What is conversion rate?

How is conversion rate calculated?

Conversion rate = conversions ÷ visitors × 100
(session-based: conversions ÷ sessions × 100)

The denominator matters more than people expect. A visitor-based rate asks "what share of people converted?"; a session-based rate asks "what share of visits ended in a conversion?" Someone who visits five times before signing up counts once in the first and as one out of five in the second, so session-based rates are always lower. Count each converting visitor once per goal unless the action can genuinely repeat (purchases).

Conversion rate example

In September, 12,000 unique visitors came to your site and 360 signed up. Visitor conversion rate = 360 ÷ 12,000 = 3%. Those visitors had 18,000 sessions, so the session conversion rate is 2%. Of the 360 sign-ups, 54 started paying: a visitor-to-paid rate of 0.45% and a sign-up-to-paid rate of 15%. Plug your numbers into the conversion rate calculator.

What is a good conversion rate?

There is no universal good number. Conversion rates vary several-fold by industry, price point, traffic source and what you count as a conversion — a free newsletter sign-up and a $500 purchase can't share a benchmark. The useful comparisons are your own rate over time, and your rate by channel and landing page: if organic visitors convert at 4% and paid social at 0.5%, that gap is a decision.

Common conversion rate pitfalls

• Bots in the denominator. Unfiltered bot visits dilute the rate; a bot surge looks like a conversion drop.
• Counting clicks as conversions. A sign-up button click isn't an account. Record the event after the sign-up succeeds.
• Small samples. 3 conversions out of 50 visitors (6%) and 30 out of 1,000 (3%) aren't evidence that the first page is better. Check with the A/B test significance calculator.
• Mixing rates. Comparing a session-based rate from one tool with a visitor-based rate from another.
• Optimizing the wrong step. A higher sign-up rate from lower-intent visitors can lower paid conversion.

How VisitTrack measures conversion rate

In VisitTrack you define a goal as a page visit or a custom event; conversion rate is the share of unique visitors who completed it, and the primary goal appears as a tile on the Overview. Any dimension — channel, campaign, page, country — can be filtered by goal. Bots are excluded from both sides of the fraction. For revenue, attributed payments give you visitor-to-paid conversion and revenue per visitor by source. See custom events for recording sign-ups.