A conversion rate is an excellent metric to measure your company’s success in marketing. But you may have some questions. For example, what is a reasonable conversion rate, and how can you boost yours? This blog post will discuss the definition of conversion and how you can calculate a conversion rate.
*Updated 11/12/2024
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What Is A Conversion?
A conversion is when a website visitor takes a desired action on your website. It could be anything from filling out a form to purchasing a product. There are six basic steps involved in the conversion process:
- Awareness: When potential customers first become aware of your company
- Interest: When they start developing an interest in your product
- Consideration: Customers consider your product as a solution to their problem
- Intent: When customers decide to buy your product
- Purchase: The final step, where a customer buys something
For more detail on these steps, check out our post explaining all the steps in the conversion process.
Also, a good understanding of the steps of conversion optimization can help you achieve reasonable conversion rates. On that note, let’s discuss what a conversion rate is and how you can calculate it.
What Is A Conversion Rate?
A conversion rate is the number of times a visitor to your website takes a desired action, such as purchasing an item or signing up for a newsletter.
You can calculate your conversion rate by taking the number of conversions and dividing it by the total number of visitors. For example, if you had one hundred visitors to your website and twenty made a purchase, your conversion rate would be twenty percent.
However, it might not always be possible to calculate a conversion rate using this simple calculation. For example, if a visitor makes multiple purchases or signs up for various newsletters, it would skew the results.
You can use the unique conversion rate in such cases—the number of visitors who take a desired action divided by the total number of visitors.
Similarly, suppose you are looking at the conversion rate for a specific marketing campaign. In that case, you can calculate it by taking the number of conversions from that campaign and dividing it by the total number of visitors exposed to it.
Now we know what a conversion rate is and how to calculate this number. Next, let's look at what is considered a reasonable conversion rate.
What Is Considered A Good Conversion Rate?
It’s a difficult question to answer because it depends on your industry and goals. Generally speaking, a good conversion rate is anything above the average conversion rate for your industry.
For example, if the average conversion rate for e-commerce websites is between two and three percent, a reasonable conversion rate would be anything above that.
Here are some common industries and their average conversion rates:
- E-commerce: 3.3%
- Healthcare: 5.6%
- Business-to-business (B2B) services: 7.0%
- Real estate: 3.2%
- Legal: 4.3%
It’s essential to remember that these conversion rates are for organic search, meaning they reflect the fraction of people that successfully convert after searching for a particular business online for a given industry.
You also have conversion rates for social media marketing, email marketing, paid ads, and referrals. When comparing your conversion rates against your industry’s average, consider these.
For example, you don’t want to compare your conversion rate for organic search with your industry's average email conversion rate.
How Can You Improve Your Conversion Rate?
There are several things you can do to improve your conversion rate. Here are some of the most effective:
- Offer something of value: If you want people to take action on your website, you need to offer them something of value, such as a discount, free shipping, or a free ebook.
- Make it easy to take action: Don't make people search for the button they need to click. Place it prominently on your page and make it stand out.
- Use images: People are more likely to notice pictures than text. Use images to highlight your call to action and make it more noticeable.
- Use strong calls to action: A call to action tells people what you want them to do. It should be clear and concise, and it should tell people their exact next steps.
- Test different versions of your website: Try more than one version of your website and see which one converts better. You can use A/B testing to test different versions of your pages. For example, you can try two different positions of your contact form to see which one works best.
Now You Know What Good Conversion Rates Are
Remember, there is no ideal conversion rate. A reasonable conversation rate varies with industry and marketing medium. But anything above average is considered good.
We hope the ideas discussed in this article will help you boost your conversion rate. Don’t forget to read our guide on conversion optimization if you want more tips to grow your business!
