Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the share of people who take the next step you asked for, out of everyone who had the chance. Two hundred visitors and six purchases is a three per cent conversion rate. The arithmetic is trivial; the discipline is in defining the denominator honestly, because that is where most reported numbers quietly become fiction.

A rate is only meaningful for one specific step and one specific audience. "Our conversion rate is nine per cent" describes nothing until you know whether that is visitors to sign-ups, sign-ups to trials, or trials to paid — and whether it includes the traffic from a campaign that sent unqualified people. Blend two audiences and the number tells you about the mix, not the page. It will move whenever your traffic mix moves, which is why so many teams celebrate an improvement they did not cause.

It is also the cheapest lever most small businesses have. Doubling traffic costs money and time; moving a checkout from two per cent to three costs an afternoon of removing fields and is worth exactly as much. The usual first wins are unglamorous: fewer form fields, a price on the pricing page, a headline that names the buyer.

A concrete case: a course page taking 4,000 visitors a month at 1.5% sells sixty seats. Cutting the sign-up form from nine fields to three and stating the refund policy above the button moves it to 2.2% — twenty-eight extra sales a month, from no additional traffic at all.