The conversion rate is the share of visitors who take a desired action on your website – such as completing a purchase, submitting a form, booking an appointment or calling you. It is expressed as a percentage.
The calculation is simple: conversions divided by visits, multiplied by 100. If 2,000 visits produce 40 enquiries, the conversion rate is 2 per cent.
How does the conversion rate work?
You decide what counts as a conversion. For an online shop it is the purchase, for a medical practice the appointment booking, for SaaS providers the trial sign-up or demo request. For the figure to be reliable, you need:
- clean tracking, for example with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
- clearly defined goals that genuinely result in revenue
- separate analysis by channel, page and device
An average conversion rate says little on its own. The comparison is what tells you something: which pages and channels convert better than others?
Why does the conversion rate matter?
More visitors only bring more revenue if they also enquire or buy. If the conversion rate rises from 2 to 3 per cent, you get 50 per cent more enquiries from the same traffic. That is often cheaper than winning new visitors.
That is why what counts in SEO and GEO in the end is not clicks but enquiries and revenue. In SEO consulting with Northstar Media, you look at which pages bring visitors but no enquiries – and what needs to change there.
