In plain English
It's the moment a browser becomes a customer: the person looking in the window walks in and asks for a quote.
Used in a sentence
“We count calls, quote requests and bookings as conversions, and report them every month.”
“Our traffic doubled but conversions didn't move, so we fixed the pages, not the traffic.”
In detail
What counts as a conversion depends on the business: a booking for a salon, a quote request for a contractor, a purchase for a store. Analytics tools record them as events; Google Analytics 4 now calls the important ones key events. The share of visitors who convert is the conversion rate.
Improving conversions is often the cheapest way to grow, because it gets more from visitors you already have. Clearer calls to action, faster pages, shorter forms, visible reviews and pages that answer real questions all lift it.
Why it matters for your business
Conversions are the number that matters: they're where visitors become customers.
- Measures what the site actually achieves
- More leads without more visitors
- Ties marketing to results
Easy to mix up
A conversion isn't a sale in every case. For many service businesses it's a lead, like a call or a form, and the sale happens later. Both are worth tracking.
Related terms
Conversion tracking, Call to action (CTA) and Bounce rate. Or browse the whole glossary.
