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Conversion rate

| Article: 9 min read | Conversion, Increase conversion

Conversion rate is the share of visitors or visits in which a person took the action you want: bought, left a request, subscribed. It is counted as the number of target actions divided by the number of visitors (or sessions), multiplied by 100%.

In plain words

Conversion shows how many of the people who came to the site did what the site exists for. If the store had 10,000 visits in a month and 200 orders were placed, the conversion to order is 2%.

Jakob Nielsen (Nielsen Norman Group) describes conversion as "the percentage of users who take a desired action" and gives an example: 2,000 purchases from 100,000 visitors in April make 2% (NN/g, Conversion Rates).

In conversation, "conversion" can mean the action itself ("we had 30 conversions today") or the percentage ("a 1.8% conversion"). This article is about the percentage.

The formula

Conversion rate = target actions / visitors (or sessions) × 100%

You decide what goes into the numerator and the denominator. The main thing is that the rule doesn't change from month to month.

Sessions or users

  • Session conversion rate is the share of visits in which the target action happened. One person who visited three times and bought once gives three sessions and one order.
  • User conversion rate is the share of people who took the target action at least once in the period. The same person gives one user and one order.

User conversion is usually higher, because the denominator is smaller. For products people choose for a long time (appliances, furniture), the difference can be large: a person comes several times before buying.

NN/g advises counting either unique visitors or all visits, but doing it the same way in every period, and counting conversions the same way (NN/g).

Macro and micro conversions

  • A macro conversion is the main action that brings in money directly: a placed order, a request, a sign-up.
  • A micro-conversion is a smaller step on the way to it: adding to the cart, starting checkout, subscribing to a newsletter, clicking "Buy in one click".

NN/g explains why both are needed: a macro conversion happens rarely and changes slowly, while micro-conversions give more data and show faster whether a change is working (NN/g, Macro vs. Micro Conversions).

Every goal has its own conversion rate. Optimizely notes that a site can have several goals, with a separate rate for each; and if the goal is a lead, you can exclude from the calculation the pages that have no form (blog, legal pages, support) (Optimizely).

A calculation example for a Ukrainian store

Hypothetical numbers, an example. A home appliance store, October:

Metric

Value

Sessions

50,000

Users

32,000

Sessions with add-to-cart

3,500

Orders placed

750

Sessions with an order

700

Users who ordered

680

Orders picked up at Nova Poshta (not refused)

620

Calculation:

  • Session conversion to order: 700 / 50,000 × 100% = 1.4%
  • User conversion to order: 680 / 32,000 × 100% = 2.1%
  • "Added to cart" micro-conversion: 3,500 / 50,000 × 100% = 7%
  • Cart to order: 700 / 3,500 × 100% = 20% (the rest is cart abandonment)

The Ukrainian market has one more step: an order with cash on delivery is not yet a sale. If 620 of 750 orders were picked up at the post office, the "real" conversion to a paid order is lower: 620 / 50,000 × 100% = 1.24% of sessions. Site analytics sees the moment of checkout, not the pickup, so pickup data has to be pulled in from the CRM or accounting.

One more peculiarity: some shoppers see a product on Rozetka or Prom and buy directly from the store (or the other way round). The conversion of your own site doesn't account for such paths.

How to count conversion in GA4

In Google Analytics 4, actions that matter to the business are marked as key events. Google defines a key event as "an event that measures an action that's particularly important to the success of your business"; any collected event can be marked as a key event (GA4: About key events).

How to mark one:

  1. Admin → Data display → Events.
  2. Find the event (for example `generate_lead` or `add_to_cart`) and click the star. Editor permissions are required.
  3. You can create a new event with the "+ Create event" button with "Mark as key event" turned on.

The `purchase` event is marked as a key event automatically. A standard property can have up to 30 key events (50 in Analytics 360). The marking applies from the moment of creation and doesn't change historical data; in standard reports the change appears within 24 hours (GA4: Mark events as key events).

