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Journal · The Clarity Series · Convert visitors

What is a conversion?

By Nicholas Cabel The 60-second version lives on Instagram

A conversion is the one thing you wanted a visitor to do: buy something, book a call, pick up the phone, or sign up. Everything else on your site is just the path that leads there.

In plain English

Think of your website as a hallway. Visitors walk in the front door and wander past room after room. A conversion is the door they actually walk through instead of drifting back out the way they came.

Three things move it

01

A clear call to action

Tell people exactly what to do next, in plain words.

02

A fast-loading page

Every extra second of load time gives visitors a reason to leave.

03

Fewer doubts

Answer the hesitations before they turn into a closed tab.

Worth remembering

Unbounce studied 41,000 landing pages: the median conversion rate was 6.6%.

That is the middle of the pack, not the ceiling. Plenty of pages in that study did far worse, and plenty did far better once the basics were fixed.

What to do about it

If you do not know your conversion rate, you cannot improve it. Get a free website audit and I will show you where visitors are dropping off before they ever convert.

About the author

  • Nicholas Cabel

    Written by

    Nicholas Cabel

    Founder of MakeAndUpdate, a one-person web studio in West Chester, PA. Hand-codes fast websites for local businesses and builds in public.

    @makeandupdate