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What is Website Conversion? How To Calculate & Improve Conversion

Enhance your online success with essential insights into website conversion, including calculation methods and effective strategies for improvement.

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What is Website Conversion? How To Calculate & Improve Conversion
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Website conversion is crucial for achieving business goals; it involves calculating conversion rates and optimizing user experience through strategies like improving page load speed, mobile optimization, and utilizing testimonials to build trust. Small changes can significantly impact ROI, making conversion rate optimization a cost-effective approach to enhance revenue without increasing traffic.
Title
What is Website Conversion? How To Calculate & Improve Conversion
Date
Feb 11, 2025
Description
Enhance your online success with essential insights into website conversion, including calculation methods and effective strategies for improvement.
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Current Column
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You’ve built a beautiful website. It’s got all the right colors, images, fonts, and layouts. Your friends love it, and you do too. But there’s just one problem: No one is taking action. Despite all the targeted traffic you’re sending to your site, the conversion rate is low. In this article, you’ll learn about website conversion, calculating it, and improving it to boost sales and achieve your business goals.
One of the best tools to help you improve your website's conversion rate is testimonial software. Collecting and showcasing customer reviews and ratings can help you build trust with your audience, increasing the likelihood that they’ll convert when they land on your site.

What is Website Conversion?

Website Conversion
Website Conversion
Website conversion measures how well a website fulfils its goal. Think of it like this: You’ve invited people to your store, and now you want them to do something—buy a product, sign up for your newsletter, or book a demo. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is all about getting more visitors to take those desired actions.
Every conversion is a step toward building a relationship with your audience. When someone clicks "Buy Now" or subscribes to your emails, they trust your brand. Trust, over time, leads to loyalty, revenue, and growth.

How to Calculate Your Website’s Conversion Rate

Before you can optimize anything, you need to know where you stand. Here's the basic conversion rate formula:
Conversion rate = conversions / total visitors x 100
Conversion rate = total number of conversions / total number of unique visitors x 100
For example, you own a mattress and pillow company, and you deem a conversion to be the sale of your product (in this case, a pillow).
If you had 50,000 unique visitors to your website last month and you sold 1,000 pillows, it would look something like this: Conversion rate: 1,000/50,000 X 100 = 2%

Measuring Website Reach

Unique visitors have visited the website but are only counted once during the calculation period. This means that if the same person were to revisit the website during that period, it still counts as one visitor. Businesses can also use tools such as Google Analytics or Similarweb to save time and calculate conversion rates conveniently.

What’s a Good Conversion Rate?

Now, how is my conversion rate good? Well… it depends. There’s no magic number because every business and industry is different. A 2% conversion rate might be great for one niche but terrible for another. Your conversion rate is influenced by the following:
  • Your industry: E-commerce, SaaS, and B2B businesses have different benchmarks.
  • Your sales cycle: High-ticket items usually have lower conversion rates because people take longer to decide.
  • Your product or service: A $10 impulse-buy product will convert faster than a $1,000 software subscription.
  • Your pricing strategy: Competitive pricing and discounts can increase conversions. If you want to see how you compare, industry benchmarks can give you a rough idea. But the real goal is to improve your numbers over time.

Why Conversion Rate Matters

Your conversion rate isn’t just a random metric; it directly reflects your website's performance. A low conversion rate? It might mean your site has usability issues, unclear messaging, or doesn’t match customer expectations. A high conversion rate? You’re on the right track; it’s time to scale what’s working.

Optimizing for Growth, Not Just Numbers

The key to CRO isn’t just chasing a specific number; it’s about understanding your audience, optimizing their experience, and continuously improving. The better your website converts, the more revenue you generate without spending extra on traffic. And that’s how businesses grow more innovative, not just bigger.

Factors That Affect Your Website Conversion

Website Conversion
Website Conversion

Page Load Speed: The Speedy Gonzalez of Website Conversion

Page load speed refers to a web page's time to fully display its content elements. Analysis has shown that conversion rates plummet by an average of 4.42% with every additional second of load time between 0-5 seconds.
When visitors encounter this, they might become impatient, and so are likely just to leave the page. Speed is of the essence because, in this era of convenience, no one has the patience to wait for a page to load slowly.

Key to Faster Page Load Speed

While many factors, such as the number of widgets or plug-ins, inefficient code, or your website server, can affect page load speed, one of the most common causes is large image sizes on web pages. To combat this, it is paramount for businesses and e-commerce sites to optimise their webpage imagery by resizing their images, lowering the resolution of pictures used, or compressing their files.

