Once you create a website, the next step is to measure your online success. There’s more than one way to assess your performance, and how well your site is being promoted, from looking at the number of site visitors to analyzing the average amount of time they spend on your site. One of the most important KPIs, however, is your conversion rate.
This article will teach you how to calculate your conversion rate and how to use this metric to find new ways of making sales and capturing leads. First, we’ll dive into what it means to have a good conversion rate and how your business compares to others in your industry. Then, we’ll go over some conversion rate optimization tips that will help you improve your marketing strategy and grow your business.
What is website conversion rate?
Your website conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who take an action on your site that moves them down the sales funnel. This can be any action that converts them to either leads or customers.
The action you choose to define as a conversion is really up to you. Depending on your business’s goals, a conversion may constitute making a purchase, downloading an e-book, downloading a mobile app, signing up for a demo or free trial, or subscribing to an online course.
Whichever option you choose, let’s call the action that leads to conversion the “primary action.”
How to calculate website conversion rate
The first step in calculating conversion rate is defining what a conversion is for your website. You might choose to look at a handful of primary actions, or you can choose just one.
Once you’ve defined which actions constitute a conversion, count the number of those actions over a particular period of time (e.g., one month), and plug them into this formula:
(#) conversions / (#) website visitors = conversion rate
Conversion rate examples
Let’s walk through some fictional examples of website conversion rate calculations to help you better understand what this formula means:
Example 1: Concert tickets
Let’s say you’re a musician, and you decide to use your website to sell tickets for your upcoming concert. After promoting the concert online and sharing a link to your site, you decide to analyze how many of your site visitors have actually purchased tickets. In this case, you’re defining a conversion as a single primary action: purchasing a ticket through your site.
To calculate your conversion rate, you take a look at the numbers. During the month of March, your site had 1,176 visitors, and 56 of them purchased tickets to your show. By plugging these results into the formula, you can calculate the conversion rate for this particular action:
(#) conversions / (#) website visitors = conversion rate
56 / 1,176 = 0.048, or 4.8%
Based on this calculation, you learn that 4.8% of website visitors successfully converted.
Example 2: Fitness tutorials
In another scenario, imagine you’re a fitness instructor. You’re looking into small business marketing ideas and are trying to think of creative ways to attract customers and highlight your expertise in the field. As a result, you create online workout tutorials and instructional e-books that will be available for download on your site.
You’ll offer both of these for free; the only thing you ask for in exchange is your visitors’ email addresses so you can capture these new leads.
In this case, you decide that a conversion will be defined by the number of signups for your e-book or video tutorial. You see that in July, you had 635 site visitors and 21 signups. Using the same formula, you plug in the number of sign ups to discover your conversion rate:
(#) conversions / (#) website visitors = conversion rate
21 / 635 = 0.033, or 3.3%
Based on this calculation, you learn that 3.3% of website visitors successfully converted.
What is a good conversion rate?
These examples bring us to the next question: What, exactly, is a good conversion rate for your website? How can you tell whether your site’s conversion rate is satisfactory or whether it’s underperforming?
Studies have explored conversion rates across various industries and marketing strategies, but there’s no one-size-fits all answer. Conversion goals can differ significantly based on various factors – geographic location, your target audience and their habits, the nature of the primary action and more.
Still, looking at average conversion rates can give us a general picture of what’s considered high or low. Across multiple industries – including tech, automotive, financial, healthcare, legal and more – the typical conversion rate ranges from about 2% to 5%, with 3.9% being the average. For eCommerce businesses, the average conversion rate is a little lower, ranging from 1.84% to 3.71%.
Conversion rates by industry: eCommerce, B2B and more
Conversation rates are closely associated with eCommerce businesses, since these are the types of businesses that aim to make sales directly through their site. Studies show the following average conversion rates for different eCommerce industries:
Sports and recreation: 1.75%
Arts and crafts: 3.79%
Baby and child: 3.99%
Cars and motorcycling: 1.55%
Electrical and commercial equipment: 2.23%
Fashion clothes and accessories: 2.44%
Food and drink: 2.37%
Health and well-being: 3.62%
Home accessories and giftware: 2.16%
Kitchen and home appliances 2.48%
Pet care: 3.28%
These numbers are useful benchmarks for measuring your own website’s performance, but keep in mind that they’re quite general. First of all, conversion rates differ based on how a business defines a conversion, as mentioned above. Conversion rates for signing up for a free trial, for instance, will be much higher than conversion rates for making a purchase. Likewise, B2B conversion rates will differ slightly from B2C, with average B2B conversions ranging from 2.23% - 4.31%.
Understanding conversion rate
Comparing conversion rates for different industries, business models and goals is like comparing apples and oranges. Ultimately, you set your own goals for your website’s conversion rates, relying on your broader business plan, industry research and your experience in the field. Choose a conversion goal that is not entirely beyond reason, but one that is ambitious and challenging. Think of it both as a metric to evaluate your website’s success, as well as a motivation to set new goals.
In addition, don’t get too caught up in your site’s conversion rate if the number of visitors to your website is low to begin with. If you only have four visitors a month, for instance, your conversion rate will most likely be zero, since there’s a low chance that one of just four people would convert. But if you get lucky and one person does convert, your conversion rate suddenly jumps to ¼, or 25%.
This low sample size skews the numbers and isn’t an accurate representation of your website’s success. In cases like these, your main focus should be on promoting your website and getting more website traffic. Then, you can focus on conversions.
