What is conversion rate?

Two online shops receive identical traffic; one sells twice as much as the other. The difference has a name and a formula: conversion rate, the share of visitors who take the desired action — an order, a quote request, a booking, a phone call — calculated simply as conversions divided by visitors, multiplied by a hundred. It changes the marketing question from how do we bring more traffic, expensive at current advertising prices, into how do we convert the traffic already paid for. The arithmetic is merciless and rather beautiful: at the same promotional budget, doubling conversion doubles sales, and a move from one percent to two is frequently achievable, whereas doubling traffic at the same quality rarely is. Calibration figures deserve the caution any average deserves: e-commerce typically sits around one to three percent, while service enquiry forms on well-targeted traffic can climb considerably higher. Your own history beats every benchmark, because this month against three months ago is the comparison that matters. Systematic improvement work, known as conversion rate optimization, follows one cycle: measure correctly by segment, since averages hide exactly the problems worth finding; diagnose where the journey breaks using the funnel from product view to completed payment; form hypotheses about the usual suspects, meaning mobile speed, surprise delivery costs, long forms, missing trust signals and a buried call to action; then test one change at a time.