A HighRankings thread discusses how conversion rates are calculated. Alan says that industry experts typically calculate conversion rates between 0.005% and 0.2% but would like to know how this number is found.
It really varies, says other members. The only use of knowing this statistic is that it may be necessary in the future to explain to your PPC customer that a big percentage of their visitors will not be converting visitors. nethy explains that it's really not a useful metric at all.
Conversion rate outside of context is not a very useful metric. That's why it is not agood idea (it think) to benchmark too seriously. Except maybe to calm a client that just realised that 98.6% of visitors to his site left without paying.
Conversion rates in general are difficult to apply over different markets or different situations. Randy adds that funnels may show higher conversions.
As a general rule though, I'd say your 00.5 - 0.2 numbers are probably talking about overall site conversions. I would personally expect CR for individual pages or even a series of pages (funnel) that lead to a sale to be considerably higher.
Forum discussion continues at HighRankings Forums.
This post was composed on September 25 and was scheduled for publication on September 27th.
