Editor’s Note
This article clarifies the fundamental concept of a “conversion” in digital marketing, defining it as a desired user action on a website. It also introduces the topic of average ecommerce conversion rate benchmarks, a key metric for measuring online business success.
A conversion occurs when someone takes an action on your website that you wanted them to take. Every website and its digital marketing team decides what they define as a conversion.
Average ecommerce conversion rates can be useful benchmarks, but only if you understand them in a greater context.
For example, according to Statista, 1.6% of global ecommerce visits converted into purchases in Q3 2025. Other sources, like Dynamic Yield, put the global average at 2.95%. These numbers are better at giving you a rough baseline than helping to set your performance targets.
That’s because conversion rates vary widely depending on what you sell, how much it costs, how often people buy it, and how they shop. A store selling supplements mainly on mobile shouldn’t expect the same numbers as a desktop traffic-heavy fashion brand or a pet food subscription.
If you look at average conversion rates across industries over the past 12 months, the spread is significant:
- Multi-brand retail: 3.93%
- Consumer goods: 2.85%
- Food and beverage: 6.22%
- Pet care and veterinary services: 3.28%
- Home and furniture: 1.41%
- Fashion, accessories, and apparel: 3.06%
- Beauty and personal care: 4.94%
- Luxury and jewelry: 0.94%
This is about purchase friction: consumables and replenishable products convert higher because the decision is familiar and repeatable; furniture and luxury convert lower because the stakes are higher, the research cycle is longer, and the purchase is often deferred across devices or sessions.
So instead of benchmarking yourself to global averages, ask: “Is my conversion rate strong for my category, price point, and customer behavior—and is it improving over time?”
An ecommerce conversion rate refers to the conversion rate of orders from an online store. The formula to calculate this is:
Ecommerce conversion rate = Orders / Visits to your website
So if you have 1,000 visits to your site, and in 50 of those visits someone makes an order, your ecommerce conversion rate is 50 / 1,000 = .05 or 5%.
Depending on what data source you’re looking at, you may see this metric called something different. Google Analytics refers to it as “ecommerce conversion rate,” so this has become the most common name. Shopify’s Analytics calls it an “online store conversion rate” and other analytics tools may refer to it as the “transaction rate” or “order rate.” The specific terms may vary, but they all mean the same thing.
A conversion rate is the percentage of the total number of visits to a website that result in a conversion action. It’s expressed as a percentage and calculated via a simple formula:
Conversion rate = Number of specific actions taken in a period of time / Total number of visits to your site in the same period of time
There are a few common misunderstandings people have when defining ecommerce conversion rate:
Sessions (visits), not users
When someone visits your website, most analytics tools refer to this as a session and identify the person (or their device) as a user. If you visit a website on Sunday, then come back again on Monday, you would be one user who had two sessions.
Ecommerce conversion rate is calculated using the number of orders and sessions in a period, not the number of users.
If you report ecommerce conversion rate using users, the rate will be inflated. Some marketers have begun advocating the use of users instead of sessions, especially for high-priced stores where most users need multiple sessions before converting, but the industry norm continues to be sessions.
Using overall conversion rate
A website’s overall conversion rate will typically be higher than its ecommerce conversion rate, which refers only to orders.
Search keywords: jewelry retail analytics industry