Understanding conversion rate & what to do about it

If you’re a seller on Amazon, your conversion rate is probably the single metric you try to optimize more than any other - it is the bread and butter of your business, measuring how many of the people that visit a given item listing will actually go through the motions and make a purchase.  

Roughly speaking, it is the number of page visitors divided by the number of sales.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that attracting traffic is itself the name of the game, and that the sales will just come organically. The truth is that not all traffic is created equal, and attracting all kinds of traffic that is irrelevant to your product will actually harm your business, as your conversion rate will actually go down. 

In addition to providing an overall view of the health of your listing, conversion rates are one of the main stats that determine your ranking on Amazon, and keeping them as high as possible should be a priority if you want to stay near the top of the search and maximize revenue. 

On average, most sites will have a conversion rate of about 1-2%, but that number goes up on Amazon - around 10-15% - because if you’re going on Amazon, it tends to be with the intention of buying something rather than just browsing. It goes up even higher for Prime members, to about 74% within a relatively short period of time.

At the same time, the conversion rate doesn’t tell you everything - you could sell five units and still have a high conversion rate if only six people visited the page. 

How do I find out my conversion rate?

Surely, such an important metric is easily accessible, right? Not quite. There is no single place where it tells you your rate in a neat little number. 

To get a good idea of what it is though, you start at Seller Central: 

• Hover over the Reports tab and select Business Reports
• Once you’re on your Sales Dashboard, select Details Page Sales and Traffic by Parent Item
• Set the time range you want on the table of ASINs you see - the default will be 30 days
• Focus just on the Sessions (which measures the number of visits to the page over the time period) and Total Order Items columns. Sessions is a more accurate measure than page views, as it will count multiple page views if a customer leaves the page and comes back, whereas sessions will count it as the same.
• Total Order Items / Sessions = Your conversion rate for your selected time range
  

How can I get my conversion rate up?

The bad news is that there is no single silver bullet here - the fact is that just about everything on the page will ultimately have an effect on whether or not a customer ends up buying your item. 

The good news is that there are several things you can do - or avoid - to get that percentage trending upward. These factors include: 

• Keywords: Most of the time, discussion of keywords has to do with traffic - if you want more people to come to your page, you have to figure out what the most sought after keywords are and action them. When it comes to conversion rates, though, there is a double-edged sword.  

          What you don’t want to do is use a keyword for its popularity and drive traffic to an ASIN, but then not create sales because it is not relevant. If you are selling a           standard board game, for example, and put a limited edition keyword to drive traffic and hope that more people buy when they get to the page, you may get a           bump from those looking for a limited edition, but they won’t buy. Your conversion rate will go down and so will your ranking.

• Quality of content: Pretty straightforward - the better your content, the more likely people will be to buy your product. Whether it is text, image or video, you don’t have infinite space to make the case for your product over your competitors’, so make the most of it.

          Use high resolution images that are also informative, feel free to use text overlays to highlight product features. Optimizing your product description for specificity,           clarity and SEO will also better your odds. 

• Reviews: For obvious reasons, shoppers want to see what those before them say about the product they are looking at, and are heavily swayed by positive - or negative - reviews. Word of mouth tends to be the strongest and most trustworthy marketing mechanism, and getting a large number of positive reviews can have a strong impact on your conversion rate, especially the further up you go in price. If you are launching a new product, the Amazon Early Reviewer program can give you springboard up the listings. 
  

• Pricing and product: You’re going to want to keep your prices competitive, as it can often make the difference, especially for lower-priced products. This will also help when you’re upselling and bundling products. In the long run, you also want to make sure product quality remains high - loyal customers are more likely to convert sales.  

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