The honest answer is "it depends" — but here are the benchmarks and the metric that actually matters more.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action — buying, signing up, or booking. It's calculated as conversions ÷ visitors × 100. If 150 of 5,000 visitors buy, that's a 3% conversion rate.
Across ecommerce, average conversion rates sit around 2% to 3%. Lead-generation forms and free signups convert much higher, sometimes 10% or more, because the ask is smaller. There's no universal "good" number.
| Traffic type | Typical conversion |
|---|---|
| Paid search (high intent) | 3% – 6% |
| Organic search | 2% – 4% |
| Social / display | 0.5% – 2% |
| Email to existing list | 4% – 10%+ |
Visitors who arrive with high purchase intent convert far better than cold traffic, so always compare like-for-like.
Conversion rate ignores order value. A 2% rate on a $500 product beats a 6% rate on a $10 item. Revenue per visitor (revenue ÷ visitors) combines conversion and order size, and it's often the better metric to optimize.
Chasing conversion rate alone can backfire — deep discounts lift the rate but can lower revenue per visitor.
Clarify your value proposition, speed up page loads, simplify checkout, add trust signals like reviews, and strengthen your call to action. Test one change at a time so you know what actually moved the needle.