It’s 2024, all eCommerce brands agree that mobile eCommerce conversion rate can no longer be ignored. However, there’s an inherent problem—a lack of data that’s relevant for benchmarking based on industry.
In this post, we’ll be covering key data and the reasons why your mobile eCommerce conversion rate is less than desirable.
Jump to:
What Is a Good Mobile eCommerce Conversion Rate?
Mobile Conversion Rate by Channel
Mobile vs Desktop Conversion Rate
KPIs for Mobile Conversion Rate
What Is a Good Conversion Rate for Mobile Apps?
What Is a Good Mobile eCommerce Conversion Rate?
The average mobile eCommerce conversion rate stands at 1.82%. And traditionally, it has been around 1-3%.
But if you ask “What is a good mobile eCommerce conversion rate?” the right benchmark would be your industry average.
For instance, the retail industry sees an average mobile eCommerce conversion rate of 1.9%. If you are close to this number, that’s considered good.
This number has also to do with the nature of the industry. Low consideration products that have shorter purchase cycles, will always have a higher mobile eCommerce conversion rate.
In contrast, the car and automobile industry has a low eCommerce mobile conversion rate of 0.88%.
This is because customers browse on their mobile devices for information and prefer buying it offline. Plus, the recurring purchase is not as frequent as retail or consumer goods.
If your mobile eCommerce conversion rate is at par with the industry average, then you are on the right track.
For instance, if your average mobile eCommerce conversion rate is 1.57% and your conversion rate is 1.91%, that's a good eCommerce conversion rate for mobile as you exceeded the benchmark.
Seasonal Trends
Your mobile eCommerce conversion rate may not be linear. This is due to the seasonal fluctuations and evolving shopping behavior.
Case in point, the mobile conversion rate for the beauty and personal care industry remained at 2% from Jan to Aug 2023 while it increased to 3% thereafter.
This is due to the increased spending by Americans. It is also interesting to note that 40% of higher-income customers are the largest spenders in the segment.
Similarly, the furniture segment had a 1% conversion rate for most of the year except for November.
While this might seem less, the furniture sales have increased amidst inflation.
It can also be attributed to the fact that Americans want to buy real furniture instead of fast furniture by the time they turn 28.
You'll love to read: 32 Ways to Increase eCommerce Mobile Conversion Rate in 2024
Mobile Conversion Rate by Channel
1. Email
The average email conversion rate in eCommerce is around 8 to 10%. What contributes to this awe-inspiring statistic is that 1.7 billion users check their emails on their phones.
Other reasons why email is a high-converting channel:
- 59% of Americans check emails on their mobiles while commuting thanks to ease of access
- 75% of Americans use mobile to check their personal emails
- Mobiles have your undivided attention—69% of Americans check emails on their phone while watching TV
- Ensures high visibility—27% of US users check their email as soon they receive them
- Phone is a key purchase driver—50% of US shoppers bought a product after reading a promotional email on their phone
Read further:
i. 21 Tips to Increase Sales Through Email Marketing (+ Amazing Examples)
ii. 40 Abandoned Cart Email Examples That Actually Win Back Lost Customers
2. Organic Search
Mobile forms 63% of the mobile organic search. Mobile optimized sites perform better compared to desktops as images appear in mobile search results 12.5x more.
Key reasons why mobile organic search is critical:
- Helps in product discovery—videos feature 3x more regularly in SERPs as compared to desktop
- There’s a 60:40 ratio where certain keywords are dominated by 60% of the mobile searches
- Interestingly, mid-tail keywords are mostly searched on mobile with search volume 1to1 million thanks to ease of typing
- Mobile caters to search intent—All basic questions on Google are answered here
3. Paid Search
The average mobile ad conversion rate is 3.48% for Google search ads with 0.72% for display ads.
Here’s why paid search contributes to mobile eCommerce conversion rate:
- Retargeting ads nudge 8.65% of users to revisit a retailer’s website
- Increases engagement—retargeted ads spike the engagement rate by 400% due to its personalization
- The CTR for retargeting is 10x more(0.7%) than the typical display ads (0.07%)
- Google shopping ads saw a conversion rate of 1.91% on mobile; industries where appearances are the key purchasing saw high conversions such as clothing & apparel(2.70%) and Health & Beauty(2.78%)
Mobile vs Desktop Conversion Rates
While mobile shopping is becoming popular, the average desktop eCommerce conversion rate is still significantly higher than mobile.
