What is the conversion rate?
The conversion rate refers to the proportion of visitors to a website or app who complete a pre-defined conversion goal. While purchasing an item is a classic example of conversion, goals can also include actions like downloading an offer, registering for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form.
How is the conversion rate calculated?
The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visits:
Conversions/Visits x 100 = Conversion Rate in %
Another option is to calculate the conversion rate based on unique visitors, ensuring that repeated page visits aren’t counted more than once. This is done using a slightly modified formula:
Conversions/Unique Visitors x 100 = Conversion Rate in %
Choosing which conversion rate formula to use depends on the length of the customer decision journey. For websites where every visit represents a sales opportunity, meaning the customer decision journey is rather short, we recommend calculating the conversion rate based on visits.
However, for longer customer decision journeys that require several visits before a final conversion, it may be more logical to calculate the conversion rate on the basis of unique visitors.
Why is the conversion rate important for my business?
The conversion rate is a critical metric for conversion optimization and has a significant impact on the performance of your website.
Your website’s traffic might increase due to SEO, SEA, or display campaigns, but this doesn’t necessarily translate to more conversions. The quality of traffic can be challenging to influence, making conversion rate optimization essential to improving website performance.
What types of conversion rates are there?
In general, we distinguish between micro and macro conversion rates.
The micro-conversion rate refers to user interactions that contribute to an overarching conversion goal, known as a macro-conversion.
Micro-conversions might directly lead to a macro-conversion, such as progressing to a specific step in the checkout process before completing an order, or they might be indirect, such as watching a video or posting a comment. Both types are crucial to the conversion optimization process.
What is the average conversion rate?
Conversion rates vary across different industries and even among direct competitors, making it difficult to define a “typical” conversion rate.
However, there are benchmarks often used as a starting point. For example, various e-commerce industry publications place average conversion rates at between 1% and 3% in terms of sales.
In our experience as a conversion rate optimization agency, highly successful online shops with strong brands can even achieve conversion rates between 10% and 30%.
Factors such as the website or the app design, product prices, competitive landscape, product range and brand awareness all significantly influence the respective conversion rate.
