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2024 Average Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Industry

Average ecommerce conversion rate by industry

No matter the industry, every company wants to have a lot of visitors on their web site. What is the ultimate goal here is to turn those visitors into shoppers.

If you are not selling your products/services, your store isn’t growing. Before you start growing your website traffic, you need to know your current traffic statistics.

One metric that can help you considerably is the conversion rate. Therefore, in this ShippyPro blog post, we will look at the average eCommerce conversion rate by industry to help you start thinking about what you could do to boost your sales.

What Is the Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action such as sales of products or services, membership registrations and newsletter subscriptions. In eCommerce, we consider conversion as a percentage of online store visitors who successfully complete cart checkout.

How many people are interested in your product or services?

Conversion rate shows you how good your marketing is at getting people to buy your products or services. A high conversion rate is a sign that your marketing is efficient: that you are targeting the right people with the right product.

Understanding Average Conversion Rates

Esempio grafico di Conversion Rate

To calculate conversion rates, use this formula:

Conversion Rate = Total Number of Sales / Number of Visitors

For example, if you had 50 conversions from 1,000 clicks, your conversion rate would be 5%, since 50 ÷ 1,000 = 5%.

It is very important that you understand the average eCommerce conversion rate by industry for your industry to improve. Use this benchmark as a starting point and then aim to double the industry average.

Different Industries And Their Conversion Rates

When you look at conversion rates, one of the first things that come to your mind is what is a good conversion rate? This varies from industry to industry. There are also some factors that influence conversion rates such as Device (mobile, tablet or PC), location, product cost, traffic source etc.

Below is the table where you can see how one industry is different from another. Here are some examples of average Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Industry.

Statistics: average ecommerce conversion rate by industry

Agricultural Supplies 0.62%
Arts and Crafts 3.84%
Baby & Child 0.87%
Cars and Motorcycling 1.35%
Electrical & Commercial Equipment 2.49%
Fashion Clothing & Accessories 1.01%
Food & Drink 1.00%
Health and Wellbeing 1.87%
Home Accessories and Giftware 1.55%
Kitchen & Home Appliances 1.72%
Pet Care 2.53%
Sports and Recreation 1.18%

Some companies have high conversion rates and they still want more. Keep in mind that one strategy does not work for every company. For your industry you need to understand the average eCommerce conversion rate and go from there. 

You should look which are the top converting traffic channels. To do this you need to find out where most of your traffic comes from. For example, if your top channel is social, you should invest in an email marketing campaign in order to boost direct traffic.

Google offers a free tool for identifying key channels in Google Analytics. It’s easy to use as you only need to sign up for a free account, then install a “tracking code” on your website that will enable Google Analytics to collect data about where you traffic comes from.

Every website needs to track their statistics as this date can help you significantly in making your website better and ultimately increase your traffic and sales.

Different products have different conversion rates. Therefore you should look at your analytics to see what pages convert best.

Optimize the checkout experience in order to reduce cart abandonment rate. This could help significantly in increasing your sales.

Two different companies in the same industry will have different clientele with different needs and different opinions. Blindly mimicking another company without understanding that principle will waste your time and your precious traffic.
Alison Otting, Design Director at Disruptive Advertising


If your web site is converting at around the average mark, you are under-performing. At this stage don’t panic but instead focus on how to improve it.

Focus on how you can improve

average ecommerce conversion rate by industry

Think about your marketing efforts. The most important question is to ask yourself: are you targeting the right people with your campaigns?

Creating a buyer persona is the best starting point. Thinking about your potential customer as a real person gives you an insight into buyer preferences. With this information, you can create specific campaigns that target your customers.

To create successful campaigns always use real data and listen to your customer, for example what people are saying about your company and your industry on social media.

Speaking directly to your customers improves your chances of turning leads into customers.

Your sales team can give you feedback on what trends they predict and propose solutions for future campaigns.

Where in the buyer’s journey are customers lost and what can you do to fix this?

Keep in mind that desktop conversion rates are 3 times higher than mobile conversion rates. The reasons are that customers can’t browse multiple screens, compare and see product details. Navigating is difficult, there are security concerns and it’s too difficult to put input details.

To create an easy mobile checkout experience you should make your site very clear, simple and easy to use. So when a customer is on the site he should quickly find an item, add it to the cart and find the checkout.

Browsing for products should be easy as well. “Quick view” option is a must-have here. As for the checkout, there should not be a lot of information customers have to fill out. You should have a few payment options.

average ecommerce conversion rate by industry

In general, navigation should be simple and shopping experience fast. Read this blog post by Shippypro where you can find some great advice on e-commerce mobile optimization.

Understanding customer behaviour on your website is crucial for conversion rate optimization. Using tools such as Hotjar can help you with checking where your potential customers get lost.

The discovery of what matters is important. If you figure it out, you know WHAT to optimize, and WHERE. One huge step closer to more winning tests with bigger impact.
Peep Laja, the founder of CXL


Keep in mind that one strategy does not work for every company. Always think about your target market and your specific customer. This way your strategy will be more efficient.

Try to take a look at your eCommerce store and figure out how to make your website more user-friendly (for ex. easy navigation and fast loading process). Easy to navigate website always leads to conversion rate optimization. 

A good first impression isn’t just about design, but also how fast that design loads.
Tommy Walker, Online Marketing Consultant

Better Customer Service means Better Conversions

Conversion rates are useful because they can show your customers behavior on your web site. This is valuable information in order to build your brand.

Tips from this article will help you make the first steps in making your web visitors shopping experience better. Remember that improving your customer service is always the best investment.

Conversion rates help you to accomplish your main goal which is transforming visitors into buyers. You need to be patient as this process takes a lot of time and effort.

It’s not just about improving your website design but, most importantly, it is about developing a personal relationship with your customer.

If you’d like to know more about eCommerce keep reading our ShippyPro Blog or visit our LinkedIn and Facebook pages!

ShippyPro Team

ShippyPro is the complete shipping software for online and offline retail. With Label Creator, Track & Trace, Easy Return and Analytics features, our software simplifies your shipping operations. ShippyPro integrates with over 160 couriers and 80 sales channels, making it compatible with a wide range of products and use cases.