Conversion Rate Calculator
Use this Conversion Rate Calculator to determine the conversion rate of your ads, emails, posts, webpages, links, etc. You can also use it to calculate the number of clicks, users, or sessions, and conversions you need to hit a specific conversion rate.
Feel free to experiment with different scenarios to help you better understand this metric.
What Does Conversion Rate Mean?
The Conversion Rate (or CVR) of a campaign is the percentage of people who completed an action/purchase/conversion out of the number of people who could have completed it.
For ads and emails, Conversion Rate refers to the number of conversions compared to the number of clicks (as a percentage). This type of conversion rate is sometimes called the “Click-to-Conversion Rate”.
For websites, Conversion Rate means the percentage of people who converted out of the number of visits. Visits are usually measured as sessions rather than users (as each session on a website is an opportunity for a conversion).
Top Tip
In Google Analytics (GA4), you are given the option for either a user conversion rate or a session conversion rate. The old version of Google Analytics used session conversion rate (and just called it conversion rate), so use that if you are unsure.
Conversion Rate Formula
The Conversion Rate equation is:
For Ads, Posts, or Links: Conversion Rate = (Conversions ÷ Clicks) × 100
or
For Websites: Conversion Rate = (Conversions ÷ Visits) × 100
Example
Here is an example of calculating the conversion rate of two competing display ads.
The Royal Dinosaur company is trying to discover which dinosaur toy resonates more with kids this year. It runs two creatives to see which one works better.
Ad A Has a stegosaurus on it. It received 6,750 impressions and was clicked 472 times. 28 stegosaurus toys are sold.
Ad B Has a diplodocus on it. It received 12,250 impressions and was clicked 735 times. 29 diplodocus toys are sold.
On the surface, it may seem that the diplodocus ad did better as more diplodocus toys were sold. However, if you run the calculate the conversion rate and CTR for each ad, you find:
Ad A (Stegosaurus) Conversion Rate: 28 ÷ 472 = 6%
Ad B (Diplodocus) Conversion Rate: 29 ÷ 735 = 4%
The conversion rate for the stegosaurus ad was 2% higher. This may not seem like a lot, but this will make a massive difference in sales over time. While Ad B was seen more times and had more chances to make a sale, if both ads had been seen the same number of times, then Ad A would have made more sales.
This is why conversion rate is better than just the number of conversions alone. Conversions measure success, but conversion rate helps you compare success between similar ads, pages, campaigns, etc.
Three ways to think of conversion rate
There are three main ways to think of conversion rate and what it means.
The percentage of people who convert
Conversion rate is a core metric to look at after a campaign and use for planning new campaigns.
Conversion Rate helps you see how well something resonated with its audience from start to finish, far better than any other metric. It is important to record it when a campaign finishes.
As CVR is a fairly stable metric, it can be useful to help plan the ROI of campaigns.
For example, if you spend a certain amount on Google Ads and have an expected CTR, an expected conversion rate, and an expected average spend, you can forecast a campaign’s performance very reasonably.
How fast conversions happen
Conversion rate is also about speed. People are surprisingly uniform in their reactions to any type of messaging when shown on a large scale. You can use this to your advantage.
So, if your conversion rate is 5%, you can expect that for every 1,000 people, you will get 50 conversions. This can be useful for planning if the conversion asks people to call a number, for example, or anything that uses a limited resource on your end.
By planning the pacing of an ad campaign with the conversion rate in mind, you can ensure you have the resources to fulfil conversions in a timely manner.
The likelihood of people to convert
Understanding people’s behaviour as they interact with your various messages is an essential part of online advertising. Conversion rates give you a percentage chance of the likelihood of people doing the things which you want them to do the most.
By looking at conversion rates of different messaging across different ad types, demographics, device types, times of day, channels, etc, you can learn an incredible amount.
Find out more
- Conversion Rate Benchmark Tool
- Conversion Rate Definition
- Conversion Tracking
- CPA Definition
- CPA Calculator
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