How do you calculate your conversion rate?
6.5%, 4.6% or 2.5%? Which one is your conversion rate?
Alex CoullChecked 9 min read
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The short answer: divide the visits that converted by all your visits. Then times by 100. So 30 enquiries from 1,000 visits is 3%. But first, make three choices. What counts? What do you divide by? And how long do you count for? Then keep all three the same every month.
In October 2026, we helped a training and conference company get 6× more engaged leads. These are people who ask to be reminded about a course. They join its mailing list, and the team follows them up. First we worked out its rates the right way. Then we fixed what they showed us. Here’s how you calculate yours.
6× more engaged leads for a training and conference company
People asking to be reminded about a course went from 0.3% to 1.9% of visitors, after we adjusted the page design to suit user behaviour.
October 2026. Figures from Insights.
What is the conversion rate formula?
Conversion rate = visits that converted ÷ all visits × 100. A conversion is the thing you want people to do. That might be a sale, an enquiry, a call or a booking.
The sum, with real numbers
346visits that converted÷7,468all visits× 100 =4.6%conversion rate
Great, that’s the easy bit done. Now we have to work out what counts as a conversion. For that same website, in the same month, I can get 6.5%, 4.6% or 2.5%. Which figure is actually right? Well, that depends on some choices we’ll look at in step 3.
Conversion rate calculator
For you, let’s start by putting last month’s visits and the visits that converted into the calculator. You’ll get your rate, and how far chance alone could move it. If you want, add the month before to compare. It tells you if the change is real.
Put in your visits and the visits that converted to see your rate.
Struggling to find your numbers? Get in touch with us.
The 5 steps I go through before I give a client their conversion rate
Every way someone can buy or get in touch with you. That means forms, calls and email clicks, not just the form. But, crucially, track each one separately. Then you can add them together, or look at each one on its own.
One B2B manufacturer, October 2026
| What’s counted | Bar | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry forms only, per visit | 2.5% | |
| Forms, calls and email clicks, per visit | 4.6% | |
| Forms, calls and email clicks, per person | 6.5% |
Why does it matter? Each of those clicks is someone who wanted to talk to you. Leave them out, and a healthy site looks half as good as it is.
Check yours in Google Analytics 4
- Go to Admin, then Data display, then Events.
- Find each way people get in touch: the form, phone clicks, email clicks. Click the star next to each one. That makes it a key event.
- New key events show up in your reports within about a day. Older months don’t change.
Track each way of getting in touch as its own event. Then you can count them together, or look at them one by one.
Visits that converted. Count each visit once, however many times someone got in touch during it.
Say someone sends your form, then sends it again with a typo fixed. Then they click your phone number. That’s one visit that converted, not three.
GA4 makes this easy to get wrong. Its “Key events” column counts events, not visits. So if one person sends a form five times, that’s five. Divide key events by sessions, and your rate looks too high. On a busy form, it can even go over 100%.
Shops have the same problem the other way round. One visit can place two orders. So in Shopify, orders and converted visits won’t always match.
Check yours
- In GA4, don’t divide Key events by Sessions. Use the Session key event rate column. It counts each visit once.
- In Shopify, use Sessions that completed checkout, not the number of orders.
One visit, one conversion. That way your rate can never go over 100%.
I divide by visits, which GA4 and Shopify call sessions. It’s what both tools use for their main rate. So your number lines up with theirs.
Why is the per-person rate higher? People come back. Someone might visit three times before they get in touch. Per visit, that’s 1 in 3. Per person, it’s 1 in 1.
The mistake is mixing them. Lots of formula pages say “divide by visitors”, then use a tool that counts visits. Pick one and keep it.
Check yours
- GA4, per visit: Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Read the Session key event rate column.
- GA4, per person: Reports, then Acquisition, then User acquisition. Read the User key event rate column.
- Shopify: Analytics, then Reports, then Conversion rate over time. Its rate is sessions that completed checkout ÷ sessions.
Where you can, track both rates, so you always know the difference between visits and people. For your monthly figures, never switch. Use the same one every month.
A full calendar month. Compare it with the month before, and with the same month last year.
