Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors (or sessions) that complete a defined goal action — such as a purchase, signup, or form submission — calculated as conversions divided by total visitors or sessions.
What counts as a 'conversion' is entirely defined by the business, so conversion rate is only meaningful once that goal is clearly specified — an ecommerce site might define it as a completed checkout, a SaaS site as a free-trial signup. Because the denominator can be visitors, sessions, or clicks depending on the report, the same underlying data can produce different figures, so it matters what's being divided by what before comparing numbers across tools.
If an online store receives 2,000 sessions in a week and 40 of those sessions end in a completed purchase, the conversion rate for that week is 2% (40 divided by 2,000).
It varies enormously by industry and goal type — ecommerce checkout conversion rates often sit in the low single digits, while a simple newsletter signup can convert much higher, so benchmarks should be industry- and goal-specific.
Yes — most sites track conversion rate separately for each goal that matters, such as purchases, signups, and content downloads, rather than relying on one single overall figure.
Click-through rate measures how many people clicked an ad or link out of those who saw it; conversion rate measures how many of the people who then landed on the site actually completed the intended goal.