E-commerce Update: Significant Election Day Impact on Website Traffic and Sales

Here, the IndieCommerce team shares an important look at current trends in the world of e-commerce.

Online traffic to IndieCommerce and IndieLite websites dropped by 33.41 percent on Election Day, November 3. The lower traffic resulted in a revenue drop of 34.81 percent for the day compared to the Tuesday of the previous week. The percentage of online customers that completed online purchases (e-commerce conversion rate) remained steady at 4.77 percent, which was just slightly lower than the 4.79 percent of the previous week.

With the e-commerce conversion rate remaining steady, the big factor driving online sales is traffic/users. The election was evidently on the minds of many online customers, which diverted attention from shopping online for books.

Factoring in Election Day, online sales for the week were down 7.61 percent over the previous week.