Conversion rate: how to calculate, optimize, and avoid common mistakes

Sponsored by Semrush, edited by Nichola Stott

What is conversion rate?

Conversion rate is the average number of conversions per user, calculated by dividing the total number of conversions by the total number of users. It goes by two acronyms: CVR (the paid search version) or CR (the organic search version). 

Conversion rate = (conversions ÷ total audience) x 100

Conversion rates come in all shapes and sizes to measure your site’s success. That’s what makes them so powerful and so important. 

Common examples of conversions include: 

• Ecommerce conversions like adding an item to the cart
• Paid social conversions when a user clicks through a display ad
• Rates showing how many users downloaded a B2B guidebook

When looking at conversion rates, you’ll want to prioritize events that directly map to gathering a new lead, such as that B2B guidebook download. These sorts of events are significant to departments across your entire organization.

Smaller conversions that don’t lead to a sale or a new lead are called micro-conversions. And yes, despite being called micro-conversions, they’re still important because they show progress along the funnel. You should pay as much attention to that data as you do to conversions that result in a transaction, since you can adjust your marketing efforts and user experience in response to them.

That first entry on our list of examples—adding an item to the cart—is an example of a micro-conversion.  

If conversion rates can measure anything from sales to clicks on a call to action (CTA), what should you focus on? You can set a wide variety of conversion goals, depending on what your website is ultimately trying to achieve.

For example, if you’re trying to build an audience, you may want to track conversions to newsletter sign-ups or Youtube channel subscriptions. If you have an e-commerce website, you may want to track completed checkouts. 

Websites and apps track a wide variety of conversion goals. Each will have its own conversion rate to calculate. 

How to calculate conversion rate

Calculating your conversion rate is simple division. 

Take the number of users who have purchased your product or become a lead. Divide that by the total number of users who have visited your site in the same period.

For example, let’s say you’re running a B2B business. How effective is your lead gen page? 

Say you got 1,000 visitors in April. Of those 1,000 visitors, 12 converted. Your conversion rate would be 1.2% (12 divided by 1,000). 

You typically won’t be doing this sort of math by hand, though. 

Tools like Google Analytics (GA4), Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console, or Semrush (that’s right, you don’t have to stick to Google) can calculate your conversion rate for you. 

But is a 1.2% conversion rate good or bad? 

For ecommerce, it’s not a great rate. You’ll usually want that number closer to 2.5% or 3%. But a good conversion rate varies depending on your industry and what you’re measuring. 

Take paid search shopping, for example. Conversion rates are typically much lower for ads than product pages on a website. Familiarize yourself with industry statistics and your own seasonal trends. Establish a baseline.

The best way to get started is by setting up conversion tracking. 

The easiest way to do that? Using GA4. Follow this step-by-step guide to setting up conversion tracking—with “conversions” renamed to “key events” in GA4..

6 factors that influence conversion rate

Adding a new copy to a page’s header can make your conversion rate go up—or down. Same thing with changing the color of your “buy now” button. 

In other words, conversion rate is a fickle beast. 

Here are the top six factors that influence conversion rate: 

1. Website speed

Slow load times and high bounce rate go hand in hand. Notice a sudden drop in conversion rate after adding new features to the page? Check to see if you’re tanking your load times. 

Website speed has a direct impact on conversion rates because users expect fast-loading pages. Even a one-second delay can lead to reduced satisfaction and higher bounce rates. About 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if the page takes more than three seconds to fully load.

Studies show that faster websites create a better user experience, keeping visitors engaged and more likely to complete desired actions, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.

2. Audience targeting

Confirm you’re serving the right content to the right audience. Someone looking to buy isn’t going to be happy if they land on a blog page. Make sure your message reaches the people most likely to engage with your product or service.

When campaigns are tailored to specific demographics, interests, or behaviors, they resonate more deeply, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

3. Content quality

A page full of typos, disorganized content, or poorly researched information does not lead to a high conversion. 

Clear, engaging, and relevant content helps communicate value effectively, guiding potential customers through the decision-making process. High-quality content boosts conversion rates by building trust, addressing audience needs, and compelling users to take action.

4. Frequency of CTAs

Having too many CTAs is no good. Having too few CTAs is equally bad. A sea of popups will drop your conversion rates, whereas a desert with no options to contact you will do the same. 

Using too many calls-to-action (CTAs) can confuse or overwhelm users, leading to decision fatigue and reduced conversion rates. When visitors are presented with multiple choices, they may struggle to determine the most relevant action, increasing the likelihood of inaction. 

For example, say you have a landing page encouraging your visitor to sign up for your newsletter, download an e-guide, and contact a representative to learn more about your services. Each of those CTAs competes for your visitor’s attention. They may end up clicking on the one that’s least important for your business and ignoring the action you most want them to take. Or, even worse, they may get confused and decide not to click on any of your CTAs. 

It’s generally better for the page to focus on supporting a single, most important CTA (e.g., contact a representative), and building other pages that target your other calls to action.

Likewise, repeated insistence on a single CTA can turn off even the most loyal customer.

