8 Ecommerce Statistics and How to Use Them for Growth in 2024

Want to learn some valuable ecommerce statistics to help you optimize your online shop for more sales, conversions, and growth? Look no further. 

👋 In this guide, we’ll walk you through some important ecommerce trends and fill you in on key insights into consumer behavior, customer preferences, what contributes to more sales, and so much more. 

We’ll break down each ecommerce statistic, helping you to understand why it is important and how to use this information to improve your ecommerce store.

So, let’s dive into 8 important ecommerce statistics and how to use them to grow your business.

Ecommerce statistics #1: Good product photography influences sales

📈 According to an Etsy buyer’s survey, 90% of shoppers said the quality of the photos was “extremely important” or “very important” to a purchase decision.

Out of all the ecommerce statistics in this list, this is perhaps the quickest to achieve.The same survey revealed that good product photography edges out the cost of the item, extra costs (such as shipping), and reviews as the most important factor in deciding to buy.

In other words, whether you’re selling apparel, furniture, or electronics, good product photography plays a critical role in selling more of your products. 

Why good product photography is so important

Ecommerce customers, unlike those buying from a physical store, can’t physically interact with your product before buying it. They can’t pick it up, touch it, or feel its texture to assess if it is a great fit for them. Because of this, they completely rely on product photos to help them make a purchase decision. 

Good product photos showcase your product’s features clearly and help convince customers about its quality. On the other hand, bad product photography has the opposite effect. It could prevent you from making a sale, no matter how amazing your product is. 

Customers will have a difficult time figuring out its features which could discourage them from making a purchase. 

How to improve product photography to get more online sales

As the ecommerce store owner, you know how good your products are, with good photography, you can show your customers the same. Here are a few tips on how to do it. 

Utilize a high-quality camera

If you can afford one, purchase a high-quality camera that will bring out your product’s best qualities. Alternatively, you can hire a professional photographer who will set the stage for your products and take good photos of them. 

Different shots for different types of products

One size fits all doesn’t work when it comes to product photography. Close-up detailed shots work best for products like jewelry while group shots suit kitchenware and dining sets. You can also combine different shots for the same product to showcase it from multiple angles. 

Create an immersive product gallery to showcase your products with WooThumbs for WooCommerce

After taking your product photos, you can arrange them neatly in an intuitive product gallery with WooThumbs for WooCommerce.

This plugin allows you to upgrade your default WooCommerce product gallery and make it work for you to convince more customers to make purchase decisions. 

It makes your product gallery completely customizable, allowing you to make the following customization:

• Choose a layout depending on your ecommerce site’s needs. This could be a carousel or a modern stacked image gallery layout. 
• Let customers see product images in full screen. 
• Enrich how customers interact with product images using transitions and different zoom options. 

With WooThumbs, you can also improve how customers interact with product variations by adding multiple images per variation. This way, you’ll give them more visual information on your variations and make it easy for them to make a purchase decision.

Statistic #2: Cart abandonment rate has a huge impact on ecommerce revenue

📈 A Baymard Institute cart abandonment study revealed that 70.19% is the average online shopping cart abandonment rate. In other words, 7 out of every 10 online shoppers will abandon their carts without making a purchase.

Out of all the ecommerce statistics in this list, this is perhaps the most important. Abandoned carts represent lost sales opportunities. This is the potential revenue that your online business fails to capture. A high cart abandonment rate also results in wasted marketing costs. 

Some abandoned carts stem from reasons that we can’t control as online retailers. For instance, customers who are simply window shopping, comparing prices, or saving items for later. 

But for those customers who have triggered the checkout process, here are the main reasons why they might abandon their carts:

• Extra costs (shipping, tax, etc) are too high (48%). 
• The ecommerce site has errors (17%). 
• The site requires them to create an account (26%). 
• The checkout process is complicated (22%). 

How to minimize cart abandonment

You can minimize cart abandonment by improving your ecommerce website and the checkout process in the following ways. 

Optimize your ecommerce site

Test your website to ensure everything, including the navigation, buttons, point of sale system, etc., is working as it should be. Prioritize mobile friendliness to ensure those using mobile devices like smartphones have a smooth experience. 

