Getting people to visit your website is only the first step, and it happens to be the easiest step. Converting that web traffic to actual sales is where things get challenging. Unless you have found a way to monetize website views, your conversion rate impacts your bottom line. Tracking various conversion rate optimization statistics allows you to properly manage and optimize your conversion rate by informing your decisions and leading your efforts in the most effective direction.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action. That action could be anything from making a purchase to signing up for your email list.
What are conversion rate optimization statistics?
Conversion rate optimization statistics give you a sense of where you are right now in relation to your goals. You need to not only calculate your website’s conversion rate but also track a number of other statistics on elements that might affect your conversion rate.
How to calculate a conversion rate?
You can calculate your current conversion rate by dividing the total visitors or interactions by the number of conversions. For example, if 1000 people visit your landing page, and you receive 50 email subscription forms from that page, then your conversion rate would be 5% (1000/50).
Conversion Rate Optimization Metrics
Top Conversion Rate Metrics
- The average conversion rate for your industry.
- Social media ad conversion rates.
- Mobile vs. Desktop conversion rates.
- The percentage of web traffic generated by organic search results.
- The conversion rate of the best-performing website.
Finding Conversion Rate in Google Analytics 4
You can access behind-the-scenes statistics for your website through Google Analytics. With a little configuration, you can customize what metrics you receive reports on.
Start by listing the metrics you would like to measure. Then set goals for Google Analytics to track conversions. You can monitor everything from eCommerce sales to form submissions and affiliate link clicks.
Once you have conversion goals set up, you can find your website’s conversion rate in Google Analytics 4 dashboard by simply logging into your Google Analytics 4 property and clicking ‘Home’ in the lefthand sidebar.
Take a look at the first graph in the top left that also has scorecards. You can customize your home scorecard and graph section to include your conversion rate statistics by selecting “session conversion rate” and/or “user conversion rate” from the dropdown of two of the four available scorecards.
Make sure that you select the time period that you want to analyze your conversion rate for.
What’s the difference between session conversion rate and user conversion rate?
Your website’s conversion rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who completed a specific goal or conversion action out of the total number of visitors to your site.
Within Google Analytics 4 there are two metrics to consider: session conversion rate and user conversion rate. These metrics provide insights into how effective your website or app is at converting both individual sessions and unique users. Here’s the difference between the two:
Session Conversion Rate:
Session conversion rate measures the percentage of individual sessions that result in a conversion. A session is a single visit to your website by a user. If a user interacts with your site multiple times in a given time period (usually 30 minutes of inactivity), each of those interactions is counted as a separate session.
The formula for calculating the session conversion rate is:
Session Conversion Rate = (Number of Sessions with Conversions / Total Number of Sessions) * 100
This metric is helpful for understanding how effectively your content, offers, and calls to action drive immediate conversions within a single session.
User Conversion Rate:
User conversion rate measures the percentage of unique users who have completed a conversion. A user is an individual person who visits your website. Even if a user visits your site multiple times, they are counted as a single user as long as they’re using the same device and browser and haven’t cleared their cookies.
The formula for calculating the user conversion rate is:
User Conversion Rate = (Number of Users with Conversions / Total Number of Users) * 100
This metric provides insights into the long-term effectiveness of your conversion strategies, as it considers unique individuals who convert over multiple sessions.
Key Difference:
Here’s an example to demonstrate the main difference between the two:
If a user visits your site three times and makes a conversion during the second visit, the session conversion rate would consider this a single successful conversion out of three sessions. The user conversion rate, on the other hand, would consider this one successful conversion out of one unique user.
Both metrics provide valuable insights, and the choice of which one to focus on depends on your specific business goals and analysis needs.
If you’re interested in understanding how your site’s content and interactions drive immediate conversions, you might focus on session conversion rate. If you’re more interested in the overall impact of your marketing efforts on unique individuals, user conversion rate would be more relevant.
Drill-down on Conversion Rate in Google Analytics 4
You can get more specific data about your conversion rate by navigating to the ‘Reports’ dashboard from the lefthand sidebar and selecting any of the reports under ‘Life Cycle’ reports for Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization, and Retention.
And also, don’t overlook the reports under the ‘User’ section for reports on user attributes such as demographic data, and reports on tech, such as device and browser.
For example, you might want to analyze how the conversion rate varies over different periods, devices, traffic sources for marketing attribution, or user segments.
Average CRO spending and strategy
Every business approaches its CRO management a little differently, and that means the cost will vary. It comes down to what CRO tools you invest in and what management methods you choose. You can expect to pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars a month to a few thousand.
