The conversion rate may be the most important web metric in an
eCommerce website. A good conversion rate is important because
conversions lead to sales, and sales leads to profits.
The definition of conversion rate is:
Conversion rate (measured in %) = Number of Sales / Number of
unique visitors
Customers ask me what is a good conversion rate. The
answer is simple - your conversion rate should be high enough for
you to be profitable. It may only be 1% or 3%,
or you may need a 15% conversion rate to be profitable.
For an ecommerce site, you can mesaure your monthly conversion
rate manually.
- Find the total number of unique visitors to your website in a
month no matter how they find your site (direct and referrals)
- Calculate the total number of sales in a month.
At TwinEngines, we use MediaChase as our eCommerce technology
platform, and we implement Google Analytics to track website
performance. Our customers log into their eCommerce management
website and find the total number of sales. They get their
total number of visitors from the Google Analytics dashboard.
I recommend measuring your conversion rate over a calendar year
to get a complete understanding. You'll be able to break the
year down into seasonal periods and around other outside events
that influence your sales.
Here is a link to an article on an automatic way to
measure conversion rates - using Google Analyics.