The CVR Balancing Act: How to Benchmark Conversion Rates with Changing Traffic.

The increase of product offerings and limited Amazon shelf space makes it crucial for brands to increase their visibility in the category. As the competitive landscape continues to shift and alter glance views, we wanted to understand an acceptable rate of conversion for our brands to help us establish benchmarks for success and strategies for optimization.

At Marshall, we manage 40+ brands across Amazon and used the data to analyze the correlation between traffic and conversion rate. Our analysis covered 60K ASINs across a wide range of price points, representing over $250M in revenue and 60 million page views over the past six months—ensuring a robust and reliable data set.

Our findings highlight how changes in traffic impact conversion rates, offering a valuable benchmark for brands to better understand the relationship between traffic patterns and CVR.

Low Glance Views, High Conversions:​
Indicates higher intent shoppers, often arriving via targeted searches or recommendations, ready to make a purchase.
High Glance Views, Low Conversions:​
Shoppers are likely in the browsing or research phase, drawn by curiosity or broad targeting but lacking strong purchase intent.
Misaligned Expectations:​
High views with low conversions may reflect a disconnect between product presentation (price, features, reviews) and shopper needs.

When we work with our brands, it is crucial to understand the correlation between glance views and conversion rate to ensure optimization plans are put in place to scale.

Below are a few examples of some scenarios where traffic and conversion rates could be impacted and how our eCommerce Team would analyze the data to provide strategic decisions for our brands.

Why Higher Traffic Can Lead to Lower Conversions
Conversion rate (CVR) often declines as traffic increases because the additional visitors are usually less targeted or less qualified. Early traffic tends to come from high-intent users (e.g., loyal customers, warm leads), while broader campaigns or scaling efforts bring in a wider, less-engaged audience—lowering the average conversion rate.
Why Lower Traffic Can Lead to Higher Conversions
Conversion rate often goes up as traffic declines because the remaining visitors tend to be more qualified or high intent. When overall traffic drops—especially after scaling down ads or campaigns—the less-engaged users are filtered out, leaving a core audience that’s more likely to convert, which boosts the average CVR
The ASIN Performance Red Flag: What to Do When Traffic and Conversions Both Drop?
Being able to accurately diagnose the inputs and outputs behind ASIN performance requires more than surface-level data—it demands a system that can aggregate historical PDP details with key POS and operational metrics on an item & category level.

Our Marshall Insights Platform can deliver item level data performance detail at scale. It’s the engine behind the actionable insights we provide to the brands we partner with, helping them move quickly and confidently with data-backed decisions.

At Marshall, we understand the inputs and outputs that drive your business. Every day, we help our brands analyze their retailer data and build out strategies that support profitable growth. Interested in learning more? Reach out to us at marketing@marshassoc.com.