Create a seamless checkout experience with Flux Checkout for WooCommerce

Flux Checkout, the WooCommerce checkout flow plugin, can help you create a user-friendly lightning-fast checkout that minimizes cart abandonment.

Flux allows you to keep your checkout as simple as possible by:

• Reducing unnecessary fields like Company and Coupon fields when they’re not needed. 
• Removing things like headers, footers, and sidebars that might distract customers from completing the checkout. 
• Auto-filling the address fields for customers to save them time and effort. 

Checkout surprises, such as extra shipping costs showing up just as the customer is about to purchase are the leading cause of cart abandonment. Flux allows you to avoid this by displaying the order summary with this information as soon as possible. 

On top of that, Flux has a responsive mobile app-like design that suits mobile ordering. Your customers will have a smooth checkout experience regardless of the device they use.

Ecommerce statistics #3: The importance of reviews on ecommerce conversion rates

📈 Power Reviews reveal that nearly half (45%) of consumers won’t purchase a product if there are no reviews available for it. Similarly, 9 out of 10 customers consult online reviews before purchasing. 

Reviews help customers make purchasing decisions

Customer reviews are important in increasing conversion rates because they impact purchase decisions directly. Because ecommerce customers can’t physically touch products before buying them, they need extra assurance before making a purchase decision. 

To get this extra assurance, they turn to reviews from customers who have already used the product. Potential buyers tend to trust these reviews nearly as much as personal product recommendations as they come from an unbiased source.

When your product gets numerous positive reviews, it assures potential buyers about its quality and they will likely purchase it. 

In addition, customer reviews contain keywords that potential customers are likely to search for. And if they do, these reviews could lead them back to your ecommerce site. This shows that reviews improve your SEO efforts. 

How to acquire better product reviews and showcase them 

The first step to getting better customer reviews is to explicitly ask customers to leave a review after they’ve received and used your product. But, you don’t have to stop there.

Make use of the following strategies to encourage customers to leave better reviews that will have a greater impact on your business. 

Offer incentives

Motivate customers to leave a review by giving them something in return. This could be a coupon or special discount on their next purchase. Give better rewards for better reviews to encourage them to leave high-quality reviews.

For instance:

• A 5% discount for customers who leave a starting alone. 
• 10% for a star rating and a written review. 
• 20% for all the above plus a product image/video. 

Make the review process user-friendly

If customers have an easy time completing a review, they will more likely complete the review process.

This also encourages repeat reviews as customers who have an easy time leaving reviews will likely do so again in the future. 

Showcase the best reviews on your site with WP Business Reviews

If you’re looking to promote your customer’s best experiences on your site, then WP Business Reviews is the plugin to do it.

With WP Business Reviews, you can bring in your customer reviews from review platforms like Yelp, Zomato, etc., and display them on your ecommerce site. 

It allows you to create a compelling customer testimonial section by giving you complete control over how this section looks. You can edit its appearance using a variety of styles and formats like transparent, list, or grid. You can also filter your reviews to display the best ones alone. 

WP Business Reviews will constantly pull in fresh reviews from the platforms you’ve specified to keep the testimonial section up-to-date.

Statistic #4: The global ecommerce market is growing

📈 In a Forbs Advisor survey, 57% of online shoppers report shopping internationally. The same study revealed that Walmart, eBay, and Alibaba are the most visited ecommerce websites. 

All of these ecommerce companies and other major ones are well set up to sell internationally. They can reach out to customers in regions like Europe and Asia or specific countries including Japan, China, and India. This is massively contributing to the 10.29% annual growth rate of ecommerce businesses. 

Ecommerce products are accessible to customers globally because of the following main developments:

• Cross-border payment methods – like PayPal, Amazon Pay, and Credit Cards have established themselves in numerous countries. This allows online retailers to make global ecommerce sales using their customers’ preferred payment options.
• International shipping – International shipping providers like DHL, FedEx, and UPS offer reliable and efficient delivery services across borders.

As a small business with a WordPress website and WooCommerce as your ecommerce platform, how can you set yourself up to sell internationally?

