What is conversion rate?

A conversion rate is the share of people who complete a desired action, such as buying, signing up or booking, out of everyone who had the chance to.

Conversion rate shows whether your social media is actually helping your business. Likes and views are nice, but conversions are often what pay the bills. Tracking them helps you see which posts, networks and offers bring in real results.

A conversion can be anything you care about: a sale, a newsletter sign-up, a form submission, a download or a booked appointment. It is usually calculated by dividing conversions by the number of visitors or clicks, then multiplying by one hundred. Ad platforms and website analytics tools can track conversions once they are set up.

Decide what counts as a conversion before you start measuring. Make the path easy, with a clear call to action and a landing page that matches the post. If many people click but few convert, look at your page, price or offer.

Example

A handmade jewelry shop tracks how many visitors from its Pinterest pins go on to buy, and compares that to visitors from Instagram.