What is a "conversion"?

In the online world, conversion is the act of a website visitor taking the desired action.

For example, if you have a website selling iPods - with 100 website visitors and 10 sales, you get 10 sales conversions. In other words, out of the total visitors to your site, 10 users decided to purchase the iPod and "converted" from a website visitor to a paying customer.

A related term: Conversion Rate, describes the percentage of visitors who took the desired action. In the example above, 10 sales out of 100 visitors, translates to a 10% conversion rate.

Understanding and constantly measuring your conversion rate is cruicial to your success online.

Since not all website visitors will be prepared to buy right away, a well designed website is going to offer website visitors several 'conversion points':

* Buy Now (Convert from website visitor to paying customer)
* Contact us (Convert from website visitor to qualified lead)
* Download whitepaper (Convert from website visitor to lead)