Mobile Optimization: The Key To Website Conversion

Mobile optimization, or optimizing websites for mobile devices, is critical to improving conversion rates in this technological age. More people than ever are using mobile phones instead of their computers to access websites or search for information online on the go.
According to Statista, in the last quarter of 2024, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 62.54 percent of global website traffic. If your site is not mobile-friendly, it can lead to a high bounce rate, significantly impeding securing conversions.

Preventing Lost Customers

When customers head to webpages on their devices, and the elements such as the content, pictures, or videos are not mobile optimized, it becomes difficult for them to find the information they need or be directed to the correct pages for sales to be carried out.
Frustrated with the whole experience, potential customers would inevitably leave with a negative perception of your brand.

Page Design & Content: The Dynamic Duo of Website Conversion

Closely interlinked, a site’s page design and content are imperative in positively impacting conversion rates. Businesses must remember that visitors to their pages are looking for information, but it may be their first time on that website. Thus, positioning engaging headlines and written Call To Action (CTAs) throughout their web pages are necessary to act as roadmaps to direct potential customers to your desired conversions.

Guiding Users to Conversion

On the flip side, failure to present a clear visual hierarchy through the written content and page design will infuriate them as they can’t access the information that answers their queries or leads them to where they want to go. This sequence of events will likely lead to them bouncing out of your e-commerce site and low conversion rates.

Authentic Reviews, Powerful Results

Testimonial simplifies the process of building trust and credibility for businesses. Our software allows an accessible collection and display of authentic client testimonials featuring:
  • Video and text options
  • Embeddable wall of love widget
  • Clever Email Assistant
  • Third-party review imports
Testimonials showcase real customer experiences and help boost credibility and conversion rates. They are ideal for:
  • Content creators
  • Agencies
  • eCommerce
  • SaaS companies
Build a wall of love for free today with Testimonial.

How To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate

Website Conversion
Website Conversion
Trust is an essential asset for conversions. Here’s how you can build trust:
  • Create a detailed “about us” page.
  • Use text rather than an image for your imprint.
  • Avoid broken links.
  • Work with transparent prices.
Social proof reinforces trust and reliability. Display customer testimonials, reviews, and case studies prominently on your site. Highlighting positive experiences from others assures new visitors that they’re making a sound decision, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversion. Include security badges, payment seals, or industry certifications to key pages like:
  • Checkout
  • Sign-up forms
These signals reassure users that their information is safe. Testimonials to help streamline review collection and management, allowing you to build social proof without the hassle.

Content is King for Conversion Optimization

Once your target group is clearly defined and familiar with their needs, it’s time to create content. Too often, SEO focuses solely on the search volume of keywords. Nevertheless, it is much more important to consider how and with which terms your target group searches for your products or services.
Well-founded keyword research is, therefore, the basis for creating conversion-optimized content. Here are some practical tips on how to conduct keyword research. For content to lead to conversions, it must not only be geared toward the target group.

What Else is Important

Watch out for mistakes when copywriting. Incorrect grammar and spelling can lead to losing trust in your site. A lack of confidence is poison for possible conversions. Cut out unnecessary filler words or long phrases. The faster your readers reach their goals, the better.

Consistently Deliver Value with Your Content

To create content that meets user needs and aligns with search journeys, consider the following:

Informational Content

What does your target audience need when researching a topic, product, or service? Provide well-founded information that showcases your expertise.

Persuasive Content

What will convince interested users? Use trust signals, high-quality product images, and compelling details.

Conversion-Focused Content

What encourages users to take action? Include clear calls-to-action (CTAs) and strategically placed buttons to drive engagement.
You should consider the EAT criteria for all content you publish on your website:
  • Expertise
  • Authority
  • Trustworthiness

Web Design: Give Visitors What They Want

You will achieve more conversions with a web design that makes things easy for visitors. Above all, your motto should be “mobile first.” Mobile optimization is a must.
Web design has a decisive influence on the user experience. Make sure that:
  • Texts are easy to read.
  • Design remains clear on every device.
  • Buttons are easy to click.
  • No complex graphics affect the loading time.

Speed Thrills: The Faster, the Better for Your Conversions

It’s no secret that fast loading times are good for conversion rates. And why is that? We’re just impatient. If a website takes too long to load, we bounce out. Bounced visitors are usually lost visitors who can’t trigger more conversions. That’s why you need to take care of the core web vitals and the related loading times on your website. Only with a fast website you can be successful in the long run.

Shopping Cart Optimization: How to Reduce Abandoned Carts

In e-commerce, the buying process is very sensitive. Small mistakes can already lead to an aborted purchase. There are many things you can do to optimize this process:
  • Offer multiple payment options.
  • Keep the checkout process as simple as possible.
  • Add trust signals or seals of approval.
  • Make it easier to enter data in forms.
  • Use concrete calls to action.

