What is my ecommerce conversion rate?
Last updated
Sessions decide what the rate is a rate OF, so they come first.
Online store sessions over a period. Not users, not pageviews — the three are different numbers and only one of them belongs here.
Enter the number of store sessions over a period. In Shopify Analytics this is Sessions; in any other analytics tool, use Sessions over the same date range. It is not users and it is not pageviews, and the three are not interchangeable.
- Online store sessions over a periodNeeded
- Orders over exactly that same periodNeeded
- A target rate, which adds the two routes to closing the gapOptional
No benchmark is used and no grade is given. The only published figures we hold are popup benchmarks measured against popup displays, which count a different thing in a different population from store sessions — comparing the two would be confident and wrong. Rates computed over fewer than 1,000 sessions are flagged rather than projected from.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. There is no account, no install and no store connection — the arithmetic runs where you are reading it.
What the rate is built from
Ecommerce conversion rate is the share of online store sessions that end in a placed order, so a Shopify store with 42,000 sessions and 714 orders over the same period converts at 1.7%.
This is a store conversion rate, the share of online store sessions that end in an order, and not a currency conversion. No benchmark is used and no grade is given: the only published figures we hold with a disclosed sample are popup benchmarks measured against popup displays, which count something else entirely. If you want that one graded, the email capture benchmark is the tool that does it, against its published bands.
Two numbers from the same report and the same dates. Every disagreement about an ecommerce conversion rate comes from what gets counted: sessions against users, and whether the two figures cover the same window.
- Sessions
- Visits to the online store over a period, where one person browsing twice in a day counts twice. This is what Shopify Analytics reports and what most ecommerce conversion rates are built on. It is not users, and it is not pageviews.
- Orders
- Orders placed over exactly the same period. Draft orders, point-of-sale orders and wholesale orders never touched the online store, so counting them inflates the rate with orders from shoppers who were never in the session count.
- The same period, on both sides
- The most common reason two tools disagree about a conversion rate is not the arithmetic, it is a date range that is one day different on the order side. Pull both figures from the same report and the same window.
- A share, quoted as a percentage
- The rate is quoted the way the whole industry quotes it, as a percentage of sessions. 714 orders from 42,000 sessions is 1.7%, which is about 17 orders for every 1,000 sessions.
- Percentage points versus relative lift
- A move from 1.7% to 2.2% is 0.5 percentage points, and also a 29.4% relative increase. Both are correct and they are not the same unit. A target agreed in one and reported in the other is how a team ends up chasing something nobody meant.
- 0.1 of a percentage point
- One more order for every thousand sessions. It is the smallest movement worth planning around and the one merchants almost never price. At real traffic it is rarely a small number, which is usually the discovery.
- The two routes to a target
- A target can be reached by converting better or by buying more traffic, and the tool shows both. They come out to the same percentage, by arithmetic: a 30% lift in conversion and 30% more sessions deliver the same orders. Only one of them has a media bill.
- The confidence floor
- Below 1,000 sessions the tool reports the rate and refuses to project from it. A percentage over a few hundred sessions is arithmetic, not evidence.
Most shoppers leave without buying or leaving an email. Nudgesmart catches them before they go, and is available on the Shopify App Store. Browse the template library or see what it costs.
What a tenth of a percentage point is worth
Illustrative arithmetic, not customer data. Every figure below is produced by the same function the calculator above runs, so the two cannot disagree.
| Store shape | Sessions | Orders | Rate | Target | Gap | Orders needed | Or sessions | 0.1 pp is worth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid-size store, one month | 42,000 | 714 | 1.7% | 2.2% | 0.5 pp29.4% relative | 210 | 12,353 | 42 orders |
| Paid-traffic heavy, one month | 128,000 | 1,408 | 1.1% | 1.5% | 0.4 pp36.4% relative | 512 | 46,545 | 128 orders |
| Repeat-purchase brand, one quarter | 96,000 | 3,360 | 3.5% | 4% | 0.5 pp14.3% relative | 480 | 13,714 | 96 orders |
| High-consideration furniture, one quarter | 210,000 | 1,470 | 0.7% | 1% | 0.3 pp42.9% relative | 630 | 90,000 | 210 orders |
| Niche store already past its target | 18,000 | 810 | 4.5% | 3.5% | already there | — | — | 18 orders |
| New store, first fortnight | 420 | 9 | 2.14% | 3% | not rated | — | — | — |
What a blended rate hides
It is one number over a whole store
A blended conversion rate averages a branded-search visitor who was always going to buy with a cold prospecting click who was never going to. Almost every useful conversion decision lives inside that average (by channel, by device, by new against returning) and the blended figure hides all of it.
It moves when your traffic mix moves, with no change to your store
Turn off a broad prospecting campaign and the rate rises. Turn it on and the rate falls. Neither is a statement about the site. This is the single biggest reason a conversion rate goes the wrong way in a month when the team did good work.
It says nothing about what the orders were worth
A rate that climbs while average order value falls can be a worse month wearing a better number. Conversion rate and basket size have to be read together, and this page only holds one of them.
No benchmark is offered, and that is deliberate
The only published figures we hold with a disclosed sample are popup performance benchmarks measured against popup displays, which count a different thing in a different population. Every calculator that hands you a store conversion grade is comparing against something, and it is worth asking what. Ours declines rather than borrowing a yardstick that does not fit.
The gap arithmetic assumes nothing else changes
It takes your current rate as fixed and asks what traffic would produce the target orders. In reality the extra traffic is usually worse than the traffic you have, so the sessions figure is a floor, not a forecast.
Conversion rate questions
What does an ecommerce conversion rate measure?
The share of online store sessions that end in a placed order, over one period. A Shopify store with 42,000 sessions and 714 orders in a month converts at 1.7%, about 17 orders for every 1,000 sessions. This is a store conversion rate and has nothing to do with converting one currency into another.
Should I count sessions or users?
Sessions, if you want the number most ecommerce reporting means by conversion rate. Shopify Analytics reports sessions, so a rate built on users is a different and always higher number. Pick one, say which one you picked, and never compare a sessions-based rate with a users-based one.
What is a good ecommerce conversion rate?
This tool does not answer that, on purpose. The only published benchmark figures we hold are popup performance measured against popup displays, which count a different thing in a different population from store sessions. Grading your store rate against them would be a confident comparison with the wrong thing.
What is the difference between percentage points and a percentage increase?
Going from 1.7% to 2.2% is 0.5 percentage points and a 29.4% relative increase. They describe the same move and they sound wildly different, which is exactly why targets get set in one unit and reported in the other. This tool shows both side by side.
What is a tenth of a percentage point actually worth?
One more order for every thousand sessions. At 42,000 sessions a month, a tenth of a point is 42 more orders in the same month with no extra traffic. Merchants rarely work this out and it is usually the number that makes conversion work worth funding.
How many sessions do I need before the rate means anything?
At least 1,000. Below that a single extra order moves the rate enough that week-on-week comparisons are measuring noise, and the tool flags the figure rather than projecting from it.
Why does this tool not show me the revenue impact?
Because it would have to assume the extra orders carry your average order value, and the orders won at the margin are the hesitant ones, whose baskets are usually smaller than average. A single confident currency figure built on that assumption is worse than an order count you can trust.
Most sessions end without an order. Some of them can still be saved.
A store-wide rate averages away the session you could have saved. Nudgesmart works the sessions the store-wide rate hides — the leaving one, the stalled one, the one with a full cart — and reports each campaign on its own.