For example, placing a “Download our B2B guide” after every block of text on the page can look spammy and negatively impact your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness to your visitors. Not only will fewer people click the CTA, but you may increase your bounce rate as people seek more authentic content.

On the other hand, using too few CTAs can leave users unsure of what to do next or cause missed opportunities for conversion. Visitors may exit the site without taking action, even if they’re interested. 

Striking a balance ensures CTAs are strategically placed and relevant, providing enough direction to engage users without overwhelming them.

5. Trustworthiness

If you swamp users with display ads or provide a spammy experience, they won’t trust you with their email, much less their credit card info. 

Trustworthiness directly impacts conversion rates, as users are more likely to engage and complete transactions on websites they perceive as credible and secure. Overloading with trust signals, like excessive badges or testimonials, can appear insincere, while too few may raise doubts.

6. Mobile experience

There’s a reason Google uses a mobile crawler now—60% of your users will land on your page using mobile. Make sure they have a positive site experience, since they’re five times as likely to abandon a site if it isn’t optimized for mobile. 

Remember, user experience is king. As appealing as it might be to pepper conversion opportunities everywhere, that’s the fastest way to annoy your users. 

Also, avoid hard-to-read text and misleading messaging. That not only ruins user experience, but also user trust. 

How to track and measure conversion rate effectively

You can’t optimize data that you haven’t gathered. By tracking conversion rate, you can learn what tools work best. Then you can look for those inevitable areas of improvement.

To avoid calculating conversion rate by hand, you can use GA4 or other third-party tools. These make it easy for you to keep tabs on how your site is performing. 

Take heatmap tools, for instance. 

How powerful would it be to see where a user is clicking on your page? Which conversion paths are they interacting with the most? The least? You can see all that data through a heatmap tool like Crazy Egg or HotJar.

These kinds of tools immerse you in the eyes of a user. You can follow their experience as they move through the site. See what moved them faster. What slowed them down. And, most importantly, at what point they left your site. 

There’s only one thing better than heatmap data, though, and that’s customer data. Make sure to always give your customer an opportunity to share feedback. 

Ask questions like:

• How did you find our site? 
• What did you like the most about your shopping process? 
• What did you like the least? 

Once you have that feedback, test it. 

Of course, the customer isn’t actually always right, especially if it’s a lone customer with an outlier complaint. Generally speaking, you’ll want to monitor statistically viable answers rather than a single survey response. 

But conversion rate isn’t the only metric you’ll want to watch. Keep track of these data points so you get a full picture of your site’s health: 

Click-through rate (CTR) 

Click-through rate measures how many people click on your page from an ad, website link, or from the organic search engine result pages (SERP). 

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is how many people immediately leave your page after arriving. A high bounce rate can indicate a poor quality page or a poor audience fit. 

Exit rate 

Exit rate shows you the page that users last visited before leaving your site. If one page has a high exit rate, it indicates the same thing as a page with a high bounce rate: poor user experience. 

Strategies to improve conversion rate

Got your tracking in place and your benchmarks recorded? You’re ready to start optimizing. 

The strategies that will help you see the best improvement in your conversion rate are: 

A/B testing

A/B testing is the place to start improving your conversion rate. And it’s easy to begin.  

First, you’ll need to come up with a hypothesis. 

What do you think will improve your conversion rate? How can you get more users clicking on that link in your email? Signing up for your newsletter? 

Second, you’ll want to identify what you want to change. Maybe you want to update the wording on your CTA?

Third, you’ll want to figure out how many users you need to get a clear winner in your A/B test. Using a tool like Hotjar or VWO can help with this (don’t worry, we’ll get into more tool recommendations later). 

Fourth, figure out how long you’ll need to run the test to get a clear result. 

Now you’re ready to get testing!

CTA optimization

Customize your CTAs to fit the pain points of your user. Don’t go with something generic like “buy now.” 

Think about why this user is here. What are they worrying about? What do they need help with? 

Say you’re selling car parts. Create CTAs that address how quickly you can send the part your user needs. Or how your stores can help install it once the user receives the part. 

Improving site speed

We’ve already talked about how slow site speed can ruin user experience. Look at your pages and see what’s slowing you down. Get your load times snappy so you don’t ever have to worry about bounce rate again. 

But how do you apply these tactics? How can you use these strategies to improve your conversion rate? 

Three words: conversion rate optimization (CRO). 

Top 4 conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools

Conversion rate optimization is how you apply everything you’ve learned about improving conversion rates to your site. You don’t have to sweat over optimizing your conversion rate alone. That’s where conversion rate optimization tools come in. 

Conversion rate optimization tools target where your site is weakest. 

Make sure you know what you want to test and track before you commit to a tool. Each CRO tool can help in a different way. 

Google Analytics

GA4 gives some of the best insights into reporting. It can show you where you’re going wrong—so long as you know how to build out a report. It syncs directly with your Google data to give you the best insights into what Google sees when it looks at engagement with your website.

One drawback is that GA4 is good if you have the time to get your hands dirty, but it’s not the most intuitive. If you’re looking for a tool that you can start testing with yesterday, GA4 isn’t for you. 

