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What Is a Website Conversion Rate?

5 min to read

Conversion rates are how many customers convert on your site, based on the metric that you want to measure.

The action they take to “convert” depends on your needs; some websites might measure trial sign-ups, but others could focus on total purchases.
Blogs might use newsletter sign-ups to determine their conversion rates, meanwhile.

You should use conversion rates to measure the effectiveness of your website or marketing campaigns.
Use the data you find to figure out where you should make improvements, regardless of whether conversion rates are high or low.

Pro Tip:
Focus on your website’s design as a starting point. Identify your audience and the messaging they would engage with, and clearly say what they should do in your calls to action.
Key Takeaways:
  • Measuring ROI
    • You’ll need to use conversion rates to determine the effectiveness of making site visitors paying customers.
  • Influences
    • Make sure you know about site design and how to target your messaging.
  • Auditing
    • Audit your results and customers’ behaviors on a regular basis.
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What Is a Website Conversion Rate?

Why does website conversion rate matter?

You need to know your conversion rate if you want to understand whether enough visitors are becoming customers or paying leads. For these reasons, you must also know how to analyze your data. 

Here’s why you need to measure your conversion rates on a more granular level: 

  • ROI Impact: ROI stands for return on investment, and you should focus on this and conversion rates for measures of effectiveness. 

  • Customer Acquisition (CPA): You need to understand cost per acquisition, and ideally, you should have a lower CPA. Measure your conversion rates to determine your current CPA.

  • Business Growth Metrics: Use conversion rates as a key performance indicator (KPI) to determine whether you need to change your growth strategy. Your objective is to use conversion rates for increasing revenue in the long run. 

How to calculate conversion rate?

You’ll need to divide conversions by visitors; choose the timeframe that makes sense for you (e.g. three or six months). After dividing conversions by visitors, you must then multiply by 100. The number you see is your percentage. 

Example: 1,000 visitors with 20 paying customers would be 20 divided by 1,000 multiplied by 100. The conversion rate for this is 2%. 

Consider using software, such as Google Analytics, to calculate conversion rates on your pages. 

Pro Tip:
When looking at conversion rates, you should segment your customers. Do this based on where they’re coming from (e.g. direct or search engines), the pages they view before completing an action, and whether they’re visiting from mobile or desktop.

How can I track my conversion rate?

Tools to track your conversion rate include: 

  • Google Analytics: Web analytics tool with conversion tracking and site performance features. Make sure that you optimize it for GDPR and other regulations before installing the tool or using the plugin. 

  • Publift: Use this free online conversion rate calculator by entering your conversions and visits. 

  • Scaleo: Used Scaleo to track affiliate-related statistics. Used in the gaming industry and others.

Why is it important to periodically revisit and redefine conversion metrics?

It’s wise to redefine and visit your conversion metrics because things change in all industries. As a result, you have to keep up with evolving trends and consumer behaviors. It’s not something that you need to check daily, but you should make a consistent schedule to track and iterate.

Pro Tip:
At the very least, you should revisit conversion metrics every 3-6 months. If something big happens (e.g. an industry event or rebrand), you need to check your metrics more frequently.

What factors impact website conversion rates?

Some of the factors that may impact your conversion rates (positively or negatively) are: 

  • User Experience (UX): Test to ensure that users can navigate your site, and focus on design elements.

  • Calls to Action (CTAs): Make your CTAs visible and compel users to follow them. 

  • Audience Targeting: Research your target audience and think about what they are looking for, before then refining your copy. 

  • Marketing Strategies: Think about your marketing campaigns and assess each one, before then determining where to make improvements. 

  • Products and Services: Understand what your audience needs and create products and services around these, but test iterate rather than overthinking. 
Pro Tip:
Look at your user behavior data (e.g. online user journeys). After doing that, you should look for where your conversion funnel needs finetuning.

What is a good conversion rate?

Conversion rates differ from industry to industry, and they will also vary depending on what you’re looking to convert. For example, you might see different results if the metric you’re analyzing is newsletter sign-ups rather than sales. 

General benchmarks are between 2 and 5%, with 10% being exceptional (albeit difficult to achieve). Think about what the conversion metric is before then analyzing average results in your industry. Once you’ve done these two things, you should then think of the range in which you want to stay.

What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?

CRO is where you look at your conversion rates and think about where you can make adjustments. You need to perform split tests on site design and copy, including your CTAs. Moreover, you must look at where users are spending time on your website and the types of things they’re searching for. CRO is iterative, and it’s why you should look at your metrics regularly. 

Conclusion

You do need to think about other site elements (e.g. UX design), but conversion rates feed into these and must therefore be assessed. You will have to choose conversion rates based on your own goals, whether that’s completing sales or having people fill out a form on your website. Additionally, you should pay attention to your website bounce rate.

Start with a rough estimate of the threshold you want to stay within and have an idea of the conversion rate metric. You’ll need to iterate over time, but you just need something in the beginning. Each time you launch a marketing campaign or site redesign, look at your statistics before then making changes.

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