How To Benchmark Online Retail Store Conversion Rates

Your conversion rate, the number of people who make a purchase divided by the number of people who visit your site, is a critically important number to your online retail business. This number is the final arbiter of your success, it combines the results of your traffic generation activity with your website function, content and pricing to determine how many people who get to your site actually buy from you.

Conversion rates vary dramatically from the phenomenally high rates by retailers such as Schwanss 35.2 percent (food seller), and Keurigs 31.3 percent (single cup brew system), to the typical conversion rate for ecommerce of 2 to 3 percent. In this article we have gathered comparison data that you might use to think about your site’s conversion rate.

Top Ten Retailers U.S.

The chart below shows the top ten online retail sites conversion rates in the USA.

Top Ten Online Retail Conversion Rates
WebsiteConversion Rate
Schwans 35.2%
Keurig 31.3%
ProFlowers 26.0%
Vitacost22.5%
Blair 22.4%
DrsFosterSmith.com 22.4%
Woman Within 21.3%
Amway Global 20.5%
Roamans.com 18.7%
Office Depot 17.9%

The top retailers have high name recognition, a known, easy to understand product and as you will see if you visit these websites, an easy to use website.

Conversion Rate by Website Type U.S.

When you look at how online retail sites do by type of site, catalog sites are consistently better performers than any other type.

WebsiteConversion Rate
Catalog5.8%
Software3.9%
Fashion and Apparel2.3%
Specialty1.7%
Electronics0.50%
Outdoor and Sports0.40%

Among catalog sites, there are some real winners and obviously enough low conversion rate sites to bring the average rate down.

Top Catalog Site Conversion Rates U.S.

Type of site Conversion rate
Lane Bryant Catalog24.7%
QVC16.7%
Oriental Trading Company15.2%
Blair.com14.5%
Jessicalondon13.7%
Symantec13.5%
Roamans 13.5%
The Sportsmans Guide12.2%
Christianbook.com11.9%
Lillian Vernon11.8%

If you operate a catalog site, these are the retailers to learn from. Take a moment to go to these websites and put yourself through the customer experience, looking for strategies that you can apply on your own site.

U.K . Online Retailers Conversion Data

Core Metrics, a U.K. based web intelligence and analytics group published the information in the table that follows for U.K. online retailers. As you can see, the U.S. and U.K conversion rates are very similar.

Although the changes from 2008 to 2009 are slight, almost all of the movement is in the wrong direction. Average items per order, shopping cart conversion rate and new visitor conversion rate are all down. Shopping cart abandonment is up. The slight increase in the average order value might not be statistically significant.

Mar-09Feb-09% Change
(m/m)Mar-08 % Change
(y/y)
Average Items/Order2.352.321.32%2.52-6.89%
Average Order ValueGBP57.09GBP55.303.24%GBP56.960.22%
Shopping Cart Conversion Rate49.90%47.47%5.12%52.25%-4.50%
Shopping Cart Abandonment50.10%52.53%-4.63%47.75%4.92%
New Visitor Conversion Rate3.04%2.75%10.55%3.27%-7.03%

Core Metrics also provided interesting information about the value of site search capability. Their data shows that when site search is used, which occurs about one third of the time, the conversion rate jumps to nearly eight percent, though the average order value decreases by about GBP15.

This information seems to suggest that when a visitor can search for precisely what they are looking for, they tend to buy less, possibly zeroing in on just the item they are seeking. This kind of data may make you wonder if you want to sacrifice GBP15 for the higher conversion rate.

However, you probably should not draw too many conclusions by comparing the two sets of conversion data because the earlier chart depicts new visitor conversion only, the second chart illustrates overall conversion based on search. It is difficult to know what factors are playing a part in the difference.

Mar-09Feb-09% Change
(m/m)Mar-08 % Change
(y/y)
On-Site Search Session29.67%31.76%-6.58%33.05%-10.23%
On-Site Search Conversion Rate7.59%7.04%7.81%8.60%-11.74%
On-Site Search Average Order ValueGBP42.90GBP40.585.71%GBP43.67-1.78%

On the other hand, it does seem to be true that some impulse buying is lost when the on site search function is utilized. Under the circumstances, the best strategy is to be sure that you have optimized the buying opportunity within the sales strategy and throughout the checkout, e.g., organize search results to bring up best sellers first, place cross sell items on the same page, introduce sales items during the check out process.

Benchmarking is an excellent way to think about your own site. Calculate your own numbers, compare them to the benchmarks and figure out why they are different, where you have an opportunity to improve and how you might do so.