Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a business-critical action, in other words a conversion. The action can be a purchase, a signup or a completed contact form, depending on what the website is there to deliver. The rate says how well traffic is turned into value.

The calculation

Conversions / visitors x 100 = conversion rate

A website with 800 visitors in a month, 40 of whom took the intended action, has a conversion rate of 5%.

What counts as a good rate

It depends on the industry, the action and above all the channel. E-commerce commonly sits between 2% and 3%, but a visitor arriving from a query with clear purchase intent converts far better than one arriving from a broad informational keyword. In SEO reporting the rate is what separates traffic growth from business growth, and the most honest benchmark is the site's own history, split by channel and landing page.

A symptom, not a dial

Conversion rate cannot be adjusted directly. It reflects everything sitting behind it: page speed, the user experience, the clarity of the page's call to action and how much trust the moment of decision carries. The rate is also sensitive to shifts in traffic mix, so a broad keyword suddenly sending many more visitors can pull it down without any page getting worse. The systematic work of raising it is conversion rate optimization, where changes are tested against data rather than instinct.