When you’re neck-deep in the world of ecommerce, data inundates your life. Suddenly, your vocabulary gets stuffed with acronyms like LTV, CAC, CTR, MRR, and NPS, but what do they all mean? And which of these three-letter baddies is actually valuable to learning, growing, and dominating DTC?
Few metrics in ecommerce indicate that you’re on the right track like your conversion rate. And CRO, or conversion rate optimization, is going to be a mainstay goal for your squad from Day One of your online store’s life, so get cozy with this metric ASAP.
Trying to crack the CRO code is going to be a constant question, especially when it comes to selling more gifts from your site. Lucky for you, Zest has had a front-row seat in the sphere of online gifting, and we’ve seen what works in the ongoing battle to boost gift conversion rates and scale this lucrative channel.
Read on to learn about five strategies we’ve seen that are simple enough to start tackling right away so you can watch your conversion rate soar.
What Is a Good Conversion Rate, Anyways?
If this is your first ecommerce rodeo, your conversion rate measures “the percentage of people who completed an action on your website.” While the conversion rate you should obsess over the most is how many people go from viewing a product to buying a product, you should also keep an eye on things like:
- Your count of marketing newsletter signups.
- The percentage of customers who use their VIP coupons.
- Email and SMS marketing effectiveness.
- The number of people who see your Instagram ad and end up buying.
These are just a few (verrry few) of the touchpoints your shoppers encounter on their way to becoming your best customer.
Not only can you hunt for a conversion rate across a variety of channels for your store, but you can also pull a seemingly indefinite number of levers to try and make your conversion rate boom within each channel.
- Adjust which day and time your marketing emails deploy.
- Changing the price of a product from $24 to $23.99.
- Playing with your button color and copy.
- Maximize your site speed and mobile-friendliness.
- Smooth out the checkout process with modern tech.
Once you’re in the proverbial control room flicking switches, smashing buttons, and pulling levers, you’ll start to get a feel for what resonates with your brand’s unique audience so you can fine-tune and grow for the long haul.
However, getting your conversion rate to budge upward can be tough, especially with gifting, so don’t get discouraged if you’re not hitting your goal right out of the gate. Finding your store’s magic formula often requires continuous testing and endless optimization so no part of the customer journey grows stodgy or difficult.
Plus, the “good” conversion rate you’re striving for may be wildly different across other ecommerce verticals and channels. Brands dealing in high-value, luxury goods like exotic cars will most definitely see a lower conversion rate than brands selling lower-priced everyday necessities like batteries or underpants.
With that caveat in mind, the average ecommerce conversion rate sits between 2% and 3%. And if your store crests 3.2%, then congrats — you’re in the top 20% of all Shopify stores.
When it comes to gift sale conversion rates, this number may fluctuate dramatically depending on the time of year. For example, during the month of March 2025, we found that our brand partners saw an average gift conversion rate in line with the rest of ecommerce, >2%. In other words, of all the people who landed on a brand’s Zest-powered gifting storefront, more than 2% made a gift purchase.
(Pssst! This does not factor in customers who reach out to a brand for concierge gifting services, which will always see a much higher conversion rate because that experience is deeply intentional.)
March, however, is a relatively less giftable month than December when gifts are on everyone’s mind. But even in this relative lull, ecommerce brands that optimize their on-site self-service gifting journey convert as many people with intent to gift as people who are there to buy for themselves. During peak gifting season when online shoppers are on a gifting mission instead of buying for themselves, gift conversion rates will soar.
Selling more gifts from your website may seem like a nebulous task if you’re new to ecommerce, new to gifting, or both. Don’t sweat it, though. Check off these easy conversion-boosting tactics for a rock-solid gift sale conversion rate.
Five Ways to Grow Your Store’s Gift Channel Conversion Rate
Think getting your gift sale conversion rate to soar is out of reach? Think again. We know the typical brand owner is a very busy person, so these five tactics are pretty low lifts that reap big returns.
1. Add “Gifts” to your site navigation.
It would be hard to drive from Belfast, Maine, to Topanga, California, on vibes alone. Without a good map in hand, you might be able to get from Point A to Point B, but the journey would be stressful, confusing, long, and inefficient (at best).
Similarly, why would you want to leave shoppers on your site guessing when it comes to buying gifts? Imagine gift-seeking shoppers clicking around, hunting for gift message fields or blunt CTA buttons like “Send a gift!” and, eventually, ditching your site because the journey is murky. Big Yikes.
The vast majority of consumers, a fat 94% of ‘em, prioritize ease of navigation when shopping online. Clear navigation steers shoppers toward exactly what they’re looking for, nixing the guessing game entirely.
Zest brands that see the highest gift sale conversion rates abide by this best practice (and ecommerce necessity). By placing “Gifts,” “Corporate Gifts,” “Event Gifts,” or a similar category in an intuitive area for your shoppers, you not only make it easy for them to get to your giftable goods, but you even draw awareness to your gifting capabilities.
People who might not be shopping for a gift at the moment may see that category and come back to your store when they do need a thoughtful gift.
