Is it better to raise traffic or conversion?

Usually conversion. Traffic costs money per visitor while a conversion improvement applies to every visitor you already have, including the free ones.

Businessmarketing

Conversion Rate Calculator

Conversion rate with the value per visitor, which is the figure that decides how much traffic is worth buying. One extra percentage point is usually worth more than any plausible traffic increase.

Also called: cvr calculator, conversion percentage.

Conversion rate

2.5%

2.5%, or one in 40. Each visitor is worth $50.00 and each conversion $2,000.00. Lifting the rate to 3.5% would add 100 conversions.

One in how many

Revenue per visitor

$50.00

Revenue per conversion

$2,000.00

Cost per conversion

$400.00

Extra conversions at a rate one point higher

100

That target rate

3.5%

How this is calculated

Method and background

How this is calculated

Conversions over visitors. The value per visitor is the useful derivative: it converts a traffic number into money and sets the ceiling on what a click is worth paying for. The last line shows what one extra percentage point of conversion delivers, which on most funnels is a larger gain than doubling the traffic and considerably cheaper.

conversion rate = conversions / visitors

c: Conversions
v: Visitors

Worked examples

Each of these is asserted on every build. If a change to the engine ever moved one of these answers, the build would fail before the page could print it.

two and a half percent

Visitors or leads: 10,000
Conversions: 250
Revenue from those conversions: $500,000.00
Cost of getting the visitors: $100,000.00

Conversion rate2.5%

arithmetic identity across all three

Open this example

no conversions is a zero rate

Visitors or leads: 10,000
Conversions: 0
Revenue from those conversions: $0.00
Cost of getting the visitors: $100,000.00

Conversion rate0%

boundary: guarded rather than dividing by zero

Open this example

Method and limits

What it assumes

Visitors and conversions measured over the same window.

What it deliberately does not model

A rate on a small sample is noise. A few hundred visitors cannot distinguish two percent from three.
It does not account for returning visitors counted more than once.

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Frequently asked questions

Is it better to raise traffic or conversion?: Usually conversion. Traffic costs money per visitor while a conversion improvement applies to every visitor you already have, including the free ones.