conversion rate of an e-commerce site

[CR0X]

I have had to get involved with a venture and I am looking at their e-commerce site.

They get 17k visits month, but little conversion rates. I can see instantly lots of ideas of how to improve the experience, but what would anyone else be happy with for conversions considering it is a low cost product (glass packaging).

It is built on zencart which I have no experience in so a steep learning curve.

[andy-sw]

Are you talking 17k UNIQUE visitors a month? Where are these visitors coming from and how are you targetting them?.

Is the conversion rate between 1-3%?

I've not worked with conversion rates on e-commerce sites so hard to say from my eyes, although I have had to work to improve conversion rates on a lot of websites in the past, be it lead generation or sign ups, I have seen anything from 2% up to 20%.

Edited by andy-sw on Friday 26th February 16:16

[CR0X]

current google analytics:

15k unique visitors (76% new visits)
191k page views
3 1/2 minutes average time
11 pages average view
.78% bounce rate

Conversion rate of 0.78%. The stats seem to tell me that people are interested and look around but don't complete the transaction.

[purplepolarbear]

It's difficult to say and a lot will depend on your product and how it is priced in comparison with your competitors products. We get between 1% and 6% in fashion, the highest figures being in sales and the lowest just before sales start (when people visit the site thinking there might be a sale but then leave realising it hasn't started yet).

It will also depend on the strategy you use to get people to visit your site. If you don't spend anything on SEO or email marketing, people will visit your site because they have heard of your products and will be looking to buy something. If you do spend on these, people might visit your site when they don't really want anything and then leave.

When you make the improvements, you need to change one thing at a time to see if they work, ideally showing one version of the site to old users and the new version to others. If the conversion rate between the two groups is improved, you will know your change has worked (and it's not something else like pricing or the activities of a competitor).

[Dick Dastardly]

These three tell me you have very relevant traffic:

- 3 1/2 minutes average time
- 11 pages average view
- .78% bounce rate

This tells me that you don't:

- Conversion rate of 0.78%

Quite strange. How many people are exiting on the checkout page?

[CR0X]

15% exit during viewing shopping cart, not sure of checkout as trying to get to grips of the site and how it works. By the looks of it, not many.

The company has spent a hellvalot on AdWords which perhaps accounts for lack of profitability and high quality visits.

We will redesign the site shortly, either leaving it on ZenCart (saving time uploading information) or start again, hopefully with spending money on SEO as opposed to AdWords.

[Dick Dastardly]

CR0X said:

hopefully with spending money on SEO as opposed to AdWords.

The ecommerce clients we have the most success with stick to a mixture of the two. Depending on how competitive the market is, it is often decided to optimise for a selection of keywords and pay for the rest. You will probably find that adwords traffic converts more readily as the natural listings will always send over tonnes of researchers along with prospective buyers.

[Gareth79]

Work very hard on optimising your AdWords campaigns - try and figure out if you are getting duff traffic and add negative keywords or whatever to block it, also if you are on AdSense check that it is on relevant sites.

The bounce rate is the same as the conversion rate you quote, is that correct?

[CR0X]

the conversion rate is slightly higher in reality.

[Adcuz]

Have you got goal funnels setup? That should tell you where customers are leaking away.

[CoopR]

I've found using something like crazyegg.com invaluable for this sort of thing, stick it on your top traffic, exit and entry pages.

In one case it highlighted a "spend £50 and get free delivery" image near my checkout button was confusing the customers, people were trying to click it and obviously getting pissed off and leaving.

[andy-sw]

Definitely agree with using crazyegg or similar software, can be extremely valuable to monitoring visitors.

Agree with the above said regarding the stats, it seems liek the traffic is targetted although the conversion rate states otherwise. It would be good to get that above 1% to start off with regardless of industry or product.

Adwords when used correctly, although involving spending the moolah can become extremely profitable. It will boil down to the keywords you are targetting. Are you targetting the 'buy' keywords, where people know what they want to buy and just want to find a site and click buy now, or are these people still researching, therefore, visiting the website, browsing for x amount of time (which your stats seem to show) then shooting off to find other prices etc.

This, I have found, can play a huge part in the conversion rates. Does this make sense?

What are the CTR% on the ads? and although monitoring the conversion rate, are you monitoring which keywords/ads are converting for the site?

[DozyGit]

There are many reasons, and having sorted issues like these, it's very complicated - sometimes nothing to do with the site! If you want me to have a quick look and give some pointers, I can do it for free (normally I charge :P) You can PM link if you want to. Advise is not to spend, without having the business model checked out.