Conv. Rate
What it means
Conv. Rate is the share of website sessions that ended in a purchase, written as a percentage. Google Analytics divides transactions by sessions, so the denominator is visits — not people, not clicks. Every visit counts, whether it arrived from an ad, a search, an email or straight from a bookmark.
The same label sits on your Google Ads pages dividing by clicks instead. That version reads higher on the same shop in the same week, and the two must never be compared or averaged.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Purchases is completed purchase transactions, the same count the app shows as TransactionsTransactionsPair with sessions to sanity-check conversion and spot tracking gaps..
Sessions is visits to the site, counted by SessionsSessionsTraffic to your listings; only lifts sales if conversion holds. — one person visiting four times is four sessions.
Worked example. March takes 40,000 sessions and 800 orders. Conv. Rate = 800 ÷ 40,000 = 2%. At €50 an order that's €40,000.
Lift the rate to 2.5% on exactly the same traffic and you take 1,000 orders — €50,000. That €10,000 costs no extra advertising, which is why this number gets fixed before budgets get raised.
It answers the question
Of everyone who visited the shop, how many bought? It's the number that decides what your traffic is worth, so it sets the price you can afford to pay for a visit.
Why it matters
It applies to traffic you've already paid for. A percentage point here multiplies across every session in the period, and unlike traffic it doesn't cost more to keep once you've won it.
It also splits a revenue problem in two. Revenue down with the rate holding means fewer visits and the answer is upstream in marketing. Revenue down while the rate fell means the visits arrived and the site lost them.
What good looks like
This band is lower than the Google Ads one on purpose. The denominator here is every session — bounces, repeat visits and browsers included — while Google Ads divides by paid clicks it selected and charged you for. The same shop reads lower here and it isn't a fault. Compare a month against your own last twelve, not against another store.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Take the surprises out of checkout | Show delivery cost and date on the product page, and drop forced account creation | Fewer drop-offs at the last step | 1–2 weeks | A cheaper delivery promise comes out of margin, and an honest slow date loses the sale earlier rather than saving it. |
| Fast Cut the worst traffic source | Sort Session Source by conversion and stop the campaign at the bottom | Rate up within days | Same week | The rate improved because the denominator shrank. Sessions and revenue fall with it, so check orders held before you call it a win. |
| Slow Rewrite the pages the traffic lands on | Take the top landing pages by sessions and fix what they promise, price and answer | Rate up across every source at once | 1 quarter | A page rewrite moves several metrics together, so the gain is easy to credit to whatever else shipped that month. |
| Slow Sell to the people who already bought | Build flows for the segments that convert instead of buying new visits | Rate up because the visit mix improved | 1–2 quarters | Returning buyers convert well and cost list health to reach. Send too often and the audience you can mail next quarter is smaller. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
A conversion rate is the last number in a chain. Read it beside Cart To View RateCart To View RateSee the full entry. and it tells you which link broke.
The whole funnel improved
More browsers adding, and more of them finishing. That usually means the product pages got better rather than the checkout, because the gain starts at the top.
Fewer carts, better carts
People add to cart less often but finish more reliably. Common after cutting a cheap traffic source — the rate rose because the browsers left.
A leak after the cart
Shoppers want the product and stop before paying. This is the most fixable shape on the chart, and it points squarely at checkout rather than at the product pages.
Failing from the top
Fewer adds and fewer orders. A purchase event that stopped firing produces exactly this picture, so check that orders in the shop match transactions here before rebuilding anything.
One is the size of the traffic, the other is what you did with it. Sessions up with the rate down is traffic bought too broadly; sessions down with the rate up is usually the same thing running in reverse. Revenue is the product of the two, so neither number alone tells you whether the month was good.
A rate can be bought with discounts. When the rate climbs and average purchase revenue falls in the same month, you converted more people by charging them less — worth knowing before that campaign becomes the standing setting.
Common misreads
Both are right. This one divides purchases by every session on the site; the Google Ads one divides conversions by paid clicks only. Different denominators produce different numbers from the same week of trading.
