How to measure conversion rate

Overview

Are you looking to learn how to measure conversion rate? The iconic magnate Henry Ford once said, “What can be measured can be improved.” More often than not, businesses that do the work to assess and measure performance and the impact of the changes they make are the ones that find themselves at the top of their industry. 

When it comes to your website, particularly if it’s an integral part of your sales and lead generation, measuring the moving parts of your performance is a recipe to success and moving above and beyond your competitors. There are many vanity metrics in marketing, unfortunately, receiving too much attention such as “follows,” “site visits,” “engagement,” but at the end of the day, what actually matters is the “Conversion Rate.” 

Conversion rate is the percentage of people who come to your website and achieve a goal (a conversion) out of the total number of people who come to your site. The more conversions your site makes per visitor, the better its conversion rate is.

What exactly is a conversion? A conversion may take several forms, such as purchases completed, newsletter signup, contact forms completed, guide/ebook downloaded, site engagement, account created, free trial/demo request completed, or phone call inquiries.

When people convert, they move one step closer in a measurable way to drive your business growth. You want your marketing efforts to result in as many conversions as possible. A high conversion rate indicates that people are interested in what you’re giving and the user experience is a straightforward, comfortable and easy experience for them to convert!

If you understand how to calculate conversion rate and keep a careful eye on it, you can:

  • Measure how well your web pages and apps work
  • Identify areas that need to be better
  • Determine how profitable you are
  • Better allocate your marketing budget and resources 
  • Scale advertising costs
  • And more

Ignoring conversion rates and failing to optimize them may harm your website’s performance and profitability.

Types of Conversion Rates

 There are several types of conversion rates. These are:

  • Total Conversion Rate – examines your whole site’s traffic and measures your performance
  • Channel Conversion Rate – breaks down your conversion into individual channels 
  • Page Conversion Rate – determines which of your pages converts better 
  • Ad or Campaign Conversion Rate – determines ad or campaign converts better 
  • New visitor conversion rate – determined just for new or first-time visitors to your site
  • Return visitor conversion rate – determined just for returning visitors to your site

How To Calculate Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by total visits then multiplied by 100. The most accurate method of calculating conversion rate is dependent on precisely what you’re identifying as a conversion event and how you want to measure website traffic.

A step-by-step guide to calculating the conversion rate:

  • Consider the formula: Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) x 100
  • Determine the total number of conversions.
  • Divide the number of conversions by the total number of visits to the site (i.e., unique visitors, sessions, or leads)
  • To find out the percentage, multiply the quotient by 100.

Example of Calculating A Conversion Rate

Here’s a simple illustration of how to calculate a conversion rate. Scenario: 88 joined your mailing list out of 1,000 interactions.

  1. Take 88 and divide it by 1,000.
  2. The quotient will be equal to 0.088.
  3. To calculate the percentage, multiply 0.088 by 100.
  4. The conversion rate for your campaign is 8.8%.

What’s A Good Conversion Rate?

A good conversion rate depends on various criteria, including your specialty, target device, and other variables. Some sectors, such as companies that offer gadgets or business services, have more excellent conversion rates than other industries. 

A good conversion rate depends on the actual conversion, industry, and audience.

When it comes to the type of conversion, email signup conversion rates average 15.22%, whereas the average conversion rate for eCommerce is 3.31%. For lead generation, anywhere from 2% to 5% is average, and more than 10% is good.

When it comes to assessing industry vs. industry, you’ll also have a very mixed result, for example, when it comes to lead generation: 

Industry

Best Conversion Rates

Travel

25.10%

Real Estate

11.20%

Business Consulting

27.40%

Business Services

15.70%

Credit and Lending

24.30%

Health

12.30%

Higher Education

11.50%

Home Improvement

14.90%

Legal

15.40%

Vocational Studies and Job Training

25.00%

(Source: Marketing Insider Group

The average conversion rate also varies in organic search, paid search, email and social media.

Industry

Average conversion rate for organic search

Average conversion rate for paid search

Average conversion rate for email

Average conversion rate for social media

Agency

2.30%

6.60%

2.30%

1.20%

Automotive

2.50%

1.30%

0.80%

2.90%

B2B eCommerce

4.00%

1.80%

2.20%

2.00%

B2B Services

7.00%

5.00%

5.70%

2.10%

B2B Tech

1.00%

2.50%

2.40%

1.00%

Financial

4.70%

6.00%

5.80%

2.80%

Healthcare

5.60%

5.10%

5.00%

3.10%

Industrial

8.50%

4.70%

7.40%

1.40%

Legal

4.30%

1.80%

4.50%

1.60%

Professional Services

12.30%

7.00%

5.10%

4.50%

Real Estate

3.20%

1.50%

1.40%

0.80%

Travel

8.50%

8.50%

4.70%

1.60%

(Source: Ruler Analytics

Depending on the marketing channel, you can even expect a “good conversion rate” definition to be different.

Channel

Average Conversion Rate

Organic

16.00%

Amazon Advertising

9.47%

Microsoft Advertising

2.94%

Google Ads

3.75%

Paid

2.50%

Facebook Ads

9.21%

(Source: Popupsmart

The point is that your conversion will vary and is situational depending on your unique situation and marketing strategy. 

Conversion Rate Tracking

It would help if you were tracking conversions to compute your conversion rate. When it comes to adopting marketing tactics, tracking conversions allows you to keep on top of the latest trends, which gives you a competitive advantage over your competitors who may not be paying attention to conversions statistics.

Web analytics tools: There are a lot of tools on the internet that businesses can use to keep track of their conversions. Their job is to keep track and report on the number of people who visit a website in one place.

Heatmaps: Heatmap tools indicate the most visited sections of a screen. The colored heatmaps on a screen show the user’s clicks on a site. It’s easy to see where heavy usage is and where it’s not.

Session recordings and replay tools: By watching how people interact with a page on your site, you can figure out what caused people to leave the page quickly or what needs to be changed.

Satisfaction reviews/surveys: Asking direct questions of your clients or site visitors might help gauge satisfaction. You’ll get unique replies that an analytics tool can’t provide, such as site upgrades and consumer satisfaction.

How To Optimize A Conversion Rate

When it comes to optimizing one’s conversion rate, the answer is as varied as there are businesses and websites. In our opinion, four key components are involved in this process, and perhaps the solution requires a whole new article to answer this. 

  1. Properly define what it is you are looking to achieve and improve.
  2. Have appropriate measurement tools in place
  3. Treat all changes as a scientific experiment, objectively measuring improvements through split testing and eliminating your personal biases. 
  4. Apply insights observing data and known best practices outside of these observations to look for optimization opportunities. 

See our post on conversion rate optimization for more information on how to improve your conversion rate.

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