How Successful Is Your Website Really? What Is a Conversion

What are the essential elements when building a new website?

Good design? Compelling copy? A striking logo? Social media integration? Check, check, and check. You’ve got it all. So you launch the site… now what?

Unfortunately, just getting your website online doesn’t guarantee success.

How do you know if your effort has paid off? Is your new website meeting its goals and delivering real results?

Even if you’re seeing payments roll in, that’s not the whole story. The real question is, could you be achieving even better results? Is there room for improvement? To answer that, my advice is simple:

Track your conversions.

What is a conversion?

A conversion is any action on your website that aligns with your goals. It’s something specific you want your visitors to do, and you define it based on what’s most valuable to your business.

Think of it this way: every website has a purpose. For an online store, that purpose might be sales. For a blog, it could be engagement. A conversion happens when a visitor takes an action that contributes to that purpose.

Here are a few common examples:

E-commerce: A customer adding a product to their cart or completing a purchase.
Lead generation: A visitor filling out a contact form or signing up for a newsletter.
Content sites: A reader leaving a comment or sharing your post on social media.

Conversions can be big or small. Whether it’s making a purchase or simply clicking a button, if it moves the needle toward your goals, it’s a conversion.

Understanding what conversions are and how they relate to your objectives is crucial. Once you know what actions matter most, you can start optimizing your site to encourage more of them.

Why is all this effort worth it?

Every website exists to achieve a goal. That goal varies depending on the type of site. A new social platform might aim to attract as many users as possible. An e-commerce store is likely focused on maximizing sales. A small business website might prioritize bringing more customers through its doors.

Without defining what a conversion is for your website, you can’t measure how well you’re achieving those goals.

Imagine you run an e-commerce store, and you’re selling 10 products a day. If that’s all you know, you’re missing the bigger picture. Without more context, you can’t tell if 10 sales is a success or a failure. For instance, if you have 100 visitors a day, 10 sales is an excellent conversion rate. But if you’re getting 100,000 visitors a day, those same 10 sales are a serious problem.

The only way to truly gauge your website’s effectiveness is by tracking conversions. When you know how many visitors are taking the actions you care about, you can assess your performance, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to reach your goals.

How to specify what counts as a conversion for your website

The simplest way to define a conversion is by looking at the primary goal of your website. If your site’s main purpose is to sell products, then a conversion should be defined as a sale. If the goal is to drive foot traffic to your physical store, then a conversion might be when a customer walks through your door after finding you online. The key is to align your conversions with the objectives that matter most to your business.

However, more experienced marketers take things a step further. They track conversions on multiple levels, considering not just a single action but a sequence of actions that leads to the ultimate goal. This approach provides a deeper understanding of how well the website is performing.

For example, an e-commerce site might define a conversion sequence like this:

A visitor adds an item to their shopping cart
They click the “Go to Checkout” button
They complete the purchase and make a payment
The total transaction amount exceeds $100
The customer applies a discount code at checkout
They choose to sign up for a newsletter during the purchase process
They select express shipping as their delivery option
They return to purchase another item within 30 days
and so on

Tracking these steps separately allows you to pinpoint where potential customers might drop off and what might need improvement. For instance, if many visitors add items to their cart but don’t proceed to checkout, you might need to optimize the checkout process or address concerns that are preventing them from finalizing the purchase.

Defining your conversions is just the first step. Once you know what actions matter most, you can start tracking them, analyzing the results, and optimizing your site to improve your performance over time.

Tracking conversion rates

Here’s where the real work begins.

Once you’ve defined what a conversion means for your website, you need a system to track it.

The easiest way to do this is by using tools like Google Analytics or Google Ads, which offer built-in conversion tracking features. In some cases, however, you might need to hire a developer to create a custom solution tailored to your specific needs.

In theory, tracking conversions is straightforward. You simply measure the ratio of visitors who complete a conversion to the total number of visitors on your site.

For example, if your conversion goal is a sale in your e-commerce store, and you make 4 sales for every 250 visitors, your conversion rate would be calculated as follows:

4 sales ÷ 250 visitors = 0.016

This result is typically expressed as a percentage, so:

0.016 × 100 = 1.6%

To calculate this, you need two key pieces of data:

✅ A system that counts how many people visit your site.
✅ A system that counts how many of those visitors complete a conversion.

Once you have these numbers, it’s just a matter of dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors to get your conversion rate. As mentioned, tools like Google Analytics can handle this for you with minimal setup, making it easier to monitor and analyze your conversion performance over time.

Using the data to improve your results

Remember, the ultimate goal of tracking conversions is to improve your website’s performance and help it achieve its objectives more effectively.

Once you start gathering data on your conversion rates, you can make informed changes and monitor their impact on your results.

One of the most surprising yet well-known facts in online marketing is that small changes, like tweaking your website’s headline, can significantly impact your conversion rate. Once you’ve set up conversion tracking, you can experiment with these changes to see what works best for your audience.

Here’s a simple way to test this:

Start with a baseline headline and monitor your conversion rate over a period of time.
After collecting enough data, change the headline to something different, and then track the conversion rate again.
By comparing the two sets of results, you can determine which headline performs better.

The ability to track conversion rates opens up a world of opportunities for improving your website and your business. With this simple approach, you can increase your revenue without needing to make additional investments – essentially ensuring you’re not leaving money on the table.

If you’ve tried conversion tracking before, what changes did you make that led to better results? How much of an improvement did you see in your case?