Title: Conversion rate determinants in e-commerce websites. What about moderation effects?

Authors: Davide Di Fatta; David Diwei Lu

Addresses: University of Palermo, Viale delle scienze, 90128 Palermo PA, Italy ' South China University of Technology, 381 Wushan Rd, Tianhe Qu, Guangzhou Shi, Guangdong Sheng, 510630, China

Abstract: Online retailers invest significant resource to improve conversion rates, defined as the proportion of website visitors that make a purchase. Using 1,184 observations from six e-commerce websites, this paper aims to analyse conversion rate determinants, also considering moderation effects of seasonality and webpage speed of load. Results show that free shipping and discounts policy have a positive effect on the conversion rate, moderated by seasonality and load speed. These finding could be useful guidelines for e-commerce managers in order to allocate their limited resources to the most relevant factor to increase online sales.

Keywords: conversion rate; e-commerce; pricing policy; discount; free shipping; ordinary least squares; OLS.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEMR.2018.094990

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2018 Vol.9 No.4, pp.366 - 377

Received: 31 May 2017
Accepted: 14 Jun 2017

Published online: 28 Sep 2018 *

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