Conversion metrics in GA4 (GA4 dimensions & metrics):

  • Session key event rate is the percentage of sessions in which a key event happened: sessions with a key event / all sessions.
  • User key event rate is the percentage of users who performed a key event: such users / all users.
  • Key events is how many times key events fired (one session can produce several).

For Google Ads, you can create Google Ads conversions from GA4 key events; Google Ads conversions are not shown in standard GA4 reports (Google). That's why the numbers in GA4 and in the ad account may not match.

Why "the average conversion in the market" means little

The question "what is a normal conversion rate for an online store" comes up all the time, but the answer tells you almost nothing:

  • Conversion depends on things outside the site: brand reputation, price, how hard the sale is, and how serious a decision the person is being asked to make. The conversion of a sock store and a refrigerator store can't be compared.
  • Different sources count differently. Sessions or users, orders or payments, with mobile traffic or without: an average figure mixes all of this.
  • Traffic channels differ. Optimizely reminds us that organic search usually converts better than display advertising, but that doesn't mean other traffic brings no valuable customers (Optimizely). If you launched a reach campaign, conversion will fall while sales may grow.
  • Norms change over time. According to Contentsquare, retail conversion fell 5.5% in 2025 compared with 2024 (mobile −3.5%, desktop −8%; new visitors −8.9%, returning visitors −4%); this is from a guide updated 12.02.2026, based on the "2026 Digital Experience Benchmarks" report (Contentsquare). The report covers over 26 billion retail sessions on 2,200+ sites in 71 countries (Contentsquare, retail). That is a change, not an absolute "norm" for your store; there is no Ukrainian data of this scale.

A good conversion rate for your site is one that's higher than it used to be. Compare yourself with yourself: the same month last year, the same channel, the same device type. Optimizely also advises using a benchmark specific to the industry, device or technology, along with your own average.

What has changed: AI traffic

According to the same Contentsquare report (25.02.2026; 99 billion sessions, comparing Q4 2024 and Q4 2025), overall conversion fell 5.1%, the average order value rose 6%, and traffic from AI assistants is starting to convert at a level closer to search (Contentsquare). In practice: in GA4, look at conversion by source separately, including visits from AI services, if they appear in your data.

How different sources see it

  • NN/g treats conversion as a tool for evaluating design: it shows what happens after a person arrives, and so reflects the effect of site changes better than absolute figures. But it advises checking the absolute number of conversions when traffic jumps sharply from an unusual source.
  • Google Analytics gives two metrics, for sessions and for users, and doesn't say which one is "right". The choice is yours.
  • Optimizely stresses that a higher conversion rate isn't always better in itself: who exactly is buying matters.

Common mistakes

  • Changing the counting rule. Last month you counted users, this month sessions; "conversion fell" because of the formula.
  • Looking only at conversion without revenue. A 30% discount will raise conversion, but not necessarily profit. Look at it together with average order value and revenue per visitor.
  • Mixing mobile and desktop traffic. They can convert very differently, and the overall average will hide a problem with the mobile version.
  • Counting a placed order as a sale. With cash on delivery, some parcels come back.
  • Drawing conclusions from small numbers. 3 orders versus 5 is not "conversion grew by 67%".
  • Comparing with the "market average" instead of your own trend.

FAQ

What is conversion in plain words? The percentage of people (or visits) who took the action you want on the site: bought, left a request, subscribed.

How do you calculate a website's conversion rate? Divide the number of target actions by the number of sessions or users over the same period and multiply by 100%. For example, 300 orders / 20,000 sessions = 1.5%.

What is a normal conversion rate for an online store? There is no single norm: it depends on the niche, price, traffic channel and the way of counting. It's more useful to compare with your own data from past periods.

What is sales conversion? Usually it's the share of visitors who bought. For stores with cash on delivery, it's worth counting separately the conversion to a placed order and to a received (paid) order.

Where do I see conversion in GA4? Mark the events you need as key events (Admin → Events → star) and use the Session key event rate or User key event rate metrics in reports or explorations.

Sources

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