This stark contrast can be attributed to the difference in screen size. Despite mobile shopping booming, there’s still a significant number of eCommerce brands that don’t optimize their desktop site for smartphones.
Here’s a list of mobile vs desktop conversions according to each industry:
1. Retail
The percentage of mobile traffic stands at 63.7% while desktop stands at 33.4%. The average conversion rate stands at 1.9%.
With the above data, the mobile eCommerce conversion rate for retail is 1.2%.
The audience demographic includes 92% of 30-49 age groups shopping on their mobile.
Read further:
i. How to Boost Fashion eCommerce Product Page Conversion Rate
ii. 13 brilliant ways to overcome choice paralysis in eCommerce (2022)
2. Electronics and Home Appliances
The percentage of online traffic from desktop is 61.2% while mobile traffic is 37.3%. With an average conversion rate of 3.6%, we can determine the mobile eCommerce conversion rate to be 2.16%.
The age group 26-35 forms the largest demographic that shops electronics and home appliances on mobile.
Read further:
i. 19 retention strategies that actually work (for eCommerce)
ii. 9 Proven Ways to "Prevent" eCommerce Returns (+Smart Handling ideas)
iii. Double Your Online Electronics/Tech/Gadget Store's Conversion Rate
3. Home Decor
The mobile traffic rate is 55.2% while desktop traffic is 41%. With an average conversion rate of 1.9%, the mobile eCommerce conversion rate for home decor is 1.04%.
Millennials and GenZ buy 70% of the furniture online and comprise 45% of the US population.
Read further:
i. 20 reasons why your online furniture store has low conversions (+ ways to fix)
ii. Why is your conversion rate dropping (& 36 ways to fix it)
4. Personal Care Products
The mobile traffic is 62.1% while desktop traffic is 34.7%. With an average conversion rate of 6.8%, the mobile eCommerce conversion rate in the personal care products vertical is 4.22%.
While millennials pay special attention to skincare routine, GenZ spends the most on personal and skincare products.
Read further:
i. 40 High-converting Health/Beauty "Product Page" Examples
ii. Does infinite scrolling kill conversions? Here's what we found
5. Cars and Automobile Parts
The mobile traffic is 50.9% while desktop traffic is 34.7%. With an average conversion rate of 1.57%, the mobile eCommerce conversion rate for car and automobile parts is 0.88%.
The age group 25-35 spends the most on automobile parts at 20.5%.
Read further:
i. 20 reasons your auto parts store has LOW conversions (+ ways to fix)
ii. 13 guaranteed ways to boost Revenue per Visitor (eCommerce)
6. Food and Beverages
The percentage of mobile traffic is 54.4% while desktop traffic is 44.5%. With an average conversion rate of 4.94%, the mobile eCommerce conversion rate for food and beverages is 2.67%.
Millennials form the key demographic in this industry. They occupy a large part of the US workforce. They are buying homes, climbing the corporate ladder, and raising families. This explains the reason for their increased spending on Food & Beverages.
Read further:
i. Promote your online store in the USA - 15 unique ideas
ii. Free Shipping: Still a conversion driver in 2024? (+ Brands Nailing It)
7. Pet Care
The percentage of mobile traffic is 69.5% while desktop traffic is 28.8%. With an average conversion rate of 2.32%, the mobile eCommerce conversion rate rate for pet care is 1.6%.
While millennials spend the most on pet care products online, people in the 30-44 and 55-64 have increasingly begun spending. You might want to note that 55-64 people prefer omnichannel when buying pet care products online driven by the pandemic.
Read further:
i. 20 Reasons Your Pet Supplies Store Has Low Conversions (60+ Ways To Fix)
ii. 41 Marketing Ideas For Online Pet Stores (With Examples)
How Do You Determine Mobile eCommerce Conversion Rate?
Mobile eCommerce conversion rate is determined by the total number of purchases made on a mobile device divided by the number of mobile users who visited the site.
While determining your mobile eCommerce conversion rate, exclude the following:
- Irrelevant traffic sources such as referral spam
- Bots and crawlers
- Duplicate transactions due to multiple entries
- Non-completed transactions—users who completed a purchase but have multiple sessions of drop-offs
You should also check out: 51 Marketing Ideas For Online Pet Stores (With Examples)
KPIs for Mobile Conversion Rate
When measuring the effectiveness of mobile conversion rate, you might want to consider these key KPIs:
a. Mobile conversion rate
Mobile conversion rate is found by dividing the number of users who completed a goal on mobile by the total number of users who began shopping on their mobiles.
