Industry · Retail & E-commerce

Traffic isn't the constraint in e-commerce anymore. The 76% of carts that never convert are.

Where attention converts to sales.

The Landscape

Where this market stands

Australians now spend an estimated $66.23 billion online annually, with e-commerce accounting for close to 15% of total retail trade nationally: a share that keeps climbing as 18 million Australians shop online, spending an average of $4,040 a year each, and the broader online shopping industry is valued at $64.9 billion in 2026.

Mobile is where that growth is concentrated: 77% of e-commerce site visits and 68% of orders now happen on smartphones, and mobile transaction volume grew 28.8% year-on-year, which means a retailer's mobile checkout experience, not their desktop site, is increasingly the thing deciding whether traffic turns into revenue.

$66.23bn

Australian online retail spend, 12 months to September 2025

SRC · NAB Online Retail Sales Index

~15%

Share of total Australian retail trade conducted online

SRC · NAB

77%

Share of Australian e-commerce site visits occurring on mobile

SRC · Industry e-commerce data

The Signal

What the data says

The global average e-commerce conversion rate sits at 2.5-3.0%, but that number hides enormous variance by category. Food and beverage converts at 4.9-6.2%, while electronics (1.4-1.58%) and luxury (0.8-1.19%) convert far lower, meaning category benchmarking matters more than chasing an industry-wide average.

The bigger lever for most retailers is what happens after the click: the cross-industry median cart-to-purchase rate is only around 24%, meaning roughly three in four carts are abandoned, driven mainly by unexpected shipping costs (55% of cases), complicated checkout (21%) and trust concerns (17%). Automated recovery flows convert disproportionately well against this: automated emails generate $2.87 per send versus $0.18 for standard campaigns, and SMS cart recovery converts at 24.6-39.4%.

2.5%-3.0%

Global average e-commerce conversion rate

SRC · Industry e-commerce benchmarks

~76%

Average cart abandonment rate across e-commerce

SRC · Industry e-commerce benchmarks

$2.87 vs $0.18

Revenue per automated email sent vs standard campaign email

SRC · Industry e-commerce email benchmarks

The Friction

What gets in the way

Post-iOS14 signal loss changed the physics of e-commerce acquisition: platform-reported ROAS diverges from what the bank account says, targeting precision has given way to creative volume as the real lever, and Meta and Google CPMs keep climbing, so stores that once grew on media buying alone now stall at the same spend that used to scale. Meanwhile GA4, platform dashboards and Shopify analytics all report different numbers, and budget follows whichever one flatters.

The segments diverge sharply underneath: pure-play DTC brands live or die on repeat-purchase economics and lifecycle flows; marketplace sellers fight for Amazon share-of-search where the platform is the channel; omnichannel retailers struggle to attribute online spend to in-store sales; and wholesale brands going direct discover that owning the customer requires capabilities the distributor always handled. Each has a different growth equation wearing the same 'e-commerce' label.

And the funnel below the click still leaks the most: roughly 76% of carts abandon, driven by shipping-cost surprise, forced account creation and slow mobile checkout; the lifecycle flows that recover them ($2.87 per automated email versus $0.18 for campaigns) sit unbuilt or half-built; and returns, BNPL fees and free-shipping expectations quietly compress the contribution margin that acquisition spend is judged against.

Our Approach

How we work in Retail & E-commerce

01
Scale paid on creative, not hope: Google Shopping and Performance Max with a clean product feed, Meta and TikTok campaigns fed by a steady pipeline of UGC and short-form creative, judged on MER and contribution margin rather than platform ROAS.
02
Build the lifecycle machine: Klaviyo email and SMS flows (welcome, browse and cart abandonment, post-purchase, win-back, VIP) that typically drive 25-40% of store revenue once mature, plus retention campaigns that lift repeat rate, the cheapest growth in e-commerce.
03
Fix the funnel: conversion rate optimisation on mobile checkout, PDPs and shipping-cost transparency, because recovering even a fraction of the 76% abandonment outperforms buying the same revenue in new traffic.
04
Compound the owned channels: e-commerce SEO for category and product queries, plus Generative Engine Optimisation as AI assistants start answering 'best [product] Australia' directly, reducing dependence on rising CPMs.
05
Get the numbers right: server-side conversion tracking, GA4 configured for e-commerce truth, and unit-economics dashboards (MER, contribution margin, cohort LTV) so scaling decisions rest on real margin, not platform-flattered ROAS.