UX glossary · engl. Conversion
Conversion
A conversion is a desired action on a website or in an app, such as a purchase or a signup. The conversion rate shows what share of visits leads to one.
Imagine a small online shop for coffee beans gets 4,000 visits a month. Lots of people browse products and even add something to the cart, but only a few end up ordering. The team wonders: is it the price, the shipping costs or the checkout?
That’s the kind of question conversion is all about.
Explained simply
A conversion is the moment someone completes a desired action on a website or in an app: visitors turn into customers, subscribers or leads. The team decides what counts as a conversion. Typical examples are a purchase, a newsletter signup, a contact request or a download.
Think of a bookshop. Plenty of people come in to browse. How many of them end up at the checkout is the conversion. The layout of the shop, the advice from staff and the length of the queue all play a part in whether browsing turns into buying.
Calculating the conversion rate
The conversion rate is the share of visits that lead to a conversion. The formula is simple: number of conversions divided by number of visits, times 100. If 80 out of 4,000 visits in the example above result in an order, the conversion rate is 2 percent. Depending on your analytics tool, it may count per session or per person, so it’s worth checking what exactly is being measured.
The Nielsen Norman Group distinguishes two types. Macroconversions are the main goals, such as a purchase. They often happen too rarely to deliver meaningful data quickly. Microconversions are smaller steps along the way, like adding a product to the cart or creating an account. They happen more often and show earlier where things get stuck.
One important point for UX: the conversion rate doesn’t depend on design alone. Prices, seasons, ad campaigns and traffic quality affect it too. That’s why it works best for tracking changes over time, not as a single snapshot. Which psychological factors come into play is covered in Why Do Visitors Convert into Buyers?.
An example
Here’s an example: analytics for the coffee shop show that many people leave the checkout on the shipping page. That’s where shipping costs appear for the first time, and the form also requires creating an account.
The team now shows shipping costs right on the product page and allows guest checkout. To find out whether it works, they run an A/B test instead of relying on gut feeling. You’ll find more on friction-free forms in Forms Nobody Abandons.
Common misconceptions
A higher conversion rate isn’t automatically a win. If you push people into a purchase with hidden costs or pre-checked add-ons, the number goes up in the short term, but you lose trust and get more returns. These dark patterns aren’t optimization. They’re manipulation.
In practice
- Define conversions up front. Decide which macro- and microconversions matter for your product before you start comparing numbers.
- Combine numbers with observation. Analytics shows where people drop off, while usability testing shows why.
- Test one change at a time. If you change many things at once, you won’t know afterwards what made the difference.
Related terms
A/B Testing, Dark Patterns, Usability, Journey Map