Online Marketing Basics - Conversion Rate

What is conversion rate? Conversion rate is a measure of how well users converts from one state to another action. For example, if your website has 100 visitors and of those 100 visitors, 20 of them take some form of action, the action can be anything from generating a lead to making a sale. If 20 of the 100 visitors take action then you have a 20% conversion rate. Conversion rate marketing is basically the practice of trying to improve your marketing effectiveness. Conversion rates often are used as a measuring tool, these rates should let you know how well your site is doing. It also lets you know what is working and what is not working.

In order to widen the analysis, it is often necessary to see how different types of traffic rates when it comes to the specified conversion rates you are tracking. Typically you would at least identify and track these types of traffic:

• Organic (SEO-targeted keywords)

• Organic (Long Tail)

• Referring (Link Building)

• Referring (Affiliate Links)

• Direct traffic

• Campaigns

This will give you a good measure on what traffic converts the best and where you need to put effort into your conversions.

There are several online tools for measuring Conversion Rates. Google Analytics lets you specify Goals where you can easily, both graphically and by numbers, track your conversions on a very detailed level. I would suggest using Google Analytics for this kind of analysis.