Customer conversion rate: a KPI you should always monitor

The customer conversion rate is one of the most significant performance indicators in digital marketing. This KPI helps you assess how effective your strategies are. Regular monitoring and analysis are essential. Tools such as Google Analytics or Incremys enable you to track changes in your conversion rate over time and identify which pages on your website are driving results and which may be hindering your conversion funnel.

The conversion rate explained

Your website will have one or more objectives—actions you want your visitors to complete. At the end of the customer journey is the conversion, the point at which a prospect becomes a customer. In the case of an online shop, this might be when a purchase is made. Depending on your sector, a conversion could also mean watching a video, submitting a form, signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, and so on. The customer conversion rate is the proportion of visitors who complete your desired action, compared to the total number of visitors. To express this as a percentage, simply multiply by 100.

How to calculate customer conversion rate

Let’s look at a practical example. Imagine your business sells online courses to help people develop SEO skills. If, over one week, your website receives 200 visits and sells 10 courses, your conversion rate is (10/200) = 0.05, which is 5%.

Conversion rate or transformation rate?

Both terms are commonly used in web marketing and are largely interchangeable. There’s no meaningful difference between them, but in practice:

'Conversion rate' is typically used for traffic from organic or paid sources;
'Transformation rate' is often used to refer to conversions from email campaigns.

Analysing your conversion rate

To analyse your conversion rate, start by segmenting your traffic. The main distinction is between organic traffic (SEO) and paid traffic (SEA/advertising). Other segments, such as social media or email campaigns, can also be relevant. From here, you can analyse:

• The SEO conversion rate, which refers to visitors arriving via organic search results;
• The Adwords conversion rate, which focuses on users who visit your site after clicking a paid advert, whether on the Search or Display network.
• The conversion rate from email campaigns;
• The conversion rate from social media, with further breakdowns by platform (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc.).

It’s best to analyse your conversion rate alongside other KPIs, such as visitor numbers or average basket value. In some cases, increasing the average basket value can be a more effective strategy than simply boosting conversions.

Specialist tools for analysing customer conversion rate

Google Analytics and Incremys are excellent for tracking conversions, providing detailed reports on website performance to help you make informed decisions about budget allocation and marketing efforts. As mentioned, you can compare different acquisition channels to gain deeper insights into how each performs in terms of overall customer conversion rate. Incremys also offers dedicated modules to help improve and monitor your customer conversion rate: personalised AI for advanced data analysis, a content production module optimised for conversion, and a performance reporting module for tracking results. By analysing visitor behaviour, you can spot opportunities to optimise your conversion rate. Using specialist tools gives you a clear overview and lets you focus on specific segments to identify where the best opportunities and priorities for improvement lie.

Is my customer conversion rate good enough?

This is a question that concerns every website owner. Many people try to answer it by comparing their own results to the average prospect-to-customer conversion rate.

To judge how well your conversion rate is performing, it’s useful to look at median values. In 2022, for example, the average overall conversion rate was 2.35%. This median figure is a useful benchmark, but it should be considered in the context of your industry. There are significant differences between sectors and even within them, so it’s crucial to compare your results with those of your direct competitors, especially the top performers.

Conclusion

The customer conversion rate helps you assess how attractive your pages are and how well they perform. This indicator allows you to identify both weaknesses and strengths in your conversions, providing a starting point for optimisation strategies. Optimising your conversion rate usually involves improving your offer’s presentation, editorial content and user experience.

SEO and digital marketing knowledge base