The Ultimate Guide to Amazon Conversion Rate Optimization

Data recorded from a study conducted by Statista in 2022 found that 69.8% of online shoppers abandon their carts without finalizing a purchase. The study noticed that between 2006 to 2022, the rate at which consumers abandon their shopping carts is rapidly increasing. These findings indicate that eCommerce retailers are increasingly struggling to convert customers and improve conversion rates.

This article seeks to provide Amazon merchants with the information, tools, and tips they need to decrease their shopping cart abandonment rates and increase their conversion rates to rectify the growing lack of shoppers purchasing commitment.

Amazon conversion rates indicate the percentage of customers who bought your product. High conversion rates equate to higher profits. Conversion rates are a popular unit of measurement that is calculated by dividing the total number of users who bought your product by the overall views on your Amazon product listing:

Total Number of Orders / Total Page Views = Conversion Rate 

Knowing the conversion rates of other Amazon merchants’ who sell similar products can help you establish a valuable benchmark to measure the impact of your optimization efforts. Given that Amazon’s ranking algorithm favors listings with higher conversion rates, understanding everything there is to know about them can be vital to the success of your eCommerce business.

Amazon benchmarks help brands evaluate the success of their eCommerce business. Establishing a good Amazon conversion rate benchmark can be a good indicator of where a product stands relative to the competition. However, conversion rate benchmarks vary and are contingent on various factors such as product price, number of sales, and product category. For example, an average Amazon conversion rate can be anywhere between 10% to 15%, so be sure your conversion rate reflects this metric range.

An increase in sales is not the only benefit of having a high conversion rate. There are other advantages of selling Amazon products with high conversion rates. For example, having a high Amazon conversion rate can drastically boost a product’s organic ranking. In turn, ranking higher on search results pages will also increase the amount of organic traffic a product receives. Together, these two benefits yield yet another.

High conversion rates, high product ranking, and high organic traffic are all things Amazon’s algorithm loves and respects. Once the algorithm catches wind on how well a particular product is doing, it associates it with being a best seller among shoppers. As a result, the algorithm rewards said product by increasing its chances of earning Amazon’s Best Seller badge and winning the Amazon Buy Box.

Sellers can find and track their conversion rates on the Amazon Seller Central dashboard. Follow the steps below to access your conversion rate metrics.

Once connected, go to the Sales Dashboard, hover over the “Reports” tab, and select “Business Reports.”

In this page view, you will find individual sales information on every product you sell.

There will be a “Unit Session Percentage” column within the table, and those percentages indicate your Amazon conversion rate.

One of the main reasons Amazon conversion rates stagnate or decline is because online shoppers are not following through with their purchases. Such shopping behavior leads to an increase in shopping cart abandonment.

The statistics in the graph below are from a Statista study that surveyed 18,000 online shoppers worldwide to understand what causes them to abandon a purchase after adding it to their cart.

If you are interested in improving your Amazon conversion rate then you must redirect your focus to rectifying the reasons digital shoppers abandon their carts. Below is a list of eight reasons consumers abandon shopping carts, along with eight solutions on how to prevent them from doing so.

Among the 18,000 respondents in Statista’s survey, nearly half of them said that the main reason they abandoned their shopping carts was that the delivery cost turned out to be higher than they initially anticipated.

One way to prevent a majority of shoppers from abandoning the product in their cart is to offer free shipping. Of course, sellers do not want to incur any additional costs; they just want to make money. However, providing customers with free shipping has benefits such as boosting sales, raising the average order value, increasing conversion rates, and helping cultivate customer loyalty.

More often than not, shoppers add items to their shopping cart for the very purpose of comparing the overall price of receiving the product. If the price at checkout does not satisfy the shoppers’ expectations, they will abandon the product in their cart for a similar product with a more suitable price.

To deter the likelihood of this happening, Amazon brands and sellers can adopt a competitive pricing strategy. Product pricing plays a significant role in shoppers’ decision-making process. Competitive pricing aims to lure your target audience toward you and away from your rivals by offering the most attractive prices.

There are several Amazon product alerting tools brands and sellers can add to their tool kit that notifies them when their competitors change the price of their products. Such notifications allow you to adjust your price accordingly and boost conversion rates by using competitive pricing to maintain a competitive edge.

Shoppers often abandon a cart at checkout because they change their minds about the product they initially wanted to buy. Therefore, Amazon brands and sellers need to market their products strategically and impactfully. Such marketing efforts can persuade the shopper not to change their mind and boost conversion rates.

An effective way to market and optimize Amazon items on a product detail page is to provide shoppers with compelling high-resolution product images and videos to reassure and remind them why they added that product to their cart in the first place. Images and videos should be of high quality and should seek to create a similar experience for customers as they would have in a physical store.

Too many shoppers abandon carts because the product they want is no longer in stock. Managing one’s inventory is fairly simple. Amazon sellers and brands should ensure that their products never go out of stock as adverse outcomes are associated with a lack of inventory management.

Inventory levels are one of many factors that determine Amazon Buy Box eligibility. Preserving a stocked inventory ensures Amazon’s algorithm that sellers can manage the increased conversions that coincide with increased production demands.

Another reason online shoppers abandon their shopping carts is that the product they added to their cart was not going to be delivered on time for when they needed it. Everyone knows those last-minute shoppers who forget to buy items such as costumes or birthday gifts ahead of time.

To not penalize these types of consumers and help them realize that you are the brand or seller they can count on to fulfill their needs (at the last minute), you can join the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).

FBA is a service that helps Amazon brands and sellers prosper by giving them access to Amazon’s logistics network. Essentially, FBA does most of the work for you; Amazon picks, packs, and ships all your orders.

There are too many payment options available to let this be the reason shoppers are abandoning their shopping carts. It is necessary to accommodate any shopper who is willing to spend money on a product.

Therefore Amazon brands and sellers should accept as many payment methods as possible. Buy Now Pay Later is the latest trend increasing eCommerce spending. Incorporating the BNPL financing option in your storefront can increase sales, boost conversion rates, and decrease shopping cart abandonment rates.

Like with all things, there exists an exhaustive list of conventional ways Amazon brands and sellers can improve their conversion rates. To improve conversion rates rapidly, effectively, and impactfully, eCommerce experts at DataHawk suggest implementing the tips listed above. In sum, by minimizing the number of online shoppers who abandon digital shopping carts, sellers and brands can simultaneously boost their Amazon conversion rates. After all, who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?