Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the share of your website visitors who do what you want them to do, such as buy, fill in a form or call. It is the number of conversions divided by the number of visitors. It is one of the clearest measures of whether a site is working.
What is conversion rate?
Conversion rate shows how many of your visitors do what you want on your site. The desired action depends on the site. For an online store it is a purchase. For a company site it might be sending the quote form, tapping the phone number or downloading a catalogue.
Here is an everyday case. Your online store gets 10,000 visitors in a month and 150 orders. Your conversion rate is 150 divided by 10,000, or 1.5 percent. The next month you remove the forced sign-up step from checkout. Visitors stay the same, orders rise to 200, and the rate becomes 2 percent. Sales grew without spending more on ads.
Why does it matter?
Visitor numbers alone say little. If lots of people come and nobody buys, the problem is the site, not the ads, and conversion rate shows it. What drags it down is often familiar: slow pages, long forms, hidden shipping costs, buttons that are hard to tap on a phone and a checkout that does not feel safe. Most of these are UX problems. A landing page focused on one goal is another well-known way to lift the rate.
To measure it, goals need to be set up in your analytics tool from the start. We cover a site's goals in how to get a website built. See how we build checkout flows on our e-commerce page.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good conversion rate?
There is no single right number. It varies widely by sector, price, traffic source and device. The fairest comparison is with your own site's past figures.
How is conversion rate measured?
You define goals in your analytics tool, such as order completed, form sent or phone number tapped. The tool compares each goal with visitor numbers and gives you the rate.
What is the first step to improving it?
Find where visitors drop off. Losses in the cart and checkout steps are often where the least effort brings the biggest gain.