Glossary › Conversion Rate

What Is Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action — such as signing up for a trial, requesting a demo, or making a purchase — out of the total number of visitors. It's the metric that connects traffic to revenue and determines whether a content investment is actually working.

How to Calculate Conversion Rate

The formula is simple:

Conversion Rate = (Number of Conversions / Total Visitors) × 100

If a page gets 1,000 visitors and 30 sign up for a free trial, the conversion rate is 3%. The definition of "conversion" varies by context — it could be a trial signup, a demo request, an email capture, or a purchase. What matters is consistency: pick a conversion event and measure it the same way across all pages.

Conversion Rate Benchmarks for SaaS

SaaS conversion rates vary dramatically depending on the traffic source and page type. Typical ranges:

Homepage visitor → trial signup: 2-5%
Blog post visitor → any conversion: 0.1-0.5%
BOFU page visitor → trial/demo: 5-15%
Paid landing page → signup: 3-8%
Free trial → paid customer: 10-25%

The gap between blog content (0.1-0.5%) and BOFU content (5-15%) is the core argument for investing in bottom-of-funnel pages. The traffic is smaller, but each visitor is worth 10-100x more.

Why BOFU Content Has Higher Conversion Rates

Conversion rate is a function of intent. Visitors who arrive through high-intent keywords have already decided they need a solution — they're choosing between specific options. The content's job isn't to convince them to act, it's to help them pick.

Comparison pages convert well because they answer the exact question the buyer has: "Which one should I choose?" Alternative pages convert because they catch buyers at a moment of dissatisfaction with a competitor. Both page types match content to intent, which is why conversion rates are 10x or higher than educational content.

Conversion Rate vs Traffic Volume

The biggest mistake in content marketing is optimizing for traffic instead of conversion. A page with 10,000 monthly visitors and a 0.1% conversion rate produces 10 customers. A page with 500 visitors and a 5% conversion rate produces 25.

This math is why demand capture through BOFU content often outperforms demand generation through TOFU content in revenue terms — even when traffic numbers are an order of magnitude smaller. The metric that matters isn't visits, it's conversions. And conversion rate determines the efficiency of every visit.

Improving conversion rate also has a direct impact on CAC. Doubling the conversion rate of existing pages cuts the effective cost per acquisition in half without spending a cent more on traffic.