The formula
Conversion rate = conversions ÷ visitors × 100.
If 4,000 unique visitors came to your site in a month and 80 of them signed up, the conversion rate is 80 ÷ 4,000 = 2%.
Two choices change the answer, and you should make both on purpose.
Choose the denominator
You can divide by visitors or by sessions. A person who comes three times and signs up on the third visit is one conversion out of one visitor, or out of three sessions. Visitors is usually the fairer base for a sign-up, because one person converts once. Sessions suits a shop where people buy again and again. Pick one, say which, and keep it.
Choose the goal
A conversion is whatever you decide counts. The useful split is between the macro goal, such as a purchase or a paid plan, and the steps on the way, such as viewing pricing, starting checkout or creating an account. Steps convert at much higher rates and show you where the road narrows. Lined up in order, they form a funnel.
Reading the number
A conversion rate is a ratio of two things that move independently, so read both.
- A rising rate with falling visitors can mean you lost the casual traffic and kept the buyers. That may be good.
- A falling rate after a big launch usually means a different kind of visitor, not a worse page.
- The rate differs a lot by source. People who arrive from a search for your product's name behave unlike people who arrive from a social post. Split by channel before you judge a page.
Be careful with benchmarks. Typical rates vary with price, product, audience and traffic source, and a figure from another site's data says little about yours. Your own trend over several comparable weeks is the benchmark worth having.
From rate to revenue
Conversion rate is the middle of a short chain: visitors, times conversion rate, times value per conversion, gives revenue. That chain shows where a fix pays most. If you double the visitors you double the revenue, and if you lift the conversion rate by a tenth you lift it by a tenth, at no extra traffic cost. Revenue per visitor folds all of it into one number, and it is the figure to watch when you change prices or plans.
Two free tools help here. The conversion revenue calculator turns a rate into money, and the A/B test calculator tells you whether a change in rate is likely real.
Mistakes to avoid
Do not compare rates across very different sample sizes: 3 sign-ups out of 40 visitors is not 7.5% in any way you can rely on. Do not count a bot or an internal test as a visitor. And do not call a result real because it moved a week after a change: wait for enough conversions to see a pattern, and change one thing at a time.
Try it in trckable
Mark the action you care about as a goal and trckable shows its conversion rate for the whole site, and for any source or page you click on. Count goals and events
Related terms
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