Page Conversion Rate into sale. What is common?

1000 page site with great content....what to expect

[bullneedsapic]

I'm in the process of building a site with 1000 pages planned by this year end. I know there are tons of variables, competiton, price, demand, market....etc. But would be curious to know. what type of conversation the average site has from its content into actual sales. This is a retail site that sells healthcare related products. I was thinking 1% conversion would be average? Is this realistic? to high to low? would love some feed back.

Thanks,

Mark

[tedster]

One main problem with using page views to measure conversions is that MANY page views will be from rogue bots. If you have some way of filtering out anything but human users (a cookie system, for instance) that will help.

Next, there's a catch-22 involved. The better your information/content the more you will get people only reading for the information -- especially on a health related site, I would think.

To give you a very generalized opinion, I would think that 1% is way too high for conversions per page-view. Now if you are looking at ad-driven traffic, that might be a good guess for some sites -- but most sites would like it higher.

However, if you are looking at general traffic, I say in the area of .01% as a wild guess. I took a look at one profitable business I work with and they are around that level overall -- including their PPC traffic which converts at a much higher rate.

[bullneedsapic]

Hi Tedster,

Was looking more at unigue vistors to my site. So if 1000 people showed up to the site in a day. Was looking at maybe getting 1% (10 purchases) from 1000 visitor.

I think I have provided the content in a way that is not overdone, but steers the customer towards the product. I quess I will just have to check the logs once it gets up and see how it converts.

Thanks,

Mark

[bekyed]

Hi bullneedsapic,

I think you are aiming to high, tedser is about right.
We have 4 eccommerce sites, the top one bringing in 5,000 visitors per day, we get around 20 - 25 sales from this per day selling products at £25 - £100.00 from this top site and maybe 3 to 4 sales per day from the others.

Its a hard game, we have been here for six years and these are our best conversions.

I dont want to put you off but health products is a massive industry, out of 1000 visitors i would expect 2 maybe 3 sales.

Bek.

[bullneedsapic]

Ok....

Well...Then...I guess I will just have to see how it go's. It is a little let down to know that conversions are that low. I told myself 1 year and lets see how the site performs. The site with 5000 visitors per day. How big if a site is it? Also Does it rank on 1st page? Just curious. It is a niche, but a big niche. also what is not competitive. If you find something that is not. It will not be for long.

Mark

[rb4580]

BEKYED, It's good to see someone in the same boat as me. Yes, we make good money, but our conversions seem to be about the same.

It's not easy out there but it's doable. EVERYTHING MATTERS... Load speed, your sales copy, cart speed, uniqueness, your USP, etc. You gotta fight.

[bekyed]

Yes, the past 3 months have been terrible in ecommerce, we have just about managed to hang on.

We are on the front page for many search terms, the main site has over 2800 products on and we use google adwords and overture as well as as high listings on yahoo, msn etc.

Its a bloody hard game, but its harder if you have a bricks and mortar business i have heard.

Bek.

[bekyed]

Oh and it is adult products by the way.

Bek.