CRO Statistics: 34 Vital Conversion Rate Optimization Stats (2024)

You can spend hours (days, weeks even) designing the perfect landing page for your product launch, but that effort only matters if all those visitors actually take action. If they bounce, what’s the point? Conversion rate optimization is the science of strategically improving your website to turn more visits into conversions. 

The average ecommerce conversion rate falls between 2.5% and 3%. But even with minor tweaks to your copy, layout, or other elements, you can boost this number.

If you need more convincing, delving into conversion rate optimization statistics can reveal how much potential there is to increase conversions. Here’s how CRO can unlock new opportunities for your business.

Important CRO statistics for ecommerce

CRO is the process of transforming potential customers into qualified leads or paying customers. Here are some essential CRO statistics that highlight the power of this digital marketing strategy:

CRO statistics by industry

The average website conversion rate varies widely depending on the industry. For example, the highest average conversion rate for a furniture store (where occasional purchases are made) will be very different from that of a company that sells snacks (a regular purchase). To set yourself up for success, compare your rate to the benchmark in your industry.

In the first quarter of 2024, the average conversion rates were:

• General apparel: 2%
• Active apparel: 1.9%
• General footwear: 1.9%
• Active footwear: 1.9%
• Toys and learning: 1.7%
• Food and beverage: 1.6%
• Health and beauty: 1.6%
• Home, dining, art, and décor: 1.5%
• Sporting goods: 1.5%
• Home appliances: 1.5%
• Electronics and accessories: 1.4%
• Beauty and makeup: 1.2%
• Beauty and skin care: 1%
• General handbags and luggage: 0.9%
• Home furniture: 0.6%
• Luxury apparel: 0.6%
• Luxury handbags: 0.3%

General ecommerce CRO statistics

For ecommerce sites, technical improvements can lead to upticks in conversions:

• Personalizing your site’s content for different demographics can prompt more customers to buy. For example, ecommerce marketers can convert upward of 30% more visitors using AI-powered tools like Unbounce’s Smart Traffic to surface the best content for the incoming user.
• Making your website just one second faster can lead to a 7% rise in conversions, and ensuring your website loads in two seconds or less can increase your conversions by 15%.
• Simplifying your website can boost conversions. For example, to optimize the lead generation form on your homepage, consider reducing the number of fields. FSAstore.com, an ecommerce business supplying health items for those with flexible spending accounts, simplified its web funnel, and the updated version saw an uptick of 53.8% in average sales revenue per visitor.
• Accelerated checkout tools save customer shipping and billing information for purchases across the internet, simplifying the checkout process and increasing conversions. For example, Shop Pay lifts conversion by up to 50% compared to guest checkout, and it outpaces all other accelerated checkouts by at least 10%.

Landing page CRO statistics

Building dedicated landing pages is a tried-and-true method for generating conversions. Landing pages are standalone web pages potential customers arrive at after clicking a marketing campaign asset. They typically include a headline, a subheading with a clear value proposition, a hero image or video, and a call-to-action button.

The data shows that using landing pages improves conversion rates, and it also reveals how small tweaks implemented via A/B testing can make them even more effective. Consider these landing page conversion statistics:

• On landing pages, A/B testing can increase conversions by as much as 30%. This means that if you actually take the time to create and test at least two versions of each landing page, you can significantly increase the number of customers clicking that Buy button.
• Using A/B testing to adjust ad headlines resulted in a 12% increase in revenue for Bing, according to The Wall Street Journal. When you run PPC ads across the web, subtle wording changes can have a significant impact on your conversion rates. Continually test different versions until you’ve maximized clicks. 
• When used as a lead generation tool, landing pages have a 23% signup rate—higher than all other types of signup forms. Use landing pages to prompt visitors to sign up for your email marketing newsletter and nurture them through the marketing funnel.

Mobile CRO statistics

As of 2023, mobile accounted for approximately half of web traffic worldwide, so optimizing for smartphones and tablets is critical. This is especially true for ecommerce stores—72% of all ecommerce sales came from mobile devices, and the mobile ecommerce share will likely reach approximately 88% by 2027.

Here are a few conversion rate statistics to underscore the significance of mobile optimization:

• As of June 2024, the average mobile ecommerce conversion rate for online retail was 2.89%.
• Mobile ecommerce has the highest rate of cart abandonment at 85.65% (desktop is 73.76% and tablet is 80.74%). To reduce cart abandonment and improve conversion rates in the checkout process, consider offering one-click checkout, free shipping, and an easy returns policy.
• Mobile load speed matters; conversions can fall by up to 20% for every one-second delay on mobile. Invest in mobile CRO by using mobile site speed tricks like lazy loading, which defers the loading of nonessential resources.
• Your mobile experience can influence customer perception of your entire brand—and impact future sales. Research from Google indicates that people with a negative experience on mobile sites are 62% less likely to purchase from that brand in the future. Investing in CRO for mobile has lasting effects on brand loyalty.

CRO as a long-term strategy

CRO isn’t a one-time fix. It’s an ongoing process where you adapt to new technologies, trends, and consumer preferences. Businesses optimizing for consumer preferences, in particular, are seeing large returns on their investments. Personalized messaging, for example, results in 50% better customer re-engagement and 21% more sales conversions.

Businesses leverage CRO tools to maximize these conversions and raise the value of existing website traffic. For example, Stikky, a software-as-a-service company building premium mobile experiences exclusively for Shopify merchants, found that investing in its infrastructure and implementing Shopify’s checkout sheet kit (a checkout system for iOS and Android that is customizable and easy to maintain) boosted conversions by 15%.