Statistically speaking, companies will spend $1 for every $92 spent on customer acquisition. However, the gap should be much smaller if you want to increase your bottom line. Web traffic is only effective if your visitors take action. Focusing more time and money on improving your conversion rates will help you do that.
The average company will spend approximately $2,000 on CRO tools, which might seem like a lot, but if used well, they can offer an excellent return on investment. Unfortunately, only about a third of businesses have a structured CRO strategy, leaving 68% of small businesses without one.
The Top Conversion Rate Optimization Statistics of 2024
Average Website Conversion Rate Statistics
- The average website conversion rate is 2.9%, according to Ruler Analytics – This is the average across all industries, but the number will differ from industry to industry.
- The best website conversion rate is 11+% – Remember, it is extremely rare for a conversion rate to rise above 11%.
- The industry with the highest conversion rate is professional services, with 4.6% – The industrial and auto industries followed closely at 4% and 3.7%.
- The average mobile conversion rate is around 1.53% – According to Statista, people are less likely to convert using their phones than other devices.
- The average desktop conversion rate is 4.14% – People are more willing to take action using their desktop than on their mobile devices.
- The industry with the lowest average eCommerce conversion rate is Sporting Goods at 2.35% – It’s unclear why, but sporting goods has the lowest sales conversion rate of any industry.
- The industry with the highest average eCommerce conversion rate is Food and Beverage at 4.95% – It’s a little surprising. Still, you can expect a higher online sales conversion rate if you are in the food and beverage industry.
- The industry with the lowest B2B conversion rate is non-profit at 2%.
- The industries with the highest B2B conversion rates are professional/financial services and media/publishing, both with an average of 10%.
- The average conversion rate of organic searches is 2.7%.
Landing page best practices stats
- Approximately 50% of marketers create new landing pages for each marketing campaign.
- Conversion rates increase by 12% with A/B testing.
- You can increase leads by 55% by increasing your number of landing pages from 10 to 15.
- Websites with 40+ landing pages have 12 times more leads.
- More than 60% of B2B businesses have less than 6 landing pages.
- The average conversion rate of lead-generated landing pages is 11.9%.
- Conversion rates with long-form landing pages increase by over 50%.
- You can increase landing page conversion by 86% with videos.
Form best practices stats
- Reducing form fields from 11 to 4 will generate approximately 120% more conversions.
- Multi-page forms have a 13.85% completion rate. – A significant increase compared to the 4.53% completion rate of single-page forms.
- “Click Here” has a higher conversion rate than “Submit.”
- Requesting a phone number will lower your conversion rate.
Best practices for testing CRO stats
- A/B testing is the preferred CRO method of more than 55% of marketers.
- Businesses that successfully increase the conversion rate do double the testing.
- More than 50% of businesses that use landing pages test them to increase CR.
CTA buttons and anchor text best practices stats
- Text link anchor text CTA outperforms button CTA by 121%.
- Personalized CTAs are 42% more successful than non-personalized CTAs.
Campaign/Marketing best practices CRO stats
- Personalized email message are 10% more likely to convert than non-personalized messages.
- The median conversion rate for click-based campaigns is 11.3%.
- The average conversion rate from email campaigns is 2.6% – The automotive, real estate, travel, cosmetic and dental industries all have above-average conversion rates.
- The average conversion rate from direct traffic sources is 3.3% – “Direct traffic” refers to any time someone types your web address directly into the bar. It averages the highest CR of all traffic sources and can get up to 5.3% in the healthcare, cosmetics, and dental industries.
- On average, paid search sources produce an average conversion rate of 3.2% – The CR increases to 5.2% in financial services and 5% in professional services.
- The average conversion rate from referral sources is 2.9% – It is highest in the cosmetic and dental industries, with an average of 4.1%. Industries like B2B eCommerce, healthcare, and legal are also above average.
- Social media conversion rates average around 1.5% – Social media has the lowest average CR, with the highest rates among healthcare, travel, B2B, and professional services.
- Facebook ads average a 9.21% conversion rate – The average rate across all industries is relatively high but varies heavily from industry to industry.
In our experience
The plethora of statistics might be a little overwhelming. If nothing else, note how varied the conversion rates are from industry to industry and how easy it is to optimize your rates with a few simple acts. The two biggest takeaways are:
A) You don’t need to aim for a super high conversion rate. Anything over 5% is good.
B) The keys to optimizing your conversion rate are personalized content, landing pages, A/B testing, and short or multi-page forms.
Remember, when marketing your business, you must spend just as much time and effort optimizing your conversion rates as you generate traffic on your website. Otherwise, thousands of people might visit your website, and you would have nothing to show for it.
Investing in CRO is the ‘work smarter, not harder’ approach.