Figuring out your website’s stats
By now, you know what to look for when it comes to your website’s conversion rate. But how do you find these performance stats?
Google Analytics is probably the most widely-used stats tracking tool, and there’s a good reason for that. It provides site owners and online marketers with extensive data that is invaluable for their work. When it comes to calculating your conversion rate, Google Analytics gives you real-time metrics on the number of site visits, and even allows you to enter your conversion rate goals to evaluate your performance more accurately. This important tool can easily be connected to your Wix website.
Other recommended tools for measuring and analyzing stats are available to you directly through Wix. Wix Analytics, for example, displays statistics about your website visitors’ behavior, helping you understand where they spend the most time on your site, how first-time visitors behave compared to returning visitors, and more. All of this data can ultimately be used to understand your conversion rate and to better optimize your website.
Conversion rate optimization tips
Now that we’ve established what a good conversion rate is and how to find your website’s stats, we can move to the most important part – what can you do to improve your website’s conversion rate?
The goal here is to get more and more website visitors to take the primary action that your website is promoting. We’ve created a list of ways to achieve this:
01. Create powerful landing pages
One of the most tried and tested ways to improve your website’s conversion rate is to create a landing page. A landing page is a standalone web page that is specifically designed to convert visitors. It concentrates on a single offer, such as a particular product, free trial or e-book, and uses clear, concise copy that persuades visitors to click and take action.
Because landing pages are the number one tool for driving conversions, they’re a crucial asset for every business. You can get started with this landing page builder or by using these free landing page templates.
02. Use high-converting forms
If your immediate goal is lead generation, you absolutely must include online forms on your website. You can use these forms to get people to sign up for a free trial, subscribe to your mailing list, register for a service and more. Once visitors sign up, you’ll use their name and email address to market your product to them and drive them down the marketing funnel.
To create an online form for your website, use this form builder. You can also check out these form templates, which are created by professional designers and easily customized to fit your business.
03. Prioritize UX
UX, short for “user experience,” is an umbrella term referring to the level of satisfaction and ease of use that visitors experience when interacting with your site. Having strong UX is crucial for getting users to browse your site and convert.
To maximize conversions, take the following steps:
Make your site text clearly readable
Reduce the number of clicks required to take certain actions
Make website navigation straightforward and intuitive
Ensure that the design and format of your site guides people naturally toward the next step, rather than interfering with their browsing
By providing a smooth UX, you are actively strengthening your relationship with site visitors, making it pleasant for them to navigate your site while also guiding them toward places where you want them to convert.
04. Make it easy to complete the primary action
Your goal in improving your site’s conversion rate is to increase the number of times visitors perform the primary action on your site, whether it’s a sale, download or signup. To make that happen, it’s not enough to just offer the option. You also need to make sure that every step toward completing the primary action is clear, simple and without obstacles.
Here are some common mistakes that you should look out for:
Vague phrasing on links and buttons. Abstract language or industry jargon can make it unclear what products, services or other assets you’re offering.
An excess of information on your web pages. An overwhelming amount of text can bury crucial information and reduce the power of high-converting elements, such as CTAs.
Inability to directly access the primary action. Instead, your visitors should be able to easily convert from every page on the site.
Jumbled, inconsistent content. This confuses and overwhelms visitors instead of guiding them.
Avoid these issues, and you’ll also avoid hindering visitors from completing your desired action.
05. Write strong CTAs
Calls-to-action (CTAs) play an essential role in determining the conversion rate. This short but powerful text calls on your site visitors to take the primary action that your website is focused on. Typically, CTAs are 1-3 word phrases like “Read More,” “Buy Now,” “Join Us Live,” “Subscribe” and so forth.
When a CTA is compelling, it generates more primary actions – upping your conversion rate as a result. If your conversion rate is lagging, it’s worthwhile taking a hard look at your CTAs and experimenting with changing their phrasing, placement or color to make them stand out.
06. Optimize your mobile site
All the hard work that you’re putting into improving your conversion rate is not worth too much if you are only taking into account desktop or laptop visitors. Since mobile web usage is now surpassing usage on larger devices, you must provide your audience with a great user experience on smartphones and tablets in order to reach a significant chunk of your target market.
Using Wix’s mobile editor, you can make sure that your website is optimized for mobile browsing. With this tool you’ll be able to customize how your site looks on mobile so that you can adapt your design to the smaller screen. This guarantees a smooth browsing experience for all visitors and ensures that high-converting elements, like CTAs and forms, are easily visible on your mobile site.
07. Engage visitors over live chat
Put yourself your visitors’ shoes. Are you giving them every reason to trust your business? Are you approachable to them if they have a question or concern? When you open the new lines of communication, invite your audience to connect with you and actively engage with them, you’re showing them the human behind the brand.
For that reason, engaging with your target audience should be a primary part of any marketing plan. Add live chat to your site and respond to their needs right away, and you’ll get them to trust you and develop an affinity for your brand. This, in turn, makes them more likely to convert.
08. Add testimonials to your website
Even after people convert, do your best to ensure their continued satisfaction. Not only will this inspire them to buy from you again, but it will also encourage them to spread the word and advocate for your brand
Follow up with supplementary offers, like exclusive content or VIP discounts, and kindly ask them to review your business. Honest recommendations from real customers are immensely effective when it comes to convincing others to convert.
After you’ve turned past visitors and customers into endorsers for your brand, you can display their support directly on your website. One way to do this is to use a testimonial builder to collect testimonials for your site and import reviews from Google, Facebook and Yelp.