A week is too short. One busy day can swing it. A full month evens that out, and it’s easy to repeat.
Also watch for months when the counting changed, not the site. Shopify changed how it counts visits on 21 to 23 September 2026. A visit now ends after 30 minutes without a click, not at midnight. Known bots are left out too. Shopify warns that your rate can move because of it. So treat October 2026 as a fresh start.
Check yours
- Pick last month in the date range, from the 1st to the last day.
- Turn on “Compare” and pick the month before.
- On Shopify, take care with any month before October 2026. Visits were counted the old way then.
Same length of time, every time. Then a change in your rate means something changed.
More than most people think. With 300 visits, a 3% rate could really be anywhere from 1.6% to 5.6%. That’s chance, not the site.
How far chance can move a rate
| Visits | Rate you see | Could really be |
|---|---|---|
| 300 | 3% | 1.6% to 5.6% |
| 500 | 2% | 1.1% to 3.6% |
| 2,000 | 2% | 1.5% to 2.7% |
| 10,000 | 2% | 1.7% to 2.3% |
That’s why a small site’s rate jumps about from month to month. Often nothing has changed. With few visits, a handful of enquiries either way moves the rate a lot.
Check yours
- Put your numbers in the calculator. It shows the range for you.
- If the range is wider than the rate itself, add three months together.
Trust the trend over a few months, not one month on its own.
What should you do once you have your rate?
Write down how you worked it out. Then do the same sum next month, and the month after.
Your own last month, counted the same way, is the best benchmark you’ll ever have. To see how you compare with other sites, read what is a good conversion rate.
We track this for clients every month with Insights. That means every form, call and email click, counted the same way. And what each change to the site did to them.
Quick answers
- Is a 2.5% conversion rate good?
- For a UK shop, yes. The average is 1.97% of visits (IRP Commerce, September 2026). For an enquiry site that counts calls, it’s below the 5.13% average (Ruler Analytics, May 2026). Before you judge it, check what you’re counting.
- What is a 2% conversion rate?
- 2 in every 100 visits converted. So 20 enquiries from 1,000 visits is a 2% conversion rate.
- How do you calculate a conversion rate between two numbers?
- Divide the visits that converted by all visits. Then times by 100. So 45 from 1,500 is 3%.
- Why do GA4 and Shopify show different conversion rates?
- They count visits and conversions in different ways. They also filter out bots differently. Pick one tool for your rate and stick with it.
- How is a Google Ads conversion rate different?
- Google Ads divides conversions by ad clicks, not by visits to your site. It tells you about the ad, not the website. It can even go over 100%.
- What is a sales conversion rate?
- Usually, how many leads go on to buy. That’s a sales question. This guide is about how many visits become a sale or a lead.
- What’s the difference between conversion rate and click-through rate?
- Click-through rate is how many people click a link or ad out of everyone who saw it. Conversion rate starts after the click. It’s how many visits end in a sale or enquiry.
Sources
- Google, Analytics Help: key event metrics, how key events are counted, marking key events, the Traffic acquisition report, the User acquisition report and sessions.
- Shopify Help Center: analytics fields, behaviour reports and the session measurement update.
- Google Ads Help, Conversion rate: Definition.
- NIST/SEMATECH, e-Handbook of Statistical Methods, 7.2.4.1: Confidence intervals.
- Ruler Analytics, Conversion Rate Benchmarks, 26 May 2026.
- IRP Commerce, Ecommerce market data, September 2026.
- Coullweb, Insights data, real visitors only: a B2B manufacturer (5–31 October 2026) and a training and conference company’s “Remind me” requests (4 October–8 November 2026).
Links checked on 9 November 2026.
Written by Alex Coull
Coullweb is a small website team in Basingstoke. Since 2015 we’ve designed, built and looked after sites for 58+ businesses. For us, launch is the start. We measure where visitors get stuck. We fix the biggest problem first. Then we check it worked before we move on to the next.
P.S. If you only do one thing from this guide, check what’s on your key events list. In GA4, go to Admin, then Data display, then Events. If phone and email clicks aren’t starred, your rate is too low before anyone has looked at the site. If they are and your rate still looks low, book a Friction Audit and we’ll find the leak.