Website Conversion Rate Benchmarks – Is Your Website Lagging Behind?

It’s impossible to evaluate the performance of your website without measuring how well it converts. But at the same time, that metric is only useful in context.

If you’re looking to measure more than your website’s performance in isolation, you’ll need to have conversion rate benchmarks to compare to.

A quick Google search unearths average conversion rate figures ranging from 2% to 4% but these are very broad averages, across industries and verticals.

The actual number can vary significantly based on the industry you operate in. So if you want to know whether your website is keeping up with your competitors, you the context of industry conversion rate benchmarks.

Let’s dig further into this topic and also look at the steps to take if your website is lagging behind your competition.

Website Conversion Rates Defined

Before we look at industry specifics, let’s quickly recap what defines a website conversion. If you want to understand how to calculate your website’s conversion rate, see our post on that here.

Your website’s conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who complete an action which is classed as a conversion.

Most conversion rate averages are based end of funnel conversions like transactions or lead generation. However, there are many more conversion types and their importance varies from business to business.

Conversions are usually divided into 2 categories:

Micro or Soft Conversions

A micro or soft conversion is usually completed by someone higher up in the marketing funnel. This is in the earlier awareness or consideration stages of a purchase journey and demonstrates interest or intent.

Examples of these types of conversion include:

• A guide or product brochure download
• A newsletter subscription
• A product or service video view

Macro or Hard conversions

A macro or hard conversion is generally one completed by someone reaching the bottom end of the marketing funnel. At the conversion or retention stage.

Examples of these types of conversion include:

• A purchase
• Completion of a contact form to become a qualified sales lead
• A subscription to a service or product
• Renewal of a membership

Due to the significant variance across different verticals, breaking down conversion rate averages and benchmarks across industries is all the more important.

It would be foolish to compare the conversion rate for an e-commerce website selling fast-moving consumer goods, to a site marketing and selling properties in a new housing development.

Businesses with longer sales cycles and higher-value products or services, like automotive sales or bespoke design, typically result in a lower conversion rate. Whereas those with shorter sales cycles and lower-value products or services, like food or greetings cards, tend to have a higher conversion rate.

Conversion Rate Averages Across Industries

Let’s get into the details of industry specifics.

Figures will obviously vary greatly depending on how granular you delve into industry niches, and on how the conversion rate is determined. Some will calculate an average of all conversion types across a website, whilst others may average only specific conversion types or conversions driven by specific marketing channels.

I looked at data from a range of sources, including Hubspot, Unbounce & Ruler Analytics. Where averages differed, I added a range.

• E-commerce: 2.0% – 5.2%
• B2B E-commerce: 3.2%
• Business services: 3.5%
• Software & SaaS : 1.7% – 3.0%
• Financial: 4.3% – 6.2%
• Legal: 2.6% – 5.4%
• Agencies: 2.4% – 3.3%
• Industrial: 5.6%
• Healthcare: 3.6% – 5.6%
• Travel: 4.7% – 4.8%
• Education: 5.8%
• Real estate: 1.7% – 2.6%
• Media & Entertainment: 7.9%
• Leisure & Events: 5.2%
• Automotive: 2.0%

If your brand doesn’t neatly fall into any of the industry categories above, try searching for “average website conversion rate in [your industry] industry” to find more targeted studies and results.

Does your website’s conversion rate sit below the average range for your industry? If you’re lagging behind the competition don’t panic, it just means that you have lots of room for improvement.

Moving From Average to Good Conversion Rates

Of course, understanding the industry conversion rate benchmarks in your field can only be the beginning.

If you’re sitting around the average for your industry, you’re in a healthy position and can look at making small gains to exceed it.

No brand strives to merely be average within its competitive field. Ultimately, your goal should be to beat those industry averages, not merely stay within them.

For example, a 2020 study found that while the average e-commerce conversion rate across product categories was 2.35%, the top 25% of websites within the sample actually converted at a rate above 5%. Even more crucially, the top 10% boasted a conversion rate of 11.45%, a 5x improvement over the average.

Measuring yourself against the average, in other words, is only the beginning. The key to using industry benchmarks is to build strategies that are designed to lift your website above that average, and ideally put your business within the top 10% of competitors looking to reach the same audiences.

5 Quick Steps to Improve Lagging Conversion Rates

It’s easy to get frustrated when your website conversions don’t measure up. But small tweaks can actually combine to make a massive difference to your overall conversion rate.

Before taking any drastic action, make sure you have the basics nailed down.  

1. Form fields – Research consistently shows that conversion rates are highest for forms with between 3 and 5 fields. Limit the information your audience needs to provide to as few fields as possible whilst still remaining beneficial to you.
2. Improve your offer – Website conversions build on the reciprocity principle. When users feel they’re getting value, they’re much more likely to provide their contact info. If you can offer that value through a lead magnet like a whitepaper or free trial, your conversion rates will likely increase.
3. Focus on social proof – We inherently crave the approval of others, and become more likely to trust a brand if others like us share their approval, even if they’re complete strangers. Social proof like product reviews and testimonials can go a long way towards improving conversion rates. 
4. Emphasise action language – An old marketing wisdom remains true: the worst language you could have on a submit button of a conversion form is ‘submit’. Instead, build your form around benefits-oriented action language, like ‘get your free report’ to prompt audience action.
5. Conduct split tests – Never assume that your language, or even best practices suggested by experts, will automatically work. Continuous A/B tests of your landing page can help you find the right form build, language, and even post-submit offer to keep those rates increasing.

What if Quick Steps Don’t Result In Conversion Rate Improvement?

All of the above can be small but vital steps to improve your website conversion rates towards your industry’s average. But they may not be enough.

If quick improvements don’t cut the mustard to get you in line with your competitors, you might need more comprehensive help.

More comprehensive conversion rate optimisation is a strategic and ongoing iterative process. Usually starting with an audit to help you understand key audience pain points, hurdles to conversion, and more.

An audit may also uncover a hard but essential truth, that it’s time for a new website to better serve your audience and improve your conversion rate.

Summary

Knowing your industry’s averages for website conversion rates can go a long way towards not just providing you with context, but also in building-specific targets to improve your website’s performance.

Our expertise and experience with conversion rate optimisation and UX Design across a range of industries could make us the ideal partner to help you deliver on those targets. Contact us to discuss how we can help.