E-commerce Update: Shifting Shopping Behavior

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Here, the IndieCommerce team shares an important look at current trends in the world of e-commerce.


Over the past seven days, we’ve seen the percentage of online customers who complete an online transaction (the e-commerce conversion rate) drop by 12.48 percent (blue line) vs. the previous week (orange line). This resulted in an online sales revenue drop of 14.76 percent vs. the previous week. 

Ecommerce conversion rate of 4.65%

Traffic over the past seven days was down by only 4.38 percent vs. the previous week (orange line below).

Seven-day comparison of users/traffic

The drop in the ecommerce conversion rate that we are now seeing may be the result of COVID infection rates rapidly dropping across the U.S. Bookstore customers may be shifting their purchasing back into buying offline as states open up and opportunities for in-store shopping increase. 

Keep in mind that the conversion rate has averaged 4.36 percent over the past seven days. For comparison, the same seven-day period last year had a conversion rate of 1.5 percent. Last year at this time, online traffic was 74 percent lower than what we are currently seeing. Although we are seeing online consumer behavior shift once again, online sales over the past seven days were still up over 466 percent vs. the same period last year.