How to prepare to sell internationally

If you want to expand your customer base beyond your domestic borders, having an international shipping policy in place is a must. Once you set it up, here’s how you can ensure it is up to scratch. 

• Offer multiple shipping options – Different shipping providers predominantly operate in different parts of the world. For example UPS for the American region and DHL for Asia and the Middle East. If you want to sell to all of these regions, you must enable all of these options.
• Invest in packaging and labeling – To ensure your products remain intact when they are transported over long distances across borders. 
• Familiarize yourself with customs documentation and duties – To ensure the products are cleared as quickly as possible when they get to customs. Also, inform customers about potential taxes or import duties that may occur upon delivery. 

If managing international shipping logistics becomes overwhelming, consider partnering with a third-party logistics provider to handle this for you.

Ecommerce statistics #5: Free shipping massively contributes to online transactions

📈 Free shipping is a powerful incentive to convince customers to buy. In a recent survey, 49.4% of digital buyers admitted that free delivery would encourage them to complete a purchase. 

Extra costs such as shipping, taxes, etc., are the leading cause of cart abandonment, they cause about 48% of customers to abandon their carts. This is because customers prefer to save as much as possible and they are always looking for good deals when buying. 

Free shipping eliminates a huge portion of these extra costs, helping customers to save on shipping costs. This can persuade more customers to purchase because they will feel like they’re getting a good deal. With more customers buying, your sales will go up. 

How to profitably prioritize free shipping 

Although free shipping is a great incentive, it comes at your expense. Fortunately, you can structure your free shipping offering in different ways so that it doesn’t eat into your profits too much. 

To do this you can:

Set minimum order thresholds

Set a minimum number of orders for customers to qualify for free shipping. This will encourage customers to spend more to be eligible for free shipping, and as they do, the revenue received will cover the shipping costs. 

Offer free shipping for specific products or categories only

You can also offer free shipping for specific products or categories, preferably the most expensive ones, instead of for all products. This way, you’ll incentivize customers to purchase higher-value products and bring in more revenue.

Bundle shipping costs into product prices

Instead of bearing entire shipping costs alone, you can share part of it with your shoppers. To do this, you’ll need to determine the average shipping cost per order and then decide on the portion that you want your customers to bear. Then add this value to the product price.

Statistic #6: Product video impacts in-store and online purchase decisions

📈 According to a Think With Google Marketing Strategies report, more than half of shoppers have admitted that product videos have helped them decide the specific product to buy. 

Out of all the ecommerce statistics in this list, this is perhaps the one with the most long-lasting effects.

Product videos are important in both in-store and online purchase decisions. They give potential buyers confidence to purchase, especially when they need more information about your product before they do so. And, they do it in an appealing and digestible way. 

Combining the power of product videos and ecommerce

After creating product videos, you’ll need to add them to your online store and social media platforms like TikTok (and LinkedIn where possible). This is especially important if you want to sell to millennials and Gen Z who spend time on these social networks more than any other internet users. 

Putting product videos on these social platforms allows you to take full advantage of the growing mobile ecommerce trend. Mobile shopping has a market share of about $1.45 trillion, and it is projected to rise to 1.99 trillion according to recent forecasts. More customers are coming across product videos when scrolling on social media and then following through to buy them. 

Videos are the most sharable piece of content, Statista reports that they are 2 times more likely to be shared than any other type of content.

So having product videos on these platforms can massively expand your reach. 

How to add product video to your online store

By default, WooCommerce doesn’t support video on the product page. Fortunately, you can overcome this limitation with the help of WooThumbs for WooCommerce. 

This plugin allows you to upload a video to your WordPress site and add it to your product gallery easily. Instead of uploading a video to your site and potentially slowing it down, you can host your video elsewhere. 

With your product video hosted on YouTube or Vimeo, all you have to do to add them to your product gallery is paste the link. Videos aside, you can also add other media (for instance, audio) from sources like Wistia and SoundCloud. 

When customers get to your product page, they’ll be able to play your product videos with a modern media player with customizable controls.

Statistic #7: Customer loyalty and ecommerce sales go hand in hand

There’s a lot of value in retaining customers, and here’s why. 

📈 Shopify reports that, as an online store owner, you’re 60 – 70% more likely to sell to an existing customer than a brand-new one. 

