Yes, SMS can increase ecommerce conversion rates when used for higher-intent moments like abandoned cart recovery, back-in-stock alerts, and time-limited offers. Its near-instant open rates give it an edge over email. It’s important you use SMS tactfully, as generic blasts or over-messaging can hurt conversion and drive opt-outs. Conversion rates depend on timing, targeting, and how sparingly SMS is used.
What is conversion rate?
Conversion rate is the percentage of people who took an action (purchased) out of everyone you targeted (website visitors). It’s one of the best metrics to keep an eye on, because it tells you what people do once you’ve hooked them in.
For an SMS message – like a basket reminder – the conversion rate is purchases divided by messages delivered. Those two numbers get mixed up a lot, and the distinction matters because a reminder going out to 400 people isn’t competing with your homepage, it’s competing with the version of that reminder you didn’t send.
What is a good conversion rate?
A good ecommerce conversion rate typically falls between 2-5%, varying significantly by industry. But there’s no single ‘good’ number, as it depends on your audience size and your brand. As a starting benchmark, Dynamic Yield (a Mastercard company) publishes rolling conversion rate benchmarks. These were the industry averages as of June 2026:
| Industry | Average conversion rate |
|---|---|
| Beauty & Personal Care | 5.37% |
| Food & Beverage | 5.03% |
| Pet Care & Veterinary Services | 4.4% |
| Multi-Brand Retail | 3.15% |
| Fashion, Accessories & Apparel | 2.81% |
| Consumer Goods | 2.43% |
| Home & Furniture | 1.2% |
| Luxury & Jewellery | 0.71% |
There’s a big caveat though. It entirely depends on all the things I mentioned (audience size, exclusivity, your brand), including how young or seasoned your business is.
That 5% beauty benchmark is great if you’ve got a big pool of visitors to pull from, but if your traffic’s smaller, you’ll want to aim higher to see meaningful results. It also comes down to your brand positioning (budget vs. high-end), which will shape the conversion rate that makes sense for you. The most logical approach is to work backwards:
‘We want to see £X return on investment – that means getting X% of our X website visitors to convert.‘
Don’t pull numbers out of thin air. Look at what you’ve already got and aim for steady improvements. There’s no exact science here, and your product range will span wildly different values, so apply some logic that fits your business, not someone else’s benchmark. Global averages are a useful reference, but not an exact target to copy.
Where are you actually losing people?
Before you add anything like a discount, a channel, or a new pop-up, you need to understand where the drop-off actually happens. Roughly seven in ten online baskets get abandoned. Baymard Institute puts it at 70.22% across a meta-analysis of 50 studies in 2026, and that figure has barely moved in a decade.
The reasons matter more than the headline number. In Baymard’s survey of US shoppers, the most common were:
| Reason for abandoning | Share of shoppers |
|---|---|
| Just browsing, not ready to buy | 43% |
| Unexpected extra costs at checkout | 39% |
| Site wanted them to create an account | 24% |
Only one of those is a messaging problem. If it’s your delivery charge, no amount of texting or emailing fixes that – you’re just paying to remind people why they left. Fix the checkout first. Then use messaging on the people who were genuinely persuadable in the first place.
Mobile abandonment runs meaningfully higher than desktop (Dynamic Yield’s live data puts it around 80% vs 66%). That’s one reason a channel that lands on the same device someone was browsing on, like SMS, can work well here. But that’s a detail about timing and device, not a reason to lead with the channel.
How do you use SMS to increase ecommerce conversion rates?
Firstly, delivery is a big advantage of SMS. The majority of delivered text messages delivered are opened (Forbes research shows marketing delivers an open rate around 98%, outperforming email’s typical 20% open rate). Our own research shows that ecommerce clients have achieved an average delivery rate of 92.82% from August 2025 to August 2026. So you can safely assume that 98% of that 92.82% will open the message.
The right approach for you depends on a few things, including what you’re selling. Lower value items, such as fast fashion, tend to convert quickly. Higher ticket items, like sofas, need more consideration time, so your customer’s on a longer journey with you. That’s where a proper nurturing or conversion journey comes in, mixing email, SMS and app notifications for the right moment.
To find the answer, we must first figure out the problem. Over the last six months, is there a particular point where people drop off? What communication channels are you using, and at which stage?
