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According to Avinash Kaushik, the average conversion rate for websites in the United States is 1.74%.  Of course, depending on the products you are selling and the niche you are marketing to, conversion rates will vary greatly.

A site that sells flowers may see a conversion rate as high as 30% while a site offering cell phone ringtones may be happy with a conversion rate of 0.2%.

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The Top 10 Online Retailers By Conversion for April 2009

1. ProFlowers 42.8%
2. Vitacost.com 28.9%
3. Office Depot 25.0%
4. MetroStyle 24.5%
5. Woman Within 23.0%
6. Schwan’s 21.1%
7. CDW 20.8%
8. 1800Flowers 20.8%
9. Landsend 18.8%
10. Drs FosterSmith 18.30%

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Your site isn’t converting in the 20% to 40% range?  Don’t fret, it really just comes down to whether or your cost per customer acquisition and product margin are jiving.

The nice thing is that in almost every case with almost any website, conversion rate is something that can be dramatically increased as long as you are properly split testing  the appropriate page elements.

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Raising Your Conversion Rate Is Usually Easier And Cheaper Than Getting More Traffic
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Often times companies feel that the only way they can make more money online is by getting more and more traffic to their sites.  A lot of times it is much easier and more cost effective to work on increasing your conversion rate rather than going after more traffic.

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Here’s an example:

Company X sells widgets at a retail price of $50 and it costs $30 for the product and marketing costs leaving a $20 margin.  If company X gets 10,000 site visitors each month and is converting buyers at 1.5%, they end up with 150 buyers and a total profit of  $3000.

If Company X decides to split test pages and optimize their conversion process just enough for a jump in conversion rate from 1.5% to 3% 300 of those 10,000 visitors become purchasers bringing the total profit to $6000.

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The beauty of increasing conversion over increasing site traffic is that it only takes time or a one time cost if you hire the process out.  In our example those changes to the site that resulted in the jump in conversion rate only had to be done one time and they provided Company X an additional $3,000 per month going forward.

If Company X had decided to increase sales by increasing traffic instead of conversion, they would have to spend the extra time and money for all the additional traffic every single month going forward.

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Do you need help increasing your company’s conversion rate?  Shoot me an email with any questions you have.

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