Conversion rate: what moves it, and what only looks like it did
The share of visits that end in an order. It's the number everyone wants up, and it moves more with who turned up than with anything on the site.
- 021Conversion Rate
- The percentage of visitors to your e-commerce store who go on to place an order. For email, the percentage of recipients who complete a desired action after clicking on a link in an email, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. Optimising conversion rates is a key goal of email marketing campaigns.
- On your shop
- Sessions that completed checkout divided by all sessions, in Shopify's own reports
- In Klaviyo
- Placed order rate: orders inside the attribution window divided by recipients
- Moved most by
- Who's arriving: the traffic source, the device and how warm they are
Two conversion rates, worked out two different ways
Your shop has one conversion rate and your emails have another, and they don't share a bottom line. Shopify divides the sessions that completed checkout by all sessions. Klaviyo's placed order rate divides the orders credited to an email by the people who received it.
So the shop's rate is per visit and the email's is per recipient. A third version divides orders by clicks. It's the biggest of the three, which is why it's so popular on agency slides. Ask which one you're looking at.
Why conversion rate falls when nothing on the site changed
Look, a lot of drops aren't the website. They're the traffic. Send a wave of cold visitors from a social campaign and the rate falls, because strangers buy less often than people who already know you. Same shop, same pages, different crowd.
- Traffic mix: more paid and social visits, fewer from email and search
- Device mix, since phone and desktop visits rarely convert at the same rate
- Stock: a sold out bestseller drags down every visit that came for it
- Season: January browsers and November buyers aren't the same visitor
- Measurement: Shopify changed how it counts sessions in late September 2026
That last one catches people out. Shopify's note on its session measurement update says to treat it as a measurement change. Then split the rate by source and device before anyone touches a product page. If email visitors buy as well as ever and social visitors don't, the site's fine. The audience changed.
A discount code can buy conversion rate, and the margin pays
Any shop can lift its conversion rate this week. Put a big enough code on the homepage and more visits end in an order. The rate goes up, the margin comes down, and the customers you gained learn to wait for the next code.
So read conversion rate beside average order value and margin. A rate that rose while both held is progress. One that rose on the back of a code is a sale you paid for.
Where to look first for more orders from the same traffic
- The product page, with price, delivery cost and returns clear before the basket
- The checkout, with guest checkout on and no new costs at the last step
- The visitors who leave: a sign-up offer for the warm ones, and an abandoned cart flow for anyone who started a basket
That's conversion rate optimisation in one breath. Find where visitors drop, fix that step, test the fix. And visits that end without an order aren't always lost. Some get a second chance in the inbox.
Related terms
FAQs
What is a good conversion rate for an online shop?
The one you had at the same time last year, on the same mix of traffic. Published averages pool shops with different prices, categories and audiences, so they describe the sample more than they describe you. Track yours by source and device, against the same month last year.
Is email conversion rate the same as placed order rate?
In Klaviyo, near enough. Placed order rate is the orders credited to a message inside its attribution window, divided by the people who received it. Some reports divide by clicks instead, which gives a much bigger figure for the same email, so check the bottom of the sum before you compare.
Does a higher conversion rate always mean more profit?
No. A discount can lift the rate while every order earns less, and new traffic can lower it while bringing in customers worth having. Judge it with order value and margin beside it, and with how many of those buyers come back.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
Half an hour with Theo, our founder.
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