Quick answer
Conversion rate is the percentage of visits, or of visitors, that end in a conversion such as an order, booking or signup. Divide the number of conversions by the number of sessions (or unique visitors) and multiply by 100. If 2,000 sessions produce 40 orders, the rate is 2%.
What conversion rate measures
This number tells you how good your site is at turning attention into results. A conversion count on its own can’t do that: 50 orders is excellent from 800 visits and worrying from 20,000. Dividing by traffic puts every month, page and campaign on the same scale.
It’s always a percentage, and it always depends on two choices: what you count as a conversion, and what you divide by. Get either wrong and the number looks precise while saying very little.
The two formulas, and why both exist
There are two common ways to work it out. Neither is wrong, but they answer different questions.
Session conversion rate = conversions ÷ sessions × 100
Visitor conversion rate = visitors who converted ÷ unique visitors × 100
The session version asks, “Of all the visits we had, what share ended in a conversion?” The visitor version asks, “Of all the people who came, what share converted at some point?” Since many people visit more than once before buying, the visitor figure is usually higher.
Analytics tools pick one and don’t always say which. Before you compare your figure with anything, find out which denominator your tool uses. If one report divides by sessions and another by unique visitors, they’ll never agree, and that’s fine.
A worked example
Say a small candle shop on WooCommerce has this October:
- 3,000 sessions
- 2,200 unique visitors
- 60 orders, placed by 55 different people (five customers ordered twice)
Session rate: 60 ÷ 3,000 × 100 = 2%.
Visitor rate: 55 ÷ 2,200 × 100 = 2.5%.
Both are true. The session figure is better for spotting problems with a page or a campaign, because each visit is judged on its own. The visitor figure is closer to “what share of people bought something”, which is often the question the owner actually has in mind.
Why “industry averages” are shaky
Search for a benchmark and you’ll find tables of averages by sector. Treat them with a lot of caution.
- Nobody agrees on the formula. Some sources divide by sessions, some by visitors, some by “users” as one particular tool defines them. The figures aren’t measuring the same thing.
- Businesses inside a sector differ wildly. A shop selling £8 candles and one selling £1,200 sofas are both “home and garden”. Their buyers behave completely differently.
- Traffic mix changes everything. A site with lots of blog readers arriving from search will convert at a lower rate than one whose visitors mostly come from its own newsletter, even if the shop is identical.
- The samples are rarely fair. Published averages often come from a vendor’s own customers, and the method is seldom shown.
- Tracking setups differ. Consent banners, ad blockers and bot filtering all change the number of visits being divided into.
There’s no universal good number. Your most useful benchmark is your own history: the same source, the same kind of page, compared over time.
How to read your rate
The overall figure hides most of the story. Break it down:
- By source. Newsletter visitors already know you; social visitors may be seeing you for the first time. Expect very different rates, and judge each against its own past.
- By landing page. If one product page converts at half the rate of similar ones, look at that page first.
- By device. A big gap between mobile and desktop often points to a fiddly mobile checkout or form.
Watch the denominator too. A post that goes viral can double your visits and halve your rate while sales stay exactly the same. That isn’t a problem with the site; it’s a lot of curious, less ready visitors arriving at once.
And be careful with small numbers. Going from 3 enrolments to 5 looks like a 67% rise. It’s two people.
Practical ways to improve it on a WordPress site
Most gains come from removing reasons not to act, rather than adding tricks.
- Make the site faster. Heavy page builders, unoptimised images and a pile of plugins all slow pages down, and slow pages lose people before they’ve seen anything. Our performance page explains how we think about tracker weight.
- Make the next step obvious. One clear primary button per page. If a service page has five equal-looking links, visitors have to work out which one you meant.
- Remove checkout friction. Allow guest checkout, drop optional fields and show delivery costs early. The cart abandonment rate article covers checkout fixes in detail.
- Answer doubts next to the button. Delivery times, returns, what’s included in the course, cancellation terms for a class. Put them where the decision happens, not on a separate FAQ page.
- Match the page to the promise. If a campaign email mentions a winter candle set, link straight to that set, not the shop’s homepage.
- Test your own forms on a phone. Submit a Fluent Forms enquiry from your mobile, on mobile data, and check the confirmation email arrives. You’ll be surprised how often something is broken.
- Cut distractions at the final step. Pop-ups, chat widgets and newsletter boxes on the checkout page compete with the one thing you want people to do.
Change one thing at a time where you can, and give it a few weeks before judging. Otherwise you won’t know which change did what.
How it relates to other metrics
A higher rate isn’t always good news. If you run a 40% discount, more people will buy and the rate will jump, but each order is worth less. Always read it next to average order value and total revenue. Multiplying orders per visitor by average order value gives revenue per visitor, which shows whether a change made you more money or just more orders.
A note on privacy and accuracy
If your analytics only runs after visitors accept cookies, your rate is calculated from the people who said yes, not everyone. Those groups can behave differently. Cookieless measurement counts visits in aggregate without that consent gap, which tends to give a more complete denominator. Analyzine is cookieless by default and shows this rate alongside value per conversion in wp-admin, broken down by source and campaign, so you can compare your own figures month to month.
Start with your own baseline. Note this month’s rate for your top three sources, make one change, and check the same three numbers next month.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good conversion rate?
There isn’t one figure that applies to every site. It depends on what you sell, its price, where your visitors come from and how your tool counts. Compare yourself with your own past results for the same source and type of page.
Is it shown as a percentage or a decimal?
Almost always as a percentage: conversions divided by sessions or visitors, multiplied by 100. A spreadsheet may show the same figure as a decimal, so 0.02 and 2% mean exactly the same thing.
Can conversion rate be over 100%?
Only if your tool counts every conversion and people convert several times in one visit, for example by submitting a form three times. Seeing more than 100% usually means something is double counting, so check your setup.
Why does my rate drop when traffic goes up?
Extra traffic tends to be less targeted: a viral post or a broad ad brings people who weren’t looking to buy, so a lower rate is normal. Check whether total conversions went up, rather than the rate alone.
How do I get more conversions from a WordPress site?
Speed up the pages that matter, make the next step obvious, allow guest checkout and show costs early. Test your forms and checkout on a phone yourself, and change one thing at a time so you can see what worked.
