What is the average Shopify conversion rate ?
You probably already have an idea of what the conversion rate is.
In short, it refers to the number of visitors who have carried out a significant action for your ecommerce on your website, usually an online purchase, but it can also mean the collection of an email used for a mass communication afterwards.
It istherefore a performance indicator that allows you to gauge the profitability ofyour company and the strength of your business model.
The question is: is your conversion rate good and what can you do to improve it?
If you're using Shopify specifically, there are industry-specific data to help you evaluate your own performance.
But first let's see how to calculate it.
How is the conversion rate calculated?
According to google,
"Conversion rate is calculated by simply dividing the number of conversions by the total number of interactions with an ad that resulted in a conversion in a given time period. For example, if you had 50 conversions from1,000 interactions, your conversion rate is 5% (50 ÷ 1,000 = 5%)"
These interactions can be a page your visitors see or a click on a product. Is the number of customers who buy after a click on a product page performing well?
Page view, click... it's important to know what you consider a conversion.
A "page view" conversion
In some cases, you may consider certain pages of your website as a conversion. If your business is about creating editorial content and you want to get as many visitors as possible on certain pages to monetize your site, then a page view is a good reference for a conversion.
But you need to link a time metric to it: do visitors go through your page quickly, in passing? Or do they really spend a lot of time?
To find this out, Google Analytics or GA4 will give you performance indicators of time spent on the pages of your ecommerce.
But if your site is linked to Google tag manager, you can also associate a scroll metric: do visitors scroll to 25,50,75% of the page? By triggering conversions linked to a percentage of scroll, you will be able to prove the quality of your content in a quantified way, which you can then monetize at a more interesting rate.
A "click" conversion
In other cases, a simple click can represent a conversion. Let's say you are an influencer and you have negotiated a contract committing you to bring a certain amount of traffic to the partner's website that sponsors the campaign. Trafficis measured in clicks and cost per click.
A click in this case, is a conversion.
A "purchase" conversion
The reference conversion for stores is the online purchase, the transaction, sales.
The transaction is what allows the ecommerce to live, but it also proves a real interest for the products that have the highest sales, the merchant's ability to convince and the importance of the company's presence on the market.
The transaction shows that the company meets the market's need.
But the purchase will not be the only reference: once made, most of the marketing actions will consist in keeping this newly earned customer base.
The lifetime value is an order of scale that quantifies the total number of expenses that acustomer will make during his lifetime as a customer of the company. This data is interesting because it allows to tolerate temporary acquisition cost increases.
What is the average conversion rate on a Shopify CMS?
Three levels of performance on Shopify
According to tech consultancy Littledata, the average conversion rate on Shopify is 1.8%.
Littledata auditioned nearly 4,000 Shopify stores in February 2022. But this figure is an average, and is not a good performance, as the top end would be at 3.7%, while struggling businesses would be at nearly 0.5%.
Of course, differences can be seen across industries that will thrive different proportions of sales, but the excellent conversion rate of 3.7% is achieved by nearly 20% of Shopify shops.
But some companies are doing even better than that, with nearly 5.2% conversion, or even 6.25%.
How do they manage this?
A good conversion rate... only with a big marketing budget?
The common assumption is that companies that convert better have a bigger budget.
They would have less choice to make between one strategy or another, they would be able to test more creative concepts and audiences and they would have a strong history with a certain seniority.
This seniority would also allow them, through their relationships in various media circles, to obtain even more visibility at a lower cost.
It is therefore difficult for a young and 100% digital company, which starts with a reduced or rationed budget, to reach or even exceed what is called a good conversion rate.
But some human-sized companies also achieve very good conversion rates. In fact, they simply make better choices because they know other tools, they are ahead of the trend, they know their market better and above all... they understand their customers better.
What do your customers want when they visit your website?
According to Emilie Benoit-Vernay, Head of Southern Europe, connecting with the consumer (C2C) is the only viable long-term strategy for merchants.
