Global conversion rates in selected verticals 2023

Online conversion rates of e-commerce sites were the highest in the food and beverage sector, at 3.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023. Beauty and skincare sites followed, with a 3.3 percent conversion rate. For comparison, the average conversion rate of e-commerce sites across all selected sectors stood at just over two percent.

How does conversion vary by region and device?

The conversion rate, which indicates the proportion of visits to e-commerce websites that result in purchases, varies by country and region. For instance, since at least 2023, e-commerce sites have consistently recorded higher conversion rates among shoppers in Great Britain compared to those in the United States and other global regions. Furthermore, despite the increasing prevalence of mobile shopping worldwide, conversions remain more pronounced on larger screens such as tablets and desktops.

Online shopping cart abandonment on the rise

Recently, the rate at which consumers abandon their online shopping carts has been gradually rising to more than 70 percent in 2023, showing a higher difficulty for e-commerce sites to convert website traffic into purchases. By the end of that year, food and beverage was one of the product categories with the lowest online cart abandonment rate, confirming the sector’s relatively high conversion rate. In the United States, the primary reason why customers abandoned their shopping carts is that extra costs such as shipping, tax, and service fees were too high at checkout.