Conversion rates by business sector: significant differences

When a company develops an online marketing strategy, it naturally pays close attention to several key performance indicators. Among these, the conversion rate is especially important. While conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is designed to improve this metric, it’s not always easy to know what constitutes a good conversion rate. The average conversion rate across the web is often too broad to be truly useful, as it fails to reflect the nuances of different industries. For meaningful insights, it’s far better to examine the average conversion rate by business sector, allowing for more relevant comparisons.

The conversion rate

Simply put, the conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a specific action on your website, compared to the total number of visitors. To calculate it, divide the number of conversions by the total number of visitors and multiply by 100. In e-commerce, a conversion is typically a sale, but it can also refer to other actions depending on your goals—such as watching a video, downloading an app, requesting a call-back, or subscribing to a newsletter (among others).

To help businesses improve their conversion rates, Incremys provides a suite of innovative modules tailored to different needs. With personalised AI, you gain bespoke insights into visitor behaviour, enabling you to refine your approach. The content production module helps you create relevant, optimised content for each market segment. Finally, the performance reporting module allows you to monitor your results in detail and adjust your strategy continuously.

How is conversion rate calculated?

Let’s look at a practical example. Suppose your business sells sofas online. Over a given period, you sell 25 sofas and your website receives 1,000 visitors. The conversion rate is (25 / 1,000) x 100 = 2.5%.

Conversion rate by business sector

Now, let’s interpret this 2.5% rate. If the average conversion rate across the web is 2.35%, you might think your result is quite respectable, being slightly above average. However, such a general benchmark isn’t very helpful. As we’ll see, conversion rates vary widely between sectors. Comparing your performance to similar businesses in your own industry provides much more valuable insights.

What is a strong conversion rate for e-commerce?

If you sell products or services online, it’s useful to look at the conversion rate for your specific sector. Here are some key figures that highlight the considerable differences between industries:

• Sports equipment: 2.35%
• Fashion and accessories: 3.50%
• Health and beauty: 3.80%
• High tech: 3.50%
• Homeware: 3.27%
• Food and drink: 4.95%

Understanding conversion rates by business sector is essential and offers several benefits:

• Gives you a clearer picture of market trends and sector dynamics;
• Helps assess the profitability of your commercial activities;
• Enables businesses to benchmark their performance against direct competitors in the same sector;
• Can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing and advertising based on product type;
• Provides a practical measure of customer satisfaction, showing whether you outperform similar service providers in the market;
• Makes it easier to spot new opportunities, helping organisations gain an edge over other market players;
• Offers greater transparency on commercial performance, supporting more informed decision-making.

Points to consider

While the SEO conversion rate is a valuable metric, it should be considered alongside other factors for a complete marketing analysis—such as visitor numbers and average basket value. For example, a competitor may have a lower conversion rate but generate higher profits if their average order value is much greater. To illustrate: with the same number of visitors, it can be more profitable to sell one high-value item with a large margin than many low-priced products with minimal profit per sale.

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