Shopify merchants need to reach out to their customers and not wait for them to decide to come to their store.
This requires tools but also a change in strategy: the brand must create the interaction, which means creating events like live shopping, but also adapting to a new form of commerce that will soon be in all marketing plans... the metaverse.
Even if this reality is still a bit distant, it will gradually become a reference for shoppers. In the same way that shoppers used to reject brands that didn't have a website, or those that didn't turn to social networks quickly enough, they could exclude from their choice companies that don't adapt to the metaverse.
Shoppers also want an easy journey, and this is what helps to significantly improve your conversion rate.
How to improve your conversion rate and reduce your CAC?
Conversion and acquisition costs are linked.
The more you convert, the more your marketing expenses are optimized and the more your customer acquisition cost (CAC) is reduced. The more you convert, the less it costs you to convert!
To improve your conversion rate, consider implementing simple and effective elements :
- Simplify the user experience by providing accessible and clear information. If you know that a product always raises the same questions because the product picture shows it from an angle that doesn't allow to understand its proportions or its exact color for example, change the picture!
Show the product next to a reference object that everyone knows the size of, such as a coin.
Also simplify the product description: have you written a lot of sentences that confuse what you want to say? Can you say things differently?
Are the CTAs easy to read?
Choose verbs in the infinitive or imperative tense, and make it clear in the CTA what users will see on the page after they click.
If there is any doubt, don't hesitate to add text or a bubble info (e.g.: "validate your order, you will be able to enter your promo code on the next page").
We said you should listen to your site visitors. Well, they want an optimized experience on their mobile device! So consider checking the mobile performance of your site on Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Offer different payment methods, like credit card, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Paypal. Some visitors are reassured to know that a third party takes care of the payments and may be reluctant to enter their credit card on a site where they are not used to buy.
Offering different payment methods is necessarily a good idea. In addition to this, there is a growing trend of paying in installments.
Paying in multiple installments can help improve your conversion rate by giving visitors the option to pay only a portion of the transaction immediately.
Generally, apps that allow you to pay in installments(Payplug, Klarna...) will pay you the full amount of the transaction immediately and bear the risk of non-payment in exchange for a commission.
- You have a very large catalog... and users may have difficulty finding your products. Install a search bar on your site.
With the"site search" configuration on your Google Analytics, you can even access a brand new data: the keywords that users type in, which may allow you to provide products they are looking for but that do not yet exist in your catalog.
You can also install a filter by color, size, price... A time saver for the user who can then place an order more quickly.
- Get reviews on your products: many apps allow you to get reviews, like trustpilot or yotpo review.
These reviews can really make the difference to build your credibility and increase your sales because today's shoppers are in uncertainty and don't know if they can trust you.
They don't know the real value of your product or the value of your service. Reviews from other customers help them to know you better before buying and make them feel secure.
Of course, a negative review is always difficult for the store. But if you respond to it by helping, it will also have a positive impact.
Using Live Shopping on Shopify to exceed 6.25% conversion rate
6.25% conversion rate, that's great.
But what if you could achieve 15%? 15% is what our customers observe on average.
To get that great conversion rate, they didn't spend more, they invested better.
They invested in live shopping on their shopify store. Our customers perform well in live but also in replay since replays are automatically generated on their shopify site after each live show and still generate 5% of conversion.
These are the 5% of conversions that work on their own, without any intervention from you, and that display your products with the explanations that go with them.
These replays allow you to convert and entertain shoppers, so they are the essential tool to increase the time spent on the site.
Live me Up allows you to:
- To install your own live shopping tool on your Shopify store
- To exceed the average conversion rates observed on Shopify
- To automatically generate replays that work for you without any effort on your part
- With the comfort of a shopping cart directly integrated in the solution
With Live me Up live shopping on your Shopify store, you have a tool that allows you to exceed the average conversion rate of a shopify.