Psychology and Conversions: The Mind of the Buyer

Psychology plays a significant role in whether or not a conversion occurs. Here are some essential tie-ins:

Scarcity

People respond to scarce goods with an impulse to buy. If, for example, you point out that only a few copies of a product are left, this can strengthen the incentive to buy. Nevertheless, you should not exaggerate and artificially stress customers while the item is still available in large quantities.

Keep It Simple

We love simplicity, primarily online. Keep your texts, graphics, or symbols as simple as possible. This also applies to the pricing.

Harmony

Symmetrical faces usually evoke more trust in people. The same goes for shapes or layouts.

Conspicuity

Highlight essential elements prominently.

A/B Testing: The Key to Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion rate optimization on your website involves a lot of testing. That’s why you should make use of A/B testing. You can test even small details like headlines or call-to-action buttons against each other. An important point to remember is that your control group and your challenged group should be comparable.
Also, consider possible seasonal fluctuations. In any case, only test one element at a time; otherwise, you won’t get any meaningful results.

Target Group Analysis: Who Are Your Buyers?

It may sound obvious, but unfortunately, many businesses underestimate the importance of target group analysis. This analysis helps you understand your users' thoughts and gives you essential impulses for your content and keyword research. To better understand your users, you can do the following, for example:

Survey Your Target Group

  • Find out about the needs of your target group through statistics and publicly available surveys.
  • Use tools like Google Trends to identify potential search trends for specific industries or topics.
  • Use social media to monitor target groups.
Based on your analyses, you can create buyer personas, for instance. These fictitious customer personas can help you to align texts, images, or your entire website with the needs of your target groups.

Work with Discounts: A Quick Way to Increase Conversions

Discounts can increase conversions in the short term. It doesn’t have to be only on Black Friday. You can lower prices with regular promotions, for example.

Use Email Marketing: How to Re-Engage Visitors That Dropped Off

Email marketing is often underestimated in conversion optimization. But those who have once shown interest in your products or your website and subscribed to your newsletter are more likely to come back to you.
These people already know your store or site and are familiar with it. In turn, that increases the chance of a successful conversion. You should, therefore, take care of a serious newsletter campaign. This will be a good investment to increase conversions.

A Holistic View of Website and Marketing: Improve Conversions with a Big Picture Approach

A basic rule to remember is that if you want more conversions, you must take a holistic view of your website and marketing. There are many ways to increase your website conversions. Which one you choose will depend on where you see the most significant potential for optimization and on what fits best with your marketing strategy.
A large part of conversion optimization is about improving your Website User Experience because the more positively visitors perceive their visit to your website, the more likely they are to convert.

The Impact of Website Conversion Rates on ROI

Website Conversion
Website Conversion
Conversion rates directly influence return on investment (ROI) by determining how efficiently a business turns website visitors into paying customers. The higher the conversion rate, the more revenue a company generates from its existing traffic without spending extra on customer acquisition.

Higher Conversion Rates Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

One of the most significant factors affecting ROI is customer acquisition cost (CAC)—the amount spent to acquire a new customer through advertising, SEO, or other marketing efforts. When conversion rates are high, fewer resources are wasted on attracting visitors who leave without taking action. This means:
  • Lower ad spend per conversion: Since more visitors turn into customers, businesses get more value from each marketing dollar.
  • More efficient lead generation: Optimizing conversion rates allows businesses to extract more revenue from existing visitors instead of needing a huge marketing budget to drive traffic. For example, if a company spends $10,000 on ads to generate 10,000 visitors, and the website converts at 1%, that results in 100 new customers.
But if the conversion rate doubles to 2%, the same ad spend results in 200 new customers, effectively cutting the CAC in half.

Even Small Conversion Rate Changes Can Dramatically Affect Profits

Conversion rates seem like a small detail, but even minor changes have a massive impact on ROI. Studies show that a 1% increase in conversions can lead to a 200% increase in ROI. Conversely, a 0.5% drop in conversion rate can mean the difference between profitability and losses, especially in high-volume businesses.

The Power of Small Changes

For example, if a business has 50,000 monthly visitors with a 2% conversion rate, it generates 1,000 conversions per month. If the conversion rate drops to 1.5%, that’s 750 conversions—a 25% loss in sales with the same traffic. This highlights why conversion rate optimization (CRO) is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve ROI without increasing marketing expenses.

