I’ve been often asked about benchmark conversion rate. While I strongly believe that conversion rate is quite an individual indicator and depends on many factors, it is still interesting to have some number to compare your store performance. BTW, thanks to guys from Demac Media who produced and shared Canadian eCommerce Benchmark Quarterly Reports. The charts below represents average conversion for selected set of Canadian online retailer using two popular platforms – Magento eCommerce and Shopify. The sample size of Shopify merchants is apparently bigger.
As you may see the average conversion is in the range between 1.1% and 1.5% with a bit higher numbers for Shopify merchants.
If your conversion rate is very different from that number I however suggest do not rush to celebrate or cry over that fact. If you have tons of cheap traffic you may experience lower conversion and still have a great business and vice-versa – there can be cases with much higher conversion, but not high enough to justify extremely expensive cost of visitors. The conversion is important, but more as an internal indicator you may use to compare it in dynamic and segmented for different channels. What is much more important however is ROMI (return on your marketing investment).
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