Examples of how channels fit different parts of a journey:
First visit: Make it easy to navigate, and hook people in with an offer to capture their details (email/SMS sign-up)
Browsing products: Offer a ‘save’ option and basket additions to encourage account creation; if they abandon, trigger a follow-up SMS or email with a link straight back to their basket
About to purchase: Capture their mobile number for transactional updates, and offer marketing sign-up at the same time
Customer: Make the experience effortless with great communication (SMS confirmation, dispatch updates, delivery tracking) to encourage returning customers
Previous customer: Focus on retargeting campaigns, depending on what data you have available for past purchasers. Purpose first, then decide on the communication channel after.
Again, this all comes back to the value of what you’re selling and how long that typical conversion window is. A quick-turnaround product needs a snappier journey, but a big-ticket item needs more patience (and more touch-points).
Our top tip for increasing conversions: Keep it simple!
You might find yourself getting caught up in the small vanity metrics of A/B testing or dragged down by traditional marketing methods, but it all comes back to solving a problem simply. If your conversions aren’t where you want them to be, find where you’re losing traffic and introduce one thing at a time. That way, when your conversions start to increase, you’ll see which thing helped.
How do you set up an abandoned basket SMS?
- Capture the mobile number before checkout, not during it. Ask at the point someone saves an item or enters a delivery estimate. If you only collect numbers at the payment step, you don’t have a number for the people who abandon.
- Get explicit marketing consent, separately from transactional. Two tick boxes, not one. Under PECR, a pre-ticked box isn’t consent, and the soft opt-in only covers your own similar products to existing customers.
- Connect your store to your SMS platform. Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace and Wix all connect to FireText through Zapier, or you can build it directly with the FireText API if you want tighter control over the trigger.
- Set the delay. Between one and four hours works for most stores. Sooner for low-value impulse items, later for anything people need to think about.
- Write one message with one link. Straight back to their basket, not your homepage. Use a custom field for their first name and the product if you have it.
- Send a second only if the first goes unanswered, and only once. Twenty-four hours later, ideally with a reason to return that isn’t a discount.
- Track it against a control group. Hold back 10% and send them nothing. Otherwise you’re measuring people who would have come back anyway.
What platforms can I use to help increase conversion rates?
Connecting communication channels to your CRM is easier than you’d think. Platforms like Shopify offer integrations with SMS providers like FireText via Zapier, so you can trigger journeys automatically, like sending an SMS reminder two hours after someone abandons their basket. It’s something many CRMs can do quite easily (including Squarespace, WooCommerce and Wix), whether by using Zapier or FireText’s API for a custom integration. This allows you to create touch-points that work exactly around your customers’ behaviours.
Sometimes it’s the ‘boring’ communications, like the reminders, the confirmations, the nudges, that quietly do the most work when it comes to increasing conversion rates. Tools like custom fields – where you can add personalised information to messages – can be a really simple but effective move to help.
SMS for ecommerce FAQs
What is a good conversion rate for an abandoned basket message?
There’s no universal figure – it depends on your audience and how ‘warm’ they are. Compare automated messages to other automated messages, not to broadcasts. Omnisend’s 2026 benchmark (3.81% vs 0.97%) is a reasonable starting reference.
Does SMS convert better than email for abandoned baskets?
It tends to convert faster rather than better, and the two work well together for double effect – email carries detail and images, SMS carries urgency and a single link. In-app messaging also carries urgency, but it’s very dependent on whether notifications are on or off.
How soon should I send an abandoned basket message?
One to four hours after abandonment works for most stores. Shorter for low-value impulse purchases, longer for considered ones.
Do I need consent to send marketing SMS?
Yes. In the UK, marketing texts need consent under PECR, collected separately from transactional consent. The soft opt-in can cover existing customers being messaged about similar products. It’s worth checking your specific setup rather than assuming.
How many abandoned basket messages should I send?
Two at most. The first does nearly all the work; a second, a day later, picks up a little more. A third mostly generates opt-outs.
Can I connect this to Shopify or WooCommerce?
Yes. Both connect through Zapier, along with Squarespace and Wix and lots of other CRMs. You can also integrate directly through FireText’s API, allowing you to set up a custom integration to any customer management platform you use.
Communicate to convert – try out FireText
Sign up to FireText to try out some simple messages. Head to our SMS for ecommerce page for some detailed inspiration.
