Conversion rate

In internet marketing, conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators. If the prospect has visited a marketer's web site, examples of conversion actions might include making an online purchase or submitting a form to request additional information.

The Conversion rate is defined as follows:

$\mathrm{Conversion\ rate} = \frac{\mathrm{Number\ of\ Goal \ Achievements}}{\mathrm{Visits}}$

Successful conversions are interpreted differently by individual marketers, advertisers, and content creators. To online retailers, for example, a successful conversion may constitute the sale of a product to a consumer whose interest in the item was initially sparked by clicking a banner advertisement. To content creators, however, a successful conversion may refer to a membership registration, newsletter subscription, software download, or other activity that occurs due to a subtle or direct request from the content creator for the visitor to take the action.

Measures

For web sites that seek to generate offline responses, for example telephone calls or foot traffic to a store, measuring conversions can be difficult because a phone call or visitor is not automatically traced to its source, such as the Yellow Pages, website, or referral. Possible solutions include asking each caller or shopper how they heard about the business and using a toll-free number on the website that forwards to the existing line.

For web sites where the response occurs on the site itself, a conversion funnel can be set up in a site's analytics package to track user behavior.

Methods to increase the conversion in e-commerce

Among the many methods to increase the conversion rate, these are the most relevant:

• Generate user reviews about your products, which can accelerate conversion.
• clear distinction of the website for a certain conversion goal (e.g. "increase sign-ins for newsletter")
• better content (e.g. text, picture, video) of the website that clearly target versus the conversion goal
• increase usability to reduce the barriers towards the conversion goal and thus reduce the abortion rate
• good site navigation structure to help users find and browse without thinking too much about where to click
• show credibility signs like third-party trust logos and good site design to increase trust level of visitor
• use AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to move the user through the conversion funnel

See also

• Conversion optimization
• Win-loss analytics
• Conversion funnel

Sources

• Definition of the Conversion rate [1]
• Facts about typical conversion rates and hints how to increase them [2]
• Berkeley-Study on Conversion rate in Spam [3]