How many percent of visitors actually buy?

Are there any stats on this?

[Erku]

Hi,

I would like to ask how many percent of your unique daily visitors make a purchase. For example, how many out of one thousand daily visitors will buy a product?

Are there any stats on this or please share here. It's interesting what we can hope for.

Thank you.

[minnapple]

Conversion rates run from the low side .5% to the high side 15%. Most healthy sites run at a 2-5% conversion rate.

Sites selling niche products have a higher conversion rate than sites selling general product lines that are offered by many.

[ecommerceprofit]

Our prices are higher so conversions are lower

[Erku]

Thank you guys this reallly helps.

So you are saying that if a site is normal there is lower rate than .5?

Thank you.

[jsinger]

Too high a conversion rate could mean you're charging too little and wasting time shipping low profit orders. Or that you carry too many fringe products.

A large study a few years ago concluded 1.8% of visitors buy (during that session? Not sure) That sounds about right to me and many others here.

The web's greatest evil isn't site or cart abandonment contrary to what many experts suggest.

[Erku]

so about 2 percent out of unique visitors is just fine?

Do you guys use pay pal?

Does it work?

[Raymond]

The percentage means very little.

It all depends on how your marketing and SEO is done. If you get alot of unrelated traffic, your percentages will be diluted. What you must do is to focus the percentages on EACH targetted source. Say, the conversion rate of 1 specific set of keywords from different search engines. Then you can compare which search engine or source give you a better conversion.

You cannot compare apple and oranges, which alot of people do. It is useless.

[Tsuren]

Erku, Porn has conversion about 0.1% and even lower. Mainstream of porn has ~ 0.03%. Some tools get 33% but on froogle’s traffic. It depends.
There is no one “just fine” for every type of merchandize.

[Essex_boy]

I look for over 1% then Im happy

[adamnichols45]

1% blimey how do you actually earn any money?

anything below 5% and i would not be happy - and im just about to launch.

[jsinger]

So you're saying you get little traffic and need 5% to make money. You do realize that probably the majority of sites don't make money. 1% can be very profitable with a high traffic/cost/margin product.

In our field, about 50% of sites shut down within a few years, and another 30-40% linger just above break even. Once a site is running the break even is often very low. About 5-10% of the sites are highly profitable. Those tend to be old sites and those run by brick/mortar pros.

--
I can't imagine that many sites convert as high as one visitor in 20.

[jwolthuis]

Your conversion percentage is a function of the price of your widgets, customer loyalty, customer support, and other technological factors.

Price: You can easily gain a 5% conversion rate simply by pricing your widgets at-cost and offering free shipping. Running your site at a loss may be a short-term (only) strategy to gain name recognition and build volume. Gradually adjust your prices upward until you maximize your revenue per visit.

Customer Loyalty: Repeat customers will convert at a much higher rate. Get on their Favorites/Bookmarks menu, keep your name in front of them via snail mailings or e-mails, run a user forum or wiki, offer better pricing for your loyal customers.

Customer support: Answer daytime emails within the hour, return messages promptly, provide online tracking numbers and order status, and offer live chat, and give insanely-prompt customer support.

Technological factors: Provide quick shipping and tax costs. Offer alsoBought's, product recommendations, wishlists, email a friend, and ratings/reviews. Sell online gift certificates.

Today's Internet shopper is price- and delivery-conscious, and very well-informed. And eBay has tought them to compare, ask for discounts, and use their chargeback leverage. They are a much tougher (but larger) crowd than B&M walk-in traffic.

[adamnichols45]

Yes i think 5% is fair - the traffic is going to be very targetted -

people coming in will know what will sell and for how much.

we offer same day dispatch and answer all mail quickly.

we are also one of the cheaper e-tailors.

i think 5% is holding back on my behalf actually.

Shall be interesting to see how it works out though.

[nipear]

5% is a very high target. If you look at the internet retailer 400 you'll see most big retailers have much smaller conversion rates, and those with very high conversion rates are also offline retailers, catalogs or very big brand well known names. Or they pre-qualify visitors offline where people know what they want before getting to the site to place their order. And these big boys with 2.5% conversion rates also have been at it for years tweaking this and that. A/B testing most of their site. Also there is a big difference between returning visitor and new vistor conversion rates. So with a 2.5% conversion rate you're looking at a 3-5% conversion rate for returning people and a 1-2% for new visitors. And it takes time to get the repeat customer/visitors coming in.

For a new store to get 5% conversion you better be on top of everything and be selling something very unique and desireable. As in no other competition. As for being the lowest price. I've found price matters very little if you're in the same ballpark. It's all about trust.

