Site conversion rate: is your strategy effective?

The site conversion rate is one of the most valuable KPIs for any marketing team. This metric measures how well a page, a group of pages, or an entire website turns visitors into leads or customers. By tracking your site conversion rate, you can assess the quality and relevance of your strategies, and identify areas that could be improved. With the right approach and tools, you can set realistic, data-driven targets and estimate the return on investment from your optimisation efforts.

What is a site conversion rate?

The site conversion rate is a crucial metric for businesses and website owners to gauge the success of their marketing actions. It shows the proportion of visitors who complete a specific action on your site, compared to the total number of visitors. A conversion occurs when a set objective is achieved. This could be anything from purchasing a product or service (the most obvious for ecommerce), to downloading a white paper, signing up to a newsletter, filling in a contact form, or following your brand on social media. There is no difference between conversion rate and transformation rate; in English, the term used is simply conversion rate.

How do you calculate the site conversion rate?

For example, suppose your ecommerce site sells kitchens and receives 800 visits over a given period. If you achieve 20 conversions in that time, your site conversion rate is (20/800) = 0.025. To express this as a percentage, multiply by 100 (2.5%).

Why is it important to know your site conversion rate?

This is especially important if your site has commercial goals, but the site conversion rate is one of the most significant performance indicators for any website. By knowing your rate, you can:

• Identify consumer trends;
• Go beyond page views or visit numbers to understand your site's profitability;
• Spot any issues that may be holding back improvements;
• Highlight the effectiveness of certain strategies that have boosted performance;
• Optimise your marketing spend by investing where it delivers the best results.

When discussing site conversion rate, remember it includes your SEO conversion rate as well as your SEA conversion rate. These are two distinct sources of traffic: the first from organic search, the second from paid advertising such as Adwords. For a complete picture, you should also consider visits from social media and email campaigns. By analysing each segment separately, you can see which are performing best and which need improvement, allowing you to focus your efforts accordingly. To monitor and analyse your site conversion rate, you need the right tools. Google Analytics or Incremys are among the solutions that can calculate this for you. These platforms are also highly effective for measuring the impact of your strategies and to optimise your conversion rate.

Site conversion rates by industry

It's tempting to look for the average site conversion rate and compare your own figures. However, this can be misleading, as there is no universal “good” site conversion rate.

There are significant differences between industries, and a rate that’s considered good in fashion could be poor in the automotive sector. While the site conversion rate is essential, it should always be considered alongside other KPIs, such as the number of visitors or the average basket value.

Site conversion rate is closely linked to your sector. General statistics, such as an average across all industries, are too broad to be your only reference. Best practice is to benchmark against the average for your own industry. Again, a rate that’s acceptable in fashion could be disappointing in automotive.

Incremys offers a range of modules to help improve your site conversion rate, including personalised AI, the content production module and the performance reporting module.

Conversion is only one part of your revenue

Example: If you have a site conversion rate of 5% with 1,000 visitors per month and an average basket of £10, your turnover is £500. A competitor with a 3% site conversion rate, 1,500 visitors and an average basket of £15 achieves a turnover of £675, which is higher than yours despite a lower conversion rate.

Conclusion

Managing a website means tracking several key performance indicators daily and implementing the right strategies to improve them over time. As the online landscape becomes ever more competitive, this is essential to ensure your brand’s long-term success. Among these KPIs, the site conversion rate is one of the most important, especially if your site is transactional or you are a pure player. Properly setting up Google Analytics and establishing a robust analysis methodology are best practices for any ecommerce business.

SEO and Digital Marketing Knowledge Base