Conversion definition
A conversion is a visitor completing an action the website exists to get, such as submitting a contact form or booking a demo. Conversion rate is the share of visitors, or sessions, that convert.
The word comes from sales, where a prospect converts into a customer. On a website it covers more ground. Any tracked goal counts as a conversion, as long as someone decided in advance that it matters. That decision is the step most sites skip, which is how you end up with an analytics setup that reports a conversion rate nobody can explain.
How do you calculate conversion rate?
Divide conversions by visitors and multiply by 100. Forty form submissions from 2,500 visitors is a 1.6% conversion rate.
The trouble is the denominator. Google Analytics 4 can calculate the rate per session or per user, and in 2024 it renamed conversions to key events, so the "conversion rate" in one report and the one in your CRM or ad platform are often measuring different things. Write down which one you use and stick to it.
What counts as a conversion on a B2B website?
B2B deals rarely close on the website. The main, or macro, conversion is usually the first step of a sales conversation: a contact form, a quote request or a booked call. Micro conversions are the smaller signals before that, like a newsletter sign-up, a downloaded guide or a visit to the pricing page.
On a B2B site the volumes are low. A few dozen enquiries a month won't show a trend for a long time, so micro conversions are often the only data that moves fast enough to learn from.
Why can conversion rate mislead?
It counts actions and ignores who took them. A student asking for thesis help and a buyer with a budget each add one to the total. Cutting a required field from a form can lift the rate and fill the sales inbox with weaker leads at the same time. I'd rather see a lower rate where most enquiries are worth answering, and the only way to know which you have is to follow the leads into the CRM.
Related terms
- Web accessibilityWeb accessibility means building websites that people with disabilities can perceive and operate, whether they listen to the page through a screen reader or navigate it by keyboard alone. It is measured against the WCAG guidelines, usually at level AA.
- TypographyTypography is the craft of choosing and arranging type so text is easy to read and its hierarchy is obvious. It covers typeface, size, line height, line length and spacing. On a website it also covers how fonts load and how text scales between screen sizes.
- PaginationPagination is splitting a long list of content, such as blog posts, products or search results, into separate pages that visitors move between with numbered links or next and previous buttons. APIs use pagination too, returning large result sets one chunk at a time.