Hotjar

In comparison, Hotjar is simple to use. It can walk you through how a user navigates your site. You can see heat maps of where someone has clicked. Or which CTA is the most and least effective. 

But Hotjar’s free plan is very limited. If you’re looking to do serious CRO testing, you’ll likely want to go with the paid version. 

VWO

A tool like VWO makes A/B testing easy. It’s perfect if you’re looking to test two new landing page experiences against each other. Or if you want to try out a new personalization process. 

VWO has a tiered pricing structure. It’s a bit more expensive than Hotjar, but also a bit more flexible. 

Semrush 

Semrush lets you peek past Google’s curtain. It lets you see anything from keyword rankings to site traffic to conversion rates. 

Use Semrush to audit your site. Keep an eye on site speed and user experience and track how your competitors are keeping pace. Click over to Traffic Analytics  to view traffic and engagement metrics and identify opportunities to get more competitive.

Common mistakes to avoid in conversion rate optimization

Like anything, it’s easy enough to make mistakes with CRO when you’re getting started. 

Before you dive into CRO wielding your new tools, you’ll want to avoid making the following mistakes:   

1. Relying on your gut, not your data: Something obvious to you may not jive with the rest of the world. Get numbers to back up your hypothesis before you push anything live. Have a plan for when you’ll check the numbers, and what you’ll do if you don’t reach enough traffic data to drive a conclusion. 
2. Ignoring mobile: 60% of website traffic comes from mobile, with Google prioritizing mobile-first indexing. Don’t ignore the experience of over half of your audience, and don’t neglect Google’s primary crawl. 
3. Making changes without testing: Even if it seems obvious, it’s always safer to test first. When others in your organization ask questions about the decisions and changes you made, you’ll always be in a stronger position if you can point to real-world data. 
4. Charging in with no clear goal: You’ll always want to test and optimize toward something. If you don’t have a clear goal, your project won’t be successful and you won’t be clear on the next actions to take. 
5. Testing a too-small sample size: Make sure you have enough users to get viable results. If the page you’re testing only gets 20 visits a month, you likely won’t be able to get a clear answer. There are some good statistical significance calculators out there that can help you with your planning.
6. No testing strategy: It can be tempting to test unrelated small changes to your site, but you’ll see better growth if you have a testing roadmap.

Advanced CRO techniques for high-impact results

You know what conversion rate is. You’ve got the basic strategies down. Now try some more advanced techniques. 

Here’s where you’ll want to start: 

CRO audit

Knowing what conversion rate is and how much it can impact your site, it’s time to review your pages with fresh eyes. 

Do you have broken buttons? 

Misleading links? 

Hard to read text? Ambiguous copy? 

Make your user experience as simple as possible. Someone brand new to your site should be able to find your conversion page easily. 

Write down every weak point you notice. Even the small things can lead to a loss in revenue. Consider testing your site performance with different internal teams or set up focus groups with fresh eyes.

Then, build out a plan to address every vulnerability you find.

Simplify the checkout/lead gen process

If you run a B2C company, look at how many steps it takes for a user to give you their money. Are there any extra unneeded pages? Any ways to reduce the total number of clicks?

If you’re a B2B business, how difficult is it for a customer to contact you? 

Review the bounce rate for your conversion page. Look at the data for your cart abandonment rates. Compare seasonal trends. Research what’s common for your industry. 

And always, always test ways to make the process even simpler.

Include trust signals 

Make your checkout process secure. Yes, that’s obvious. But you also want to tell your users the process is secure. Do this by including security badges to let them know their data is safe with you. 

If you’ve received certifications, highlight that on your site. 

Got testimonials? Add them! 

Worried about trust? Dive deeper into actions you can take to solidify your site’s trust signals.

Full funnel optimization 

Use GA4 to capture metrics like Average Revenue Per Customer to learn about your user behavior. Create custom experiences for big-spending customers to move them faster through the funnel. 

For new users, offer more information. If you have a chatbot, for example, have it pose questions first-time buyers normally have so your new user feels like they’re in good hands and can get the information they need.

Make it easy for users to always know the next step they should take to engage with your website. 

Journey mapping

For each of your customer personas, map the flow of the URLs they’re most likely to engage with. In what order do they tend to go? What data points do you have available at every stage? This can help you identify content gaps, plan out optimizations, identify testing opportunities, and even compare your site to the competition’s.

Figure out specific pain points for each user. Address those concerns at the awareness, consideration, decision, and retention areas of the funnel. 

Dynamic personalization

Customize your landing page experience based on user data. Personalization is more of an opportunity than ever before, and yet we’re seeing businesses struggle to figure out how to do it effectively.

How would personalization work? It’s all about targeting or retargeting. For example, use a website chatbot that captures first-party data. You can use that data to address a user by their company or by their name. And reference previous pages they visited in the past.

Improve your site’s conversion rate today

You know what conversion rate is, how to calculate and track it, and even how to optimize it. If you’re ready to dive into the world of conversion rates and CRO, you’ll need to know your audience. Learn the latest best practices around audience research, or dive into audience analytics with the Semrush One2Target tool.