Average Conversion Rate by Industry
Larry Kim of Wordstream published some research his company did analyzing Adwords PPC conversion rates.
Wordstream used the data collected by the AdWords Performance Grader, a free AdWords account audit tool which has evaluated over $1 billion dollars in annualized spending on Google in the last year (roughly 2.5% of total advertising revenues on Google!). For their report, they used metrics from accounts that were evaluated between July 1, 2012 and October 30, 2012.
First, you can not manage, what you do not measure. If you want to know how to improve conversion rate, you should know how you compare to some industry averages published by in a WordStream Report last year.
Here is a breakdown of conversion rates by industry for both Adwords PPC search network and display network:
Industry – – – Search CR – – – Display Network CR
Finance: 6.12% – – – 5.12%
Travel: 1.45% – – – 2.99%
Shopping: 3.58% – – – 2.19%
Jobs & Education: 6.09% – – – 2.09%
Internet & Telecom: 6.27% – – – 2.96%
Comp & Electronic 4.79% – – – 2.09%
Biz & Industrial: 4.23% – – – 4.10%
Home & Garden: 2.21% – – – 3.43%
Auto & Vehicles: 4.29% – – – 6.15%
Beauty & Fitness: 4.56% – – – 2.27%
Now these metrics are probably very deceiving because most accounts are not accurately tracking the conversion rate. In the last year, I have only seen 1 Adwords & Analytics account correctly tracking conversions. Funnel Science counts conversions as leads, phone calls and ecommerce checkouts.
Many marketers will track KPI’s as conversion rates to inflate their numbers. A KPI might be a news letter signup, or watching a video, maybe clicking to a specific page, and sometimes downloading a free book.
You Can Not Manage, What You Do Not Measure.
Make sure to have your Analytics tracking your business metrics otherwise you will find yourself wasting your PPC budget.