The numbers don’t lie and they show that existing customers don’t need much convincing to buy from you. They know what to expect, and if they’ve had great past experiences with your products, they won’t hesitate to buy. 

Focusing on customer retention and loyalty will get you more sales in the long run. On top of that, it costs 5 times less to retain a customer than it does to acquire a new one. So, increasing customer retention can boost your profit margin. 

If you want your total retail sales and profit margin to go up, focus on customer retention and loyalty. 

How to improve customer retention and loyalty

There are several strategies you can implement to improve customer retention and encourage loyalty.

These could be making changes to your customer’s journey to improve customer satisfaction such as:

• Creating personalized experiences through personalized product recommendations. 
• Providing exceptional customer experiences, for instance responding to them as soon as possible. 
• Optimizing your ecommerce site to ensure easy navigation, 

Or implementing programs to keep them coming back. For instance:

• Loyalty programs with useful rewards. 
• A product wishlist.

Allow customers to create wishlists with the Wishlists for WooCommerce plugin 

Product wishlists are a great way to keep customers coming back to your business. Wishlists for WooCommerce allows you to add this feature to your WooCommerce shop, allowing customers to create lists of products they intend to buy in the future. 

With this plugin, customers can:

• Create an unlimited number of wishlists that they can come back to on special occasions like birthdays.
• Keep their wishlists private or share them on social media in just one click. 
• Search for public wishlists to make shopping for friends and family easy. 
• Edit product wishlists from their wishlists page. 

This plugin has a clutter-free design that ensures customers will have a smooth experience creating their wishlists.

Ecommerce statistics #8: Cross-selling is key for ecommerce growth

📈 Studies show that retailers that properly implement cross-selling can expect a 10 – 30% boost in sales. 

Out of all the ecommerce statistics in this list, this is perhaps the one with the biggest impact on sales.

Cross-selling boosts sales and helps to grow your business’s revenue. It allows you to suggest products that complement the ones customers have set out to buy. Cross-sells encourage customers to make more purchases per order which increases your average order value (AOV). 

Also, cross-selling helps to improve customer satisfaction. It helps customers discover products they might want or need quickly. They don’t have to spend time searching for these products, which improves their overall experience with your store. 

If you want to boost sales in your online store, implementing an effective cross-selling strategy can help you do it.

How to cross-sell effectively with Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce

In the default WooCommerce setup, you can only cross-sell on the product page. You can take this further and cross-sell effectively across your customer’s ecommerce journey with Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce. 

Apart from cross-selling on the product page, this plugin allows you to also do it:

• Once a customer clicks ‘Add to Cart’ – Create and customize a popup to show customers products they have missed and allow them to add these products to their purchase directly from the popup. 
• At the checkout – Promote impulse purchases by displaying an irresistible offer at the checkout. Customers can add the product to their order without leaving the checkout. 
• Post-purchase – Display a heavily discounted one-time offer after the checkout for customers to add to their existing order. 

Sales Booster allows you to customize the style and sales text of these offers to make the offers appealing to your customers. You can customize the contents of each offer per product to ensure customers receive relevant product recommendations. This increases the chance of making a sale.  

With Iconic Sales Booster’s extensive cross-selling options, you can cross-sell effectively and get more revenue per order.

Improve your ecommerce business with these ecommerce statistics today

Ecommerce statistics are a powerful tool for your business. They showcase trends and reveal opportunities that you can take advantage of to improve your business and grow sustainably. 

In this article, we’ve covered some of the best ecommerce statistics to help grow your business plus useful strategies to do so.

You can implement these effective strategies with the help of the plugins mentioned in this guide: 

• WooThumbs for WooCommerce – Create a comprehensive WooCommerce product gallery with multiple images per variation and product video. 
• Flux Checkout for WooCommerce – Create a fast distraction-free checkout experience to minimize cart abandonment. 
• Wishlists for WooCommerce – Allow customers to create product wishlists to keep them coming back. 
• Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce – Cross-sell effectively to boost your sales and average order value. 

You can get these plugins one after the other using these links, or in a single discounted purchase by joining our All Access Club.