First time visitor purchase statistics?

What % of visitors make a purchase during their first visit to a site?

[katie]

Does anyone know where I can find ANY statistics on what percentage of visitors make a purchase during their first visit to a web site?
Any recommendations on this and any similar topics would be VERY MUCH appreciated!
Thanks!

[cgrantski]

It depends so much on what's being sold, whether it's a commodity, a rare item, an impulse item or a highly considered purchase item, will last a long time or not, affects a person's appearance or not, whether it's only available online, whether physical stores are within reach, the competitive situation ... these have so much effect that you really ought to be comparing only with your competitors and peers. For what it's worth (looked up a few historical stats just now) - anywhere from 0% to over 80% of purchases happen on the first visit - that's just from the first 6 sites I checked. As for the particular statistic you want (% of first-time visitors that buy) - that's often astonishingly low. 1% wouldn't be unusual, and 20% would be darn successful, I think. (at least within the context of my experience and the kinds of sites I work with)

I really wish, despite having said all this, that somebody would manage to gather intelligently done statistics with decent qualifiers, at least to reassure people that their experience isn't an outlier. There are some industry consortia in Europe that do this, and of course the Nielsens and Forresters and such ... but ...

[cfx211]

Definitely depends on what you are selling.

I have seen it as low as 0.5%. Second visits in that shop had a 1.5% conversion, third visits 3%, fourth visits 8%, and higher and higher with each subsequent visit.

If you are selling something complicated or with a fairly involved purchasing cycle, maybe you should worry more about getting your first time visits to come back a second time than getting them to buy in that first visit.