Conversion Rate by Category and Channel: A Dated Snapshot

What this page is, and isn't

A dated snapshot of what named external sources reported for conversion rate by category and channel, as of September 2026 — meant to feed Step 2 of the Benchmark Library framework, not to replace it. That page's core warning applies fully here: a specific conversion-rate figure without a current, category-matched source becomes misleading the moment conditions change, and this site's own Conversion Rate: What's Good, and How to Improve It guide deliberately avoids a single blanket number for the same reason. Verify the live figures yourself before using anything below for a real decision — conversion-rate benchmark reports are numerous, mutually inconsistent in methodology, and go stale quickly.

Conversion rate by category — two dated 2026 sources, and where they disagree

Fashion/apparel is the one category both sources roughly agree on (1.2-2.0% vs. 1.70% — genuinely close). Home/furniture is the clearest disagreement: Fyresite puts it at 0.8-1.5% (reasoning: high AOV and delivery-timing concerns suppress conversion) while IRP's narrower "Kitchen & Home Appliances" slice shows 2.84% — nearly double the top of Fyresite's range. This is very likely a category-definition mismatch (broad "home & furniture" including big-ticket furniture vs. a narrower "kitchen appliances" slice) rather than one source simply being wrong — which is exactly the kind of scope mismatch the Benchmark Library framework warns about matching before you compare your own number to either.

Mobile vs. desktop

Both dated sources agree on the direction, with different framings: Fyresite (Jan 2026) states mobile conversion rates are "often only 50-70% of desktop rates" on the same site. IRP Commerce's June 2026 data shows mobile carrying 63.5% of sales vs. desktop's 35.0% by volume, while separately noting mobile converts below desktop per-session — i.e., mobile drives the majority of traffic and sales volume even though its per-session conversion rate trails desktop. Both patterns can be true simultaneously and often are: more sessions at a lower per-session rate can still add up to more total sales.

Marketplace vs. DTC — a real methodology caveat, not just a number gap

Top Growth Marketing's August 2026 DTC-specific benchmark (19 DTC store properties, ~17M sessions, ~235K transactions via first-party GA4 data) reports a median DTC site conversion rate of 1.17%, with a middle-50% range of 0.92-1.52%. Notably, that report explicitly declined to publish per-category breakdowns, stating that "with 19 stores across eight categories, per-vertical figures would rest on two or three stores each — too thin to publish responsibly" — a level of sourcing discipline worth calling out and matching rather than papering over.

That same report flags a real comparability trap: it contrasts its DTC-only figure against vendor benchmarks that "pool B2B, marketplace, subscription, ticketing and hobby stores" into a single blended number — meaning a marketplace listing's reported conversion rate and a DTC site's session-based conversion rate are usually not measuring the same thing. Marketplace conversion is typically measured against already-high-intent, on-platform search traffic (someone who searched for your exact product), while a DTC site's session count usually includes colder, mixed-intent traffic from ads and social. This is a large part of why marketplace-listing conversion rates often look several times higher than DTC-site conversion rates in casual comparisons — it's not necessarily that the marketplace "converts better" in any comparable sense.

How to use this

1. Match category definitions carefully before comparing — the home/furniture vs. kitchen-appliances gap above shows how much a narrower or broader category slice can move the number.
2. Never compare a marketplace listing's conversion rate directly to a DTC site's session-based rate without accounting for the very different traffic-intent mix behind each (see above) — per this site's Conversion Rate: What's Good, and How to Improve It, the more useful comparison is almost always a listing or site against its own history.
3. Split any comparison by device (mobile vs. desktop) before drawing conclusions about traffic quality — see Traffic Sources for a Marketplace Listing for the same discipline applied to source mix.
4. Treat every figure above as already several months old relative to whenever you're reading this — pull the live source (linked in Sources below) if the decision at hand is material.

FAQ

Which of these two sources should I trust more? Neither one outright — record which methodology matches your own situation (Fyresite's broader compiled ranges vs. IRP Commerce's platform-specific June 2026 snapshot vs. Top Growth's small, GA4-verified DTC-only sample) and use the range, not a cherry-picked single point, exactly as the Benchmark Library recommends.

Is 1.17% a bad conversion rate? Only relative to a matched comparison — it's the median across 19 DTC stores measured via session-based GA4 data over a full year; a marketplace listing's much higher reported conversion figure is very likely measuring a narrower, higher-intent slice of traffic, not evidence that marketplace selling inherently converts better. Compare your own DTC site to this DTC-specific figure, and your own marketplace listing to marketplace-specific data, not across the two.

Why doesn't this page give a single "good" conversion rate number? Because no single number survives contact with real category and channel variation — see Conversion Rate: What's Good, and How to Improve It for why this site treats "a good conversion rate is X%" as more misleading than useful when applied blanket-wide.