Read further:
i. eCommerce Mobile UX: 27 Ways to Get More Conversions
ii. How to write product descriptions for mobile: 27 proven ideas (with examples)
iii. Mobile Product Page Breadcrumbs: 6 Common Mistakes (& 10 Brilliant Ideas)
b. Mobile Average Order Value
Your mobile AOV tells you how friendly your mobile website is. The AOV for mobile is $109. You might want to take a look at:
- Category page offerings
c. Mobile Cart Abandonment Rate
The mobile cart abandonment rate is 77.34%. This is likely due to the following reasons:
- Poor checkout experience—your users are finding it difficult to type in checkout fields
- Customers normally use mobiles for product comparison and desktops for buying
- Too much friction—overuse of mobile popups, device compatibility issues, and slow loading times
Read further:
i. 27 Ways to Boost Mobile Product Page Conversions (eCommerce)
ii. 25 amazing (& high converting) mobile checkout examples
d. Mobile Traffic Share
While your desktop traffic might win hands down, your mobile traffic share is dependent on certain factors:
- What is audience demographics? If your audience comprises 18-24-year-old adults, your mobile traffic share will be higher
- What OS does the majority of your customers use? Android is widely used for desktops while iOS has better mobile traffic
Read further:
i. Mobile Commerce: Examples, Trends, Best Practices (For 2024)
e. Add-to-Cart Rate
The average add-to-cart rate on mobile is 7.5%. This KPI tells us how easy or tough users find while adding products to carts. The possible reasons include:
- No return policy on website above-the-fold
- Lack of sticky add-to-cart CTAs
- Not having floating labels
We recommend you to read: How to Increase Add to Cart Rate: 30 Brilliant Ideas
Read further:
i. Mobile Cart Page: 17 Brilliant Examples (& Why They Work)
ii. 21 High-Converting Mobile Landing Page Examples to Inspire Yours
iii. Make your mobile payment page “conversion-friendly” (13 UX hacks)
What Is a Good Conversion Rate for Mobile Apps?
While there are three types of conversion rates for mobile apps, we will talk about the one that affects the revenue the most—In-App conversion rates.
While the industry standard is 1-2%, anything above is really good. But, there are KPIs you might want to track such as Install-to Purchase Rate.
For starters, the Install-to-Purchase Rate is the percentage of the number of users who made a purchase divided by the total number of users who installed your app.
The retail install-to-purchase rate is 1.38%. You might look at two KPIs to determine why your rate is either low or high. One is the Rage Tap rate—the number of times a user tapped repeatedly to perform an action.
The second is the crash rate. Here are two benchmarks: app crashes per session <0.1% and app crashes per screen view <0.01%.
How Do You Calculate Mobile App Conversion Rate?
Mobile app conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of conversions by the total number users(sessions) who used your app.
You might want to note conversions refer to purchases.
Tools and Analytics for Monitoring Mobile eCommerce Conversion Rates
Improving your conversion rate for mobile isn’t possible unless you keep track of data. Here are a few tools you will find beneficial:
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics 4 can help in cross-device tracking for websites. It focuses on event-based tracking—a deeper approach towards user interactions. It allows tracking up to 25 parameters.
2. Mixpanel
Mixpanel helps you understand your conversion rate for mobile eCommerce by tracking user journeys across your mobile site. It takes a proactive approach when tracking button clicks, form submissions, and other interactions.
3. Hotjar
Hotjar is a tool that helps you understand visitor activity through heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. This can help understand problem areas that cause drop-offs in the funnel.
4. AppsFlyer
AppsFlyer is a cloud-based mobile attribution and analytics tool that helps app marketers in campaign management and conversion tracking. It helps in tying installations and actions to particular channels.
5. Firebase
Firebase is part of Google's platform that is tailored for mobile apps. One advantage includes no limits to add unlimited events. It is an event based model that works based on app behavior.
How we can help you get more mobile conversions:
98% of visitors who visit an mobile eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything.
Why: user experience issues that cause friction for visitors.
And this is the problem Convertcart solves.
We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions.
How we can help you:
Our conversion experts can audit your site—identify UX issues, and suggest changes to improve conversions.