How do you calculate conversion rate?

Conversion rate = (people who completed the action ÷ people who had the opportunity) × 100. 50 signups from 1,000 visitors is a 5% conversion rate. The denominator — who counts as “had the opportunity” — matters as much as the numerator.

What is a good conversion rate?

It depends entirely on context — channel, audience, price, and what counts as a conversion. E-commerce checkout often sits in the low single digits; a free signup can be far higher. Benchmark against your own trend and your funnel, not a universal figure.

What is the difference between macro and micro conversions?

A macro conversion is the primary goal — a purchase or paid signup. Micro conversions are smaller steps toward it — adding to cart, creating an account, starting a trial. Tracking micro conversions shows where in the journey people advance or stall.

What is step conversion in a funnel?

Step (or step-to-step) conversion is the share of people who advance from one funnel step to the next, rather than all the way through. It pinpoints which single step leaks the most users, which overall conversion alone can’t show.

What Is Conversion Rate? Definition & Formula

Conversion rate is the percentage of people who complete a desired action out of everyone who had the opportunity — signups divided by visitors, purchases divided by sessions, or step-to-step completion in a funnel.

The formula

Conversion rate divides the people who completed an action by the people who could have:

conversion rate = completed ÷ had the opportunity × 100

50 signups from 1,000 visitors is 5%. The subtlety is the denominator — “had the opportunity” has to mean the same population every time, or the number isn’t comparable. Unique people or sessions, consistently, beats a fuzzy “visits.”

Overall vs step conversion

Overall conversion measures the whole journey end to end — visitor to purchase. Step conversion measures each hop in a funnel — cart to checkout, checkout to payment. Overall tells you the result; step conversion tells you where you’re losing people, which is what you actually act on.

Macro and micro conversions

The big goal — a purchase, a paid plan — is a macro conversion. The smaller steps toward it — add-to-cart, account created, trial started — are micro conversions. Tracking micro conversions as events turns a single pass/fail number into a map of where momentum builds or breaks.

What counts as good

There’s no universal “good” rate — it swings with traffic source, audience intent, price, and how hard the action is. A cold-traffic checkout and a warm free signup aren’t the same game. Measure your own baseline first, then improve against it. For typical ranges and how to read them, see what a good conversion rate is.

Try it: a conversion-rate calculator

Enter two numbers — the bar shows the share that converts.

Measure conversion in Pug

Use the free conversion rate calculator for a single rate, or the funnel calculator for step-by-step drop-off. In Pug, funnels compute step and overall conversion over your real events — filterable by any profile trait, so you can compare conversion by source, plan, or cohort.

Conversion rate