E-commerce Update: What’s the New Normal in 2021?

The percentage of customers shopping at IndieCommerce and IndieLite websites who end up completing a purchase is called the e-commerce conversion rate, and it’s a good indicator of how motivated customers are to complete an online purchase. This past week, we saw an average conversion rate of 4.64 percent, which is down from the previous week’s average of 5.15 percent.

That drop is online customers settling into purchase habits that are leading to a conversion rate that may eventually become the baseline conversion rate for most of 2021.

Although week-over-week sales revenue dropped by 14.47 percent, traffic last week actually increased by 4.94 percent (see graph below), but fewer customers completed an online purchase.

The conversion rate we saw last week is similar to what we were seeing in September 2020. The IndieCommerce team expects the conversion rate during the first quarter of this year to eventually settle into the 4.75 to 4.85 percent range — a good place to be.