Visits to Carts - Carts to orders conversion rate

Anonymous
17 September 2009 12:43pm

Hi there,

I am trying to find guidelines on what is considered industry standard for percent visits to carts and carts to orders so i can measure our performance, tried a google search but could only find stats on complete funnel visits to orders.

Anyone got any pointers? or want to share?

I was considering 20% visits to carts and 35% carts to orders, that sound about right? We are currently below these figures.

Many thanks.
Clare Laurie Staff
Head of Marketing at Econsultancy

18 September 2009 09:30am

Hi,

You'll find this sort of information in Econsultancy's Internet Statistics Compendium.

The report is updated monthly and is quite substantial, so we've recently split out into 11 sub-reports to make it easier to find the information you're after. You'll find information about shopping carts in the E-commerce Statisticss report.

If you're a paid member of Econsultancy, you'll be able to download this free as part of your membership. If not, there's a sample report you can view.

Clare
Jake Hird Staff
Director of Research and Education at Econsultancy

18 September 2009 11:03am

To benchmark your performance against an industry standard can usually be difficult - in this case, you haven't even mentioned what specific industry you're looking for data about? (Fashion, entertainment, automotive, etc?)

There's also the issue of whether you offer physical products or a service for purchase? ie. Likely to be a huge rate difference between conversion/checkout of (for example) car insurance against DVDs, as they're both entirely different.

I'd say that it totally depends on the sector and the product, so although there are generic statistics around, you need to drill down into the specifics.

- J
Rob Mclaughlin
European Web Analytics Specialist at Canon Europe

21 September 2009 13:35pm

I'd second Jake here, however...

Why look at 'industry standards' at all? Your site has its own current conversion rates - my advice would be to focus on improving them! If someone told you that the industry standard was 10% would you slap yourself on the back and make no further changes?

Firstly, you need to look at abandonment and its causes...the next step is addressing this abandonment...would be great to know where people drop off - what is your analytics telling you?

Would be great to hear.
Michael Slater
marketer at europromotionalproducts.com

22 September 2009 17:59pm

industry standards - exactly required while you are looking for simple ways to promote your business. Promotional Pens
Chris Baker
Freelance Project Manager at Chris Baker FPM

28 September 2009 17:55pm

I agree with the comments so far - generic stats are pretty useless! To illustrate this, consider the Ecommerce Benchmark Survey, January 2007 – a survey with 1,923 respondents. Across all those respondents, average shopping cart abandonment rates were 52.1% but fell into a normal curve where the high end of the normal range was 80% abandoned carts and the low end was 12.5%. So if you are getting 50% abandonment you can't tell from this whether you are way ahead or way behind your competitors (they might have 12% or 80%)!

I reviewed the survey on my website here: http://usabilitynotes.typepad.com/usabilitynotes/2007/02/shopping_cart_a.html . It includes some discussion of most effective shopping cart improvements (more useful than the headline stats).

If you are looking to improve, I'd second the idea of looking at any usage statistics you can get from your site. You may also learn a lot from a small qualitative usability study - get a few people to run through the process of finding and buying something on your site while you watch, and also get them to do this on competitors sites. Look for any areas of confusion, frustration and hesitation - you may quickly identify the major areas for improvement.