What is a good ecommerce conversion rate?
What a conversion rate is, how to calculate it, why benchmarks vary so much between stores, and how to tell whether yours is worth improving.
Ecommerce conversion rates are usually quoted somewhere around 1% to 3%, but a good rate depends heavily on what you sell, your prices, your traffic sources and the device people use. A $15 impulse buy and a $900 sofa will never convert alike. The most useful benchmark is your own store over time: track your rate by traffic source and device, fix what blocks shoppers, and watch the trend.
- Conversion rate = orders ÷ sessions × 100.
- Commonly quoted ranges are around 1% to 3%, but they vary widely by niche and price.
- Compare your rate by device and traffic source. Big gaps point to fixable problems.
- Small improvements add up: going from 1.5% to 2% is a third more orders from the same traffic.
How to calculate it
Divide the number of orders by the number of sessions in the same period, then multiply by 100. 30 orders from 2,000 sessions is a 1.5% conversion rate. Shopify shows this on the Analytics overview; in Google Analytics you can calculate it from purchases and sessions.
Why benchmarks vary so much
- Price: expensive products take more consideration and convert lower.
- Niche: consumables and repeat purchases convert differently from one-off purchases.
- Traffic source: email and returning visitors usually convert far better than cold social traffic.
- Device: mobile often converts lower than desktop, partly because people browse on phones and buy later.
- Bots and spam traffic: they inflate sessions and make your rate look worse.
That's why a single industry average is a weak target. Two healthy stores can have very different rates.
Signs your rate can improve
- Mobile converts far lower than desktop: often a mobile layout problem.
- Plenty of add-to-carts but few orders: look at shipping costs and checkout.
- Good traffic from a source that never converts: check where those visitors land.
- Your rate dropped after a theme change or a new app.
What a better rate is worth
Because revenue is visitors × conversion rate × average order value, a small change in conversion rate is worth a lot. Use our lost revenue calculator to see what a higher rate would mean for your store, then run a free StorePeek check to find what's holding it back.
Frequently asked questions
Is a 1% conversion rate bad?
Not necessarily. For expensive products or cold traffic it can be fine. Compare against your own past numbers and look at the rate by device and traffic source before deciding.
Should I use sessions or users?
Use sessions, since that's what most platforms use for conversion rate. Mixing the two makes your numbers inconsistent.
How quickly can I improve my conversion rate?
Some fixes, like moving a hidden button or showing shipping costs, can make a difference within weeks. Measure for a few weeks before and after each change, because small stores have noisy data.