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Join early accessConversion rate
CVRThe share of visitors who place an order.
Conversion rate (CVR) is orders divided by visitors, as a percentage. It measures how well your traffic turns into sales. It swings a lot by source — branded search converts far higher than cold paid social — so it's most useful segmented, and read alongside revenue per visitor.
In practice
Conversion rate is a ratio between two things you don't fully control, which is why a site-wide figure is such a weak signal. It falls when you buy more top-of-funnel traffic, even though the extra traffic may be perfectly good, and it rises when you cut everything except branded search, even though you've just stopped growing. On its own it measures traffic mix at least as much as it measures your store.
It gets useful the moment you segment it. By source, by device, by new versus returning, by landing page — that's where a genuine problem shows itself as one number well below its neighbours. A mobile rate at half the desktop rate is a checkout or speed problem you can act on today; a blended rate that dipped 0.2 points tells you almost nothing.
Formula
Conversion rate = Orders ÷ Visitors × 100
Example: 120 orders from 5,000 visitors = 2.4%.
What a good result depends on
Around 2–3% is a common e-commerce benchmark, but it varies widely by category and traffic.
Common mistakes
- Mixing traffic sources before judging.
- Chasing CVR while ignoring order value.
Questions people ask
- What's a good e-commerce conversion rate?
- It depends so heavily on category, price point and traffic mix that published averages are close to useless for decisions. Your own rate by segment, tracked over time, is the benchmark that means something.
- Why did my conversion rate drop when traffic went up?
- Almost always mix. New campaigns bring in colder visitors who convert less readily, which dilutes the average even when total orders rise. Check orders and revenue before treating it as a problem.
- Should I measure sessions or users?
- Either, but never mix them. Sessions is the common convention and gives a lower number since one person may visit several times. What matters is that every report you compare uses the same denominator.