I'd be happy with 1.5% for a new ecommerce site, and I've been at this for 7 years. I mean look at Amazon, they're converting at 3.20%.

[adamnichols45]

So your saying that if i bring in 1000 visitors then i will be lucky to have 15 paying customers right?

so if im paying £300 to get them visitors coming in i wont be making any profit ;S and you guys are all doing the same.

Something has to explain this to me lol

[jsinger]

And one of those 15 will be a scammer. One's credit card will be over its limit. One will order something that's discontinued. Two will return the products later.

A day in my life. LOL

[otc_cmnn]

I hear ya jsinger...

I think the point here is that every niche/source/site is going to have a different tolerence or expectation.

The key here is to work at INCREASING your conversion rate. Simply by the fact that you asked such a question I can be SURE that there are many many many ways you can increase your sites conversion rates. There are some great threads in here about doing so, get at em.

Don't worry about what/how your neighbour is doing, but set a goal to double your conversion rate in the next 60 days.

Start Here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[vincevincevince]

Sending traffic to affiliate sites I tend to get 5-10% conversion. That traffic is, however, pre-qualified by them clicking the ad on my site.

[ccam96]

I get 5.5% conversion , however, it's a pay-per-lead arrangement and the lead costs the visitor nothing . I've noticed that conversions are in the 1% range when the customer actually has to open his/her wallet. Just my experience.

[keno]

Start Here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

I'm fairly new to Ecom and I used the above tips. It put me into 1% conversions in an ultra competitive market.

Webmasterworld works!

[Freedom]

I'm in one business where I estimate I have one conversion for every 250 visitors. But that's a conservative estimate. It might be 200 visitors.

1/250 or 1/200

However, the price tag is about $3000 to $6000.

[fiu88]

Our buyers come back 5-8 times before buying...
how is that calculated?
about 3000 uniques /week and 50 sales....
1.5%..not counting those who have come back over several weeks before buying...

We're happy with 1.5% :)

[Essex_boy]

with the 1% yes I made money.

I tend to aim at unique products that arent available in the USA, character merchandise etc. I have only once bought adwords else all the traffic is organic.

[cybert]

When I was selling it was 1-2% which was fine because there was good profit margin on my products - mainly big-ticket items.

[Erku]

So you are saying that if there is a good site with about 3000 daily unique visitors, and you have a unique product, which is generally related to the site, you should be able to sell at least 30 a day? Considering that you have the market price.

By the way, does Pay Pal work good for receiving the payments?

[scoobydooaustralia]

Greeting,
Fist message here, YAY
you talking about 5% or even 1%, with google I set up my budget to $30 a day with around 50c per click( so I can be at the top)
if I wait for 5% of people to buy then I will not make money, im I doing something wron...

[idolw]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, scoobydooaustralia.

you talking about 5% or even 1%, with google I set up my budget to $30 a day with around 50c per click( so I can be at the top)
if I wait for 5% of people to buy then I will not make money, im I doing something wron...

if i understand you properly, you simply made no calculations before starting to burn your money.

[adamnichols45]

yes i would agree with that - im aiming to have around a 10% converion on my incoming customers soon.

After talking to my supplier im sure i can. Going to cost a few quid to get them figures though.

[Oliver Henniges]

Our conversion rate concerning orders directly via the shoping cart lie somewhere around 0.3 per cent. We receive the same if not double number of orders via telephone or fax additionally, so that sums up to about 1 %.

My best visited pages are highly informative ones on folding or imprinting widgets, not aiming at direct order, but as a long-term marketing strategy. Compared to every-day-averages I had three times as many visitors on one of them on christmas eve, when absolutely noone is going to order or buy anything; I assume most have put my site to their favourites and will come back over the current year.

All this traffic, however, is natural, no paid adds; maybe conversion-rates might be higher with google adds.

Basically, all this statistics is a bit problematic. Don't forget to view and love your visitor as a unique paying individual. This has always been the best stragety to success.

[sgg24]

I have had a couple of thousand visits but only 10 purchasers. The key is in repeat business, so customers are given an automatic delivery reward, that offers reductions on shipping.

I sell a consumable product so it's in everybody's interest to reduce complexity by entering into a contract to buy and sell at regular intervals without necessitating repeat visits.

Moreover, because my visitors visit an off-the-shelf website, the percent of customers is probably larger because there is an understanding of how the site operates.

I want to increase the percent of visitors who actually buy by increasing the number of visitors. I think this is the only way to become less of a faceless corporate entity, which I feel some larger ecommerce sites can be, adding real customer service.

I'm interested in hearing from anybody who can suggest ways of increasing low, or no, cost traffic to my site.