What is a good conversion rate for an online store?

Figures of roughly 1–3% are often quoted, but category, price point, device and traffic source move it a lot. Use your own trend and segments as the real benchmark. A store that improves its mobile conversion month after month is doing well whatever the headline figure says.

Why is my mobile conversion rate lower than desktop?

Mobile visitors often browse on the go and come back later on a computer to buy, and small screens make forms and checkout harder. Simplifying mobile checkout and speeding up mobile pages usually narrows the gap, though it rarely closes completely.

Why did my conversion rate drop when traffic went up?

Usually because the new traffic was less ready to buy. A broad social campaign or press mention can bring many browsers who leave without ordering. Check conversion by traffic source before changing the store itself.

Is conversion rate the best measure of a store change?

Not on its own. A change that raises conversion but lowers order value can earn less overall. Pair it with average order value, or use revenue per visitor, which combines the two.

What Is Ecommerce Conversion Rate? Formula, Benchmarks and How to Track It

Ecommerce conversion rate is orders divided by sessions, as a percentage. It tells you how well the store turns traffic into sales, and it should always be read by device, traffic source and landing page rather than as one sitewide number.

Ecommerce conversion rate is the share of visits to your store that end in an order. It tells you how well the store turns traffic into sales - and because it multiplies everything else, small changes compound. Going from 1.5% to 2% means a third more orders from exactly the same traffic.

It's also one of the most misread numbers in ecommerce. A single sitewide figure hides huge differences between devices, traffic sources and landing pages, and it moves as much with the quality of your traffic as with the quality of your store.

What Is Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

Ecommerce conversion rate (also called store conversion rate or order conversion rate) is orders divided by sessions, shown as a percentage. A session is one visit to your store, as counted by your web analytics tool.

It measures the whole buying journey in one number: finding a product, trusting the store, adding to cart and getting through checkout. When it drops, any of those steps could be the cause - or the visitors themselves may have changed.

🧒 Explained simply 100 people walk past your lemonade stand on Saturday and 3 of them buy a cup. Your conversion rate is 3%. If you put up a bigger sign and 200 people walk past but still only 3 buy, your conversion rate halves - the lemonade didn't get worse, you just attracted people who weren't thirsty.

How to Calculate Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate = Orders ÷ Sessions × 100

Say a store has 25,000 sessions in a month and 500 orders:

500 ÷ 25,000 × 100 = 2% conversion rate

What to include and exclude:

Leave out test, cancelled and unpaid orders. Counting them is a common mistake that inflates the rate.
Watch for duplicate sessions. Tracking problems, internal team visits and bots can inflate sessions and pull the rate down.
Sessions vs visitors. Some reports divide by unique visitors instead of sessions. Both are valid, but they give different numbers - pick one.

Why Conversion Rate Matters

It multiplies your traffic. Every visitor you pay for, or earn through content and email, is worth more when more of them buy. Improving conversion makes every marketing channel cheaper per order.

It shows where the store is leaking. Read by device, by traffic source and by landing page, conversion rate points to where buyers are getting stuck - a mobile checkout problem, a landing page that doesn't match the ad, a product page missing information.

It feeds acquisition cost. Customer acquisition cost depends on how many visitors you need to buy to get one customer. A better conversion rate brings it down directly.

It needs context. Traffic quality changes conversion rate as much as the store does. Before blaming the checkout for a drop, check whether the traffic mix shifted - a big social campaign or a viral mention can bring lots of browsers who were never going to buy.

What Is a Good Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

Figures of roughly 1–3% are often quoted for online stores, but treat them loosely. Category, price point, device and traffic source move conversion rate a lot - a store selling low-cost repeat purchases and a store selling high-priced furniture will never land in the same place.

Your own trend matters more than an industry average. Compare this month with the same month last year, and break the number down: mobile against desktop, paid against organic, new against returning visitors. A steady or rising rate within each segment is a much better sign than hitting any outside number.

How to Improve Ecommerce Conversion Rate

1. Fix mobile first

For many stores most visits are on mobile, and mobile often converts worse than desktop. Test your checkout on a phone, cut form fields, and make sure buttons, images and page speed work on a small screen.

2. Make product pages answer every question

Clear photos from several angles, size and fit information, materials, delivery times and returns policy all remove reasons to hesitate. Customer reviews help shoppers trust what they're seeing.

3. Remove surprises at checkout

Shipping costs that only appear at the last step give shoppers a reason to leave. Show shipping costs or thresholds early, offer guest checkout and familiar payment options.

4. Match landing pages to the promise

Send each ad, email or social post to the page that matches what it showed - the exact product or collection. Sending everyone to the home page makes visitors hunt.

5. Recover abandoned carts

A short sequence of cart-recovery emails brings some shoppers back to finish their order. Keep the message helpful and simple before reaching for a discount.

6. Improve the traffic, not just the store

Look at conversion by source. Campaigns that bring many visits and almost no orders drag the rate down; refining their targeting can lift conversion without touching the site.

How to Track Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Chartsy for Ecommerce connects to your BigCommerce store with read-only access and syncs orders, products and customers every hour. It counts orders from your store, and any report can leave out cancelled and unpaid orders when you ask for it, so the top half of the formula is reliable.

Sessions come from your web analytics tool, so divide your Chartsy order count by sessions from that tool for the same period. Cart data also lives outside Chartsy, so cart abandonment comes from your analytics tool or store platform. With ChartsyAI you can pull the order side quickly:

"Show orders by month for the last 12 months"
"Show orders by week for the last quarter, excluding cancelled orders"

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What is Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

Key takeaways