Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the share of store visits that end in an order, calculated as orders divided by visits.
An ecommerce conversion rate is the percentage of visits that result in an order. If a store has 10,000 visits in a month and 200 orders, its conversion rate is 2%.
Rates differ widely. They tend to be higher for cheap products, repeat customers, returning visitors and email traffic, and lower for expensive products, cold paid traffic and mobile visits. Offers such as free shipping or cash on delivery can lift them.
Conversion rate is the step that turns traffic into sales in RivalSonar's estimates. We start from a base of about 2%, adjust it by the store's price band and category, and keep the result between 0.3% and 5%. Estimated orders are then estimated visits times that rate. Since no outsider can see a store's real conversion rate, this is one of the biggest sources of error in any sales estimate, and it is why every sales figure is called an estimate.
For your own store, conversion rate is worth tracking by traffic source and device. A low rate on paid traffic often points to a mismatch between the ad's promise and the landing page. See how to estimate any store's sales for the full model.
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