Poor Customer Experience (CX) Kills ROI

A high-converting website isn’t just about attracting visitors; it’s about meeting their expectations and delivering a seamless experience. A disconnect between marketing and website experience can lead to:
  • High Bounce Rates: If visitors land on a page and immediately leave, it’s a sign that expectations weren’t met.
  • Low Engagement and Abandoned Carts: Users hesitate to complete purchases if the checkout process is complex or pricing is unclear.
  • Negative Brand Perception: Potential customers may never return if a site lacks trust signals, slow load times, or poor UX. A well-optimized website that aligns with customer needs ensures that every marketing dollar spent has a higher chance of turning into revenue, leading to better ROI.

CRO is More Cost-Effective Than Increasing Traffic

Many businesses focus on increasing website traffic to grow sales, but traffic alone won’t drive revenue if conversion rates are low. For example, Business A spends $10,000 to drive 10,000 visitors to a site, converting at 1% (100 customers). Business B spends the same $10,000 but invests in CRO to increase conversions to 3%—bringing in 300 customers from the same traffic.
Instead of continuously pouring money into ads, businesses that optimize their websites see higher revenue without additional spending, making CRO one of the highest ROI strategies.

Why Should You Measure Your Conversion Rate?

A website’s conversion rate is a real-time indicator of customer satisfaction. If your site or product page has a low conversion rate, it suggests friction in the customer journey. This could stem from unclear messaging, a complicated checkout process, or a lack of trust signals.
Conversely, a high conversion rate indicates that your site meets user expectations and effectively guides them toward action. For example, a low conversion rate on a product page might suggest that customers need:
  • More information
  • Better product visuals
  • More substantial social proof

Landing Page Insights

A high-converting landing page can provide insights into effective CTA placement, persuasive messaging, or well-designed user flows that you can replicate elsewhere. By analyzing conversion rates across different pages and user segments, you gain insight into what’s working and what needs improvement, helping you refine both your product positioning and user experience.

Uncovering Weak Spots in Website Performance with Conversion Rate Data

Conversion rate data helps pinpoint areas where users drop off so you can fix usability issues and streamline the customer journey. If a checkout page has an unusually high cart abandonment rate, it could indicate friction points like:
  • Unexpected shipping costs
  • A complicated checkout process
  • Lack of payment options
You improve the overall conversion funnel by addressing these issues through clearer pricing, a smoother checkout experience, or trust-building elements like security badges.

Optimizing Marketing Strategies for Better ROI

Every marketing effort, from paid ads to SEO, ultimately aims to convert visitors into customers. Tracking conversion rates allows you to measure which campaigns, channels, and messaging resonate most with your audience.

Data-Driven Marketing

For instance, if Facebook ads convert twice as much as Google Ads, you might shift your budget to Facebook to maximize ROI. If one version of an email campaign has higher click-through and conversion rates, you can apply similar strategies to future email marketing efforts. Conversion rate tracking ensures that marketing decisions are data-driven, not intuition-based, helping businesses allocate resources more effectively.

Scaling Success by Replicating What Works

A high conversion rate on one page or campaign indicates that something works well. Rather than treating success as a lucky break, businesses can use conversion data to identify repeatable patterns.

Conversion-Driven Insights

For example, a landing page with a video demonstration has a significantly higher conversion rate than a page with just text. In that case, you could add videos across other product pages. Similarly, if a specific CTA phrasing (“Get Started for Free”) outperforms another (“Sign Up Now”), you can test applying it to more pages to see if it boosts conversions across the board.

Driving Business Growth by Prioritizing Improvements

Conversion rate optimization isn’t just about tweaking buttons or wording; it’s about continuously improving your business offerings based on user behavior. Measuring conversion rates gives you a clear picture of what needs attention.
If customers struggle with onboarding, invest in better product education. If visitors don’t trust your site, enhance credibility with reviews, testimonials, and guarantees. If users are abandoning forms, simplify the process by removing unnecessary fields.

Optimizing for Growth

By making data-backed optimizations, businesses ensure they’re maximizing the value of their traffic while providing a better customer experience—which, in turn, leads to higher revenue and long-term growth.
  • Conversion Optimization Strategy

Build a Wall of Love for Free Today with Testimonial

Website Conversion
Website Conversion
When potential customers land on your website, they want to know you can be trusted. Real customer testimonials are one of the best ways to establish this trust. Testimonial simplifies the process of collecting and displaying testimonials from your clients. Our software allows you to import third-party reviews, create videos and text snippets, and embed a 'wall of love' on your site. This authentic feedback helps you boost your credibility and conversion rates by showcasing real customer experiences.
Build a wall of love for free today with Testimonial.

Written by

Damon Chen
Damon Chen

Founder of Testimonial

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