What’s a Good Conversion Rate? [Rant]

If I were to tell you – what would you do with that information? Honestly, think about it and see if you can answer that.

Let’s say it’s 2%, 5% or 10% – now what? What will you do differently?

If yours is already good, would you sit back and relax? If it’s crap, would you work harder?

You have to work harder no matter what.

Conversion rates are highly contextual

The average conversion rate of a site selling $10,000 diamond rings vs an ecommerce site selling $2 trinkets is going to be vastly different. Context matters.

Even if you compare conversion rates of sites in the same industry, it’s still not apples to apples. Different sites have different traffic sources (and the quality of traffic makes all the difference), traffic volumes, different brand perception and different relationship with their audiences.

Most ecommerce sites compete with Amazon one way or another. So will knowing Amazon conversion stats help you in any way?

Amazon Prime members convert at 74%. That’s a sign of a strong client relationship. Non-Prime members convert at 13%.

Now what will you do differently? Let me tell you: nothing at all.

Here’s the correct answer to your question

The only true answer to “what’s a good conversion rate” is this: a good conversion rate is better than what you had last month.

You are running your own race, and you are your own benchmark. Conversion rate of other websites should have no impact on what you do since it’s not something that you control. But you do control your own conversion rate. Work hard to improve it across segments to be able to acquire customers cheaper and all that.

And stop worrying about ‘what’s a good conversion rate’. Work to improve whatever you have.  Every month.