What Is a Good Conversion Rate?

First, be clear what you are measuring

Conversion rate is the share of visits that complete the action you care about. The formula is simple: conversions ÷ visits × 100. But the numbers change depending on choices you make:

• What counts as a conversion: a purchase, an enquiry form, a call, a booking or a newsletter sign-up.
• What counts as a visit: GA4 can calculate rates per session or per user. Google Ads calculates per click.
• Which traffic is included: all visitors, or only paid traffic to one landing page.

Always state the definition alongside the number. "3% of sessions" and "3% of ad clicks" are not comparable. Our guide to GA4 key events covers setting conversions up properly.

A real UK benchmark for online shops

IRP Commerce publishes monthly market data from online retailers. Its Market Data Centre showed a B2C ecommerce conversion rate of 1.97% in September 2026, up from 1.68% in September 2025, with an average order value of £133.12 (checked October 2026). The figures cover Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Use that as context, not a target. A shop selling low-cost repeat items will often convert higher than one selling furniture, where people browse for weeks. Mobile visitors usually convert lower than desktop. Returning visitors and email traffic convert better than cold social traffic.

Lead generation sites

For service businesses the question is less "what percentage fill a form" and more "how many good leads per pound spent". A form that converts at a high rate but brings in time-wasters is worse than a stricter form with fewer, better enquiries.

Track:

• Form submissions, calls from the website and bookings, each as a key event.
• How many become qualified leads, quotes and sales, recorded in your CRM.
• Conversion rate by traffic source and landing page, so you can see which ads and pages work.

How to tell if yours is good

1. Compare with yourself. Plot the last 12 months by month and by device. Is it improving?
2. Compare by source. If paid search converts at three times the rate of paid social, that tells you something about intent or landing pages.
3. Check the money. Does conversion rate, combined with cost per click and order value or lead value, make each channel profitable? See what is ROAS.
4. Look for leaks. In GA4, build a funnel exploration: product page, add to cart, checkout, purchase. The biggest drop is where to start.

How to improve it

• Speed, especially on mobile. Slow pages lose people before they see anything.
• Message match: the landing page headline should repeat the promise in the ad.
• Clear calls to action, visible without scrolling on a phone.
• Shorter forms. Remove fields you do not need at first contact.
• Trust signals: reviews, guarantees, delivery and returns information, real photos.
• Checkout friction: guest checkout, Apple Pay and Google Pay, no surprise costs at the last step.

Then test changes properly. An A/B test needs enough visitors and conversions in each version, and should run for full weeks to cover weekday and weekend behaviour. Ending a test early because one version is ahead is one of the most common mistakes.

Keep a simple test log: what you changed, why, the dates, the result and what you learned. Over a year that log becomes one of the most useful documents in the business, because it stops the same ideas being tested twice.

What dijitul charges

Our conversion rate optimisation is from £195 a month + VAT. It covers analytics review, funnel analysis, heatmaps and recordings, test ideas, A/B tests and reporting. For a single page, see landing page optimisation. If tracking needs fixing first, conversion tracking is £145 + VAT one-off. We never promise a specific conversion rate, because results depend on your product, prices and traffic.

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