What Is a Conversion?

Conversion definition

When it comes to marketing, a conversion is an action taken by a website visitor, that is considered beneficial and cost-effective for the website’s owner, and is encouraged through call-to-action (CTA) messages.

For a visitor to perform the desired action, the copy of your page, the design and serviceability elements have to work together in creating an uninterrupted user experience.

There are various types of profitable actions that can be classified as conversions: purchasing a product, downloading an e-book or any free material, watching a video or listening to the audio, subscribing to a newsletter or subscribing to a monthly membership.

The individual who answers to this call to action method, “converts” this process, which means that he transitions from a simple visitor to lead or customer.

Examples of conversions

For consumer marketers, conversion can be fast and easy. A possible customer scans a QR code to get a coupon and that’s a conversion right there.

In the longer and more complex B2B sales, you want a steady series of small conversions, such as engaging users on your website, interacting with your social media efforts, etc.

To online retailers, a successful conversion may be defined as the sale of a product to a consumer whose interest in the item was initiated by clicking on a banner advertisement.

To content creators, a successful conversion may hint to a membership registration, newsletter subscription, software download, or other activity.

For websites where the response arises on the site itself, a conversion can be tracked by setting up events behind specific actions that can be later on viewed in an Analytics App (Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica, etc.).

In other words, conversions can be considered all customer actions that will complete the desired goal (subscription, purchases, downloads, etc.). In electronic commerce, conversion marketing is the phrase used to often describe the act of converting a customer who browses your site to a paying customer.