2. Add gifting CTAs to product description pages.
Many times, when a shopper is looking for the perfect gift for people, they’re clicking around your whole catalog to see if you have anything that fits the bill. This means that people will typically land on your product description pages, or PDPs, to learn more about a product, read reviews, check pricing, and more.
If someone is on a PDP and knows what they’re looking at is the ideal present, don’t force them to click away and find where it’s giftable. Those extra steps add friction and hassle, aka the nemeses of ecommerce.
Similar to tip numero uno, make it easy for people to get to the gifting part and add an appropriate CTA to your product pages.
3. Use high-quality product images for your catalog of gifts.
Product imagery has always played an important role in a shopper’s purchase decision. High-quality product pics have a 90% higher conversion rate than products stuck with low-quality photos. And when it comes to gifting, how you present your goods has even greater importance.
When someone is giving a gift, there’s a boatload of psychology in play. The perceived quality of a gift often relays to how much a gifter likes or appreciates the giftee. Plus, when someone is shopping for a gift, they have their own li’l movie playing out in their head as they imagine the recipient opening the gift, absolutely loving it, and showering the gifter with appreciation.
Because of all that, the imagery you choose for your gift storefront can make or break a gift sale. The better the images of your gift — the product, the up-close details, any included gift box or wrapping — the higher your conversion rate will be. You’ll instill confidence in the gift buyers, making them rest assured they’re purchasing something that’s high-quality, durable, and desirable with a top-tier unboxing experience.
4. Get your content creators to gab about gifting.
If you run one of the many DTC brands hopping on the influencer train, good for you. UGC, or user-generated content, is trending because it works. This marketing strategy spotlights regular people (paid regular people, to be clear) hyping up a product. The brand then posts that content from their social media accounts, and boom! They have a relatable person saying relatable things about a product, and that’s some powerful word-of-mouth.
If you want to grow your gift sale conversion rate, it’s time to take your UGC to the gifting side. Instead of spotlighting a content creator talking about how they purchased one of your products for themself, have them talk about how they were given one of your products.
Ensure they go through the whole spiel — the experience of opening the box, reading the gift note, seeing the present, and feeling so happy that they received such a thoughtful gift in lieu of another piece of garbage. Even add an impetus for the gift to the script, such as Employee Appreciation Day, a new hire gift, birthday, or anniversary.
This type of marketing woven into your social media strategy could be exactly what’s needed to spark gifting inspiration with your audience and see conversion rates spike.
Zest partner Graza leverages UGC across its social campaigns. Now imagine this guy doing an impression of a Mom opening up some squeezy bottle olive oil?
5. Speed up the gift checkout process.
Roughly one in four shoppers bounce before buying because the checkout process was too long or complicated (and that’s with all the readily available modern tech purpose-built for better DTC checkouts). Now imagine your shoppers coming to your site with intent to buy one gift or hundreds. What does that checkout experience look like?
Ecommerce brands compete for customers — and conversions — on the experience they provide. World-class experiences are smooth, without a whiff of friction, and online shoppers have grown to expect them. When too many hurdles get in the way between them and their purchase intent, they simply have hundreds of competitors they can buy from with the flick of a finger.
The same goes for gifting. If all of your gift-buying journeys start with “navigate to the footer and click the gifting link,” you’re hosed. That experience may work for some gifters who prefer contact forms and white-glove concierge service, but for those who want the experience to be as simple as buying for themselves, they won’t think twice about abandoning ship.
It’s also important to consider your target shopper. For example, if your bread-and-butter is the average millennial, 42% of them say frictionless checkout is a top expectation and 59% are loyal to brands that offer a convenient shopper experience.
Expand, or start from scratch, your store’s gift checkout. With Zest in your tech stack, your online store opens up an entirely seamless way to purchase gifts:
- Tech-savvy shoppers can send gifts digitally via link and email.
- One or hundreds of gift recipients can be added to an order in seconds.
- Gifters can surprise and delight recipients without knowing a single address.
- Shoppers can quickly personalize gift notes for every recipient.
- Addresses automatically validate for error-free gifting.
Without Zest, everyone who wants to gift your brand is forced down a single path, driving many buyers out of your funnel (and off to go buy some ho-humAmazon gift cards). By investing in an easy, intuitive, and modern gift checkout, you’ll see conversion rates for this lucrative channel skyrocket.
Your Gift Channel’s Conversion Rate Is on the Precipice of Greatness
Gifting is one of the fastest-growing ecommerce categories today. As people shop for more of their must-haves online, that means they’re also cruising their favorite DTC stores to get their gifts. Whether they’re sending something thoughtful to just a few close friends or are in charge of the company-wide holiday gifting, these consumers expect a flawless experience — and they won’t hesitate to flee if they run into friction.
Gifting has long been relegated to hidden links or time-consuming contact forms and phone calls, and that’s simply not how many consumers prefer to get their shopping done these days. By expanding your gift-buying options, guiding shoppers to your handsome gift options, and turning multi-ship checkout into a 10-second process, your gift sales conversion rate is going to see some impressive lift.
Don’t wait to get to work on these tactics. Even chipping away at one or two can help your store see greater gift sales pronto and set you up for an absolutely massive Q4 gifting season. After all, when you make it easier to buy gifts, more people will buy ‘em.
