The Big Picture (Celebrating Our Results & Market Benchmarks)

Hello everyone! We wanted to pull back the curtain and share some exciting data on how shoppers are behaving on The Hive NZ. Because we are a team, your products drive this success, and these numbers belong to all of us.

When people talk about online shopping, the average New Zealand e-commerce conversion rate across general retail typically sits between 1.5% and 2.5%. Most online stores struggle to get people past the front door.

Here is what is happening across our entire funnel on The Hive NZ right now, stacked against general market averages:

• Google Search Impression to Click-Through (2.84%): Out of every 100 times our marketplace pages and products showed up in Google search results, 2.84 people clicked through to our site.
  • The Market Average: Typical organic search click-through rates for e-commerce generally hover between 1.4% and 2.0%. Hitting 2.84% means our search titles and descriptions are grabbing significantly more attention than standard shops.
• Site Visitors to Product Views (36.54%): Out of every 100 people who land on our website, over 36 of them view a product page.
  • The Market Average: Standard browsing behavior usually sees much higher bounce rates right away, making a 36.5% product interest rate a fantastic sign of healthy site navigation.
• Product Views to Add-to-Cart (4.17%): Out of every 100 people who view a product, about 4 of them love it enough to add it to their basket.
  • The Market Average: Standard e-commerce benchmarks for product-to-cart rates usually sit around 2.5% to 4%. Our marketplace product pages are performing above average at turning lookers into buyers.
• Cart to Checkout (32.32%): Nearly a third of those shoppers move forward to start the checkout process.
  • The Market Average: The median benchmark for moving from a cart to starting checkout generally sits around 30% to 37%, meaning we are sitting right where a healthy store should be.
• Checkout to Paying (61.18%): Over 60% of the people who reach the payment page successfully complete their purchase.
  • The Market Average: Most online stores see a brutal drop-off here, with average checkout completion rates hovering around 40% to 45% (though top-performing stores can reach up to 59%). Hitting 61.18% means our platform is secure, trusted, and exceptionally smooth.

What this means: While average New Zealand online stores fight hard for a tiny fraction of sales, our multi-vendor system is outperforming standard baselines across almost every single step. From Google search results all the way to the final payment, when shoppers see our products, they click, they trust what they see, and they buy. We have built a really solid foundation together!

The Power of Organic Traffic (Why Quality Matters)

In the above section, we shared how well our checkout and search clicks are performing. Now, let us talk about who is visiting The Hive NZ and how they get here.

• Almost all of our traffic comes from organic search—meaning people are typing searches into Google, finding our category pages or products naturally, and landing on the site.
• We are not relying on expensive social media ads to force people to look around.

What this means: Organic shoppers have very high intent. They are actively searching for what you make, whether it is local artisan homewares, unique gifts, or specialized services. Because these shoppers arrive ready to buy, it makes your beautiful products shine even brighter. As we continue to improve our search engine optimization (SEOSEODefinition SEO= Search Engine Optimisation. It is the practice of improving a webpage to help it rank higher in search engine results. The goal is to bring in more free, organic traffic from people searching online. Explanation Imagine a massive library with millions of books, and you need to find one specific recipe. A librarian helps you by organising the shelves and pointing you straight to the best book. Search engines like Google work in a similar way. When you use SEO, you are arranging your online shop and product pages so search engines easily understand them. This helps your brand show up near the top of the results when customers search for what you sell, making it much easier for buyers to find you without paying for adverts.) across categories, even more of these high-intent buyers will find your shopfronts.

The Shipping Hurdle (How to Win More Sales)

We have amazing traffic and a fantastic checkout process. However, looking closely at where some sales slip away, there is one major factor we need to talk about: shipping costs.

• For online shoppers in New Zealand, unexpected courier costs are the single biggest reason people abandon their baskets at the last second.
• Some listings currently have very high individual shipping fees attached to them, and those specific products are the ones missing out on completed orders.

How we can fix this together:

• Absorb a little into the price: Consider building a portion of your shipping cost directly into the product price and offering a lower flat rate—or better yet, “Free Shipping.” Shoppers much prefer seeing a slightly higher item price with free shipping than a cheaper item hit with a steep courier fee at checkout.
• Set up your shipping zones properly: This brings us to a crucial technical step…

The Shipping Tab Check (A Quick Task for Everyone)

To make shopping as transparent as possible for our customers, we need your help with a technical setting inside your vendor dashboard.

• A large number of vendors have not yet configured their shipping tab on product listings.
• Because of this, your specific shipping price does not show up clearly on the dedicated shipping tab on your product pages.

What you need to do today:

• Log into your vendor dashboard.
• Check your shipping settings and ensure your rates are fully configured. Find out how here
• Take two minutes to view one of your products live on the site and verify that the shipping tab clearly displays your delivery details.

When customers see clear shipping costs upfront, they add items to their cart with confidence, knowing there will be no nasty surprises at the final step.