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Web Site Conversion Rates

What is a Realistic Conversion Rate?

It is important to know the Big Picture in terms of reasonable expectations of sales from your Web site.  You will soon find out that this is a numbers game and you must have a lot of visitors to your Web site in order to reach your sales goals since only a fraction of them turn into sales. 

This should not come as a surprise.  This is no different than for traditional brick and morter businesses.

To start, some basic definitions are in order: 

Conversion

Defined as a Web site visitor that becomes a customer or sign-ups for more information.

 

Conversion Rate

Defined as the number of actual sales or sign-ups divided by the number of site visitors in a given period.

Industry Average Conversion Rate

The industry average Web site conversion rate is 1% to 2%. 

What does this mean you you?  It means that you have to have a lot of visitors to your Web site since only a fraction of them turn into sales. 

How to Calculate Your Conversion Rate

Here is a proven formula to estimate (at best) the amount of sales that can be achieved by driving a certain amount of traffic to your site.

1. Determine the Actual Sales or sign-ups that occurred as a direct result from your Web site.
2. Determine the # of Unique Visitors to your Web site. This can be done by taking a look at your Web site's statistics.
3. # of Unique Visitors / Actual Sales = Conversion Rate
4. Example:  100 unique visitors; 2 actual sales; 2/100 = 0.02 (2%)

How to Calculate Traffic Needed to Meet Your Sales Goals

Use this simple formula to estimate how much traffice (i.e. # of Visitors) you need to meet your sales/sign-up goals.

1. Figure out your Desired Number of Sales (quantity--not dollar value)
2. # of Visitors = Desired Number of Sales / Conversion Rate (in decimal)
3. Example:  If you want 200 sales this month, and we use the industry average conversion rate of 1%, then 200 / 0.01 = 20,000 (the minimum number of visitors required to your site).

A 1% conversion rate is considered by many average marketers to be difficult to achieve and rightly so. Many web sites, lacking million dollar budgets, are happy to get a tenth (.001) of a percent.

That means that you need to drive more traffic to your site and/or increase the effectiveness of your marketing text to motivate the visitor to buy.

Serious About Getting Started?   Give Me a Call

Web It Up to the Next Level

When you call, you'll talk directly with me.  

Expect to spend some quality time so I can learn a little about your business goals.  Then we can talk about what solutions make sense for your business. 

You'll be excited to know that there are new and innovative technologies to get you where you want to go.  Together, we can make it happen.