What is conversion?

On a Web site, conversion means that a visitor on one of your Web site pages takes a desired action. For example, if you offer a white paper on a landing page, then conversion occurs once a visitor downloads the white paper.

You could also describe a conversion as achieving the goal you have in mind for a particular page. Before creating a page, it is always important to establish the goal. With a clear goal, you are able to keep improving your pages.

Some examples of conversions

• Newsletter subscription
• Purchase in an online store
• Generating a lead by offering gated content.
• Appointment for an interview.
• Visitors who spend a certain amount of time on a page.
• Information request.

Conversions in advertising

We also speak of conversions with ads. A well-known example is Google Ads. Here your conversions are measured per keyword, ad, ad group and campaign.

Google allows you to focus on what is important for you, namely achieving your goals. These goals are entirely up to you to which Google brings them into focus.

Learn more about advertising on Google.

Conversion marketing

Conversion marketing includes all marketing activities related to defining, measuring and improving conversions.

In the intro to this page, we wrote that you can compare a conversion to achieving a goal. So it is important that you define these online marketing goals in line with your business objectives and then do everything you can to achieve them. Conversion marketing helps you do just that.

Micro vs. macro conversions

It can be useful to distinguish between micro and macro conversions. The macro conversion is the most important conversion. So the action you have in mind as an end goal. With a web shop this is a purchase.

A micro conversion is a conversion that eventually contributes to achieving a macro conversion. For the same webshop, this could be, for example, a newsletter subscription. Micro and macro conversions are also called soft and hard conversions.

Measuring conversion

Is lead generation an objective of your business? Then measure conversions continuously through KPIs. This allows you to learn and continuously improve your website.

Calculate conversions

Conversions are usually automatically calculated for you by online marketing software. However, it is important to fully understand exactly how to calculate conversion.

The formula for the conversion rate of a landing page is:

Increase Conversion

You can increase your conversion rate by making targeted adjustments to pages on your website and testing these adjustments. We call this process conversion optimization. There are several techniques for doing this. A/B testing is the best-known example of this.

An effective method is to A/B test the landing page to find out which copy, colors or images on the page convert best.

But optimizing CTAs is also a good option. After all, CTAs are the conversion path from high traffic pages to your landing pages.

Based on the click through rate of the CTA A/B test the call to action to learn which CTAs work most effectively for your target audience.

Conversion rate monitoring in HubSpot

How you measure conversions obviously depends on the goal you have in mind for your pages. When practicing inbound marketing, conversion often has to do with filling out a form. In that case, you easily measure the conversions of each page in HubSpot.

You do this by clicking on a page and then going to 'performance'. Under 'sources' you will then find 'submissions'. If the goal of your page is to get someone to fill out a form, that shows the number of conversions per page.

To compare the conversions of a page with other pages in a representative way, you should always look at the conversion rate. This is because this percentage is independent of the number of visitors the page had.

Do you still have questions about conversions after this article? Ask your question in the live chat at the bottom right or let us know on LinkedIn.