Check what happened to sessions. Removing a cheap traffic source raises the rate while orders and revenue fall, because the visitors who never intended to buy left the denominator.
Sessions count visits, not people. One buyer who researches across four visits before ordering contributes four sessions and one purchase, so this is a per-visit figure and it always reads lower than the share of people who bought.
Also called
Conversion Rate · session conversion rate · purchase conversion rate
See yoursYour rate for the period, the change against the period before, and the same column split by source, landing page and country.
Open Google Analytics →Conv. Rate
What it means
Conv. Rate on Google Ads is the share of paid clicks that ended in a tracked conversion, written as a percentage. Google divides conversions by clicks, so the denominator is clicks you were charged for — organic visits, email and direct traffic sit outside it entirely.
ConversionsConversionsSales or actions Google drove; pair with cost-per-conversion. is whatever you marked as a conversion in the Google Ads account, and it arrives as a decimal, because credit for one order is split across the clicks that led to it. That is why this figure can move without a single extra order being placed.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Conv. Rate on Google Ads = Conversions ÷ Clicks × 100.
Conversions is the tracked conversion actions Google credits to your ads in the period.
Clicks is the clicks on those ads you were charged for, whatever happened next.
Worked example. A campaign takes 5,000 clicks in March and Google records 200 conversions. Conv. Rate = 200 ÷ 5,000 = 4%.
The same shop in the same March shows 30,000 sessions and 600 orders in Google Analytics, which is 2%. Nothing is broken. One number counts paid clicks, the other counts every visit to the site.
It answers the question
Of the clicks you paid for, how many turned into a conversion? It's the middle term between what a click costs and what a sale costs, so it tells you whether an expensive click was still worth buying.
Why it matters
It converts one price into the other. Cost per conversion is your click price divided by this rate: Avg. CPCAvg. CPCCost per visit from Google search. of €0.50 at a 4% rate is €0.50 ÷ 0.04 = €12.50 a sale. Halve the rate to 2% and the same €0.50 click now costs €25 a sale, with the bid untouched.
That's the practical use. When Cost/Conv.Cost/Conv.What each Google sale costs you. rises, this number tells you whether clicks got more expensive or the same clicks stopped converting — and those two need completely different fixes.
What good looks like
The app grades Google Ads Conv. Rate against its own scale: 4% or better reads as healthy, and under 1.5% is the point where it flags. Those thresholds sit above the Google Analytics band of 3.5% for a reason worth understanding.
The denominators are different. Google Ads divides by clicks it targeted, selected and charged you for, so the traffic in the denominator already showed intent. Google Analytics divides by every session — bounces, repeat visits and browsers who arrived from anywhere. The same trading week reads higher on Google Ads, and the gap between the two is normal rather than a fault to chase.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Block the terms that never convert | Pull the Search Terms table and add negatives for rows with clicks and no conversions | Rate up within one to two weeks | 1–2 weeks | Impressions and clicks both fall, and part of the gain is only the denominator shrinking. Block too broadly and you lose terms that convert slowly. |
| Fast Land the click on the page it asked for | Point each ad group at the page that answers its term instead of the homepage | More of the same clicks convert | 1–2 weeks | More landing pages to keep accurate, and it wins nothing new — you are converting clicks you already bought, so impression share stays exactly where it was. |
| Fast Cut the places that don't buy | Use the Countries and Cost By Channel tables to exclude the rows that spend and never convert | Rate up, spend down | Same week | Total conversions usually fall with the spend. You improved the ratio by removing volume, so read Conversions before you claim the campaign got better. |
| Slow Fix checkout rather than the campaign | Take the delivery cost, payment options and form length out of the way | Rate up across every campaign at once | 1 quarter | Weeks of work outside the ad account, and it lifts the Google Analytics figure too — so the campaign gets credit for something the site did. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
A conversion rate says nothing about what the conversions were worth. Two of the columns beside it do.
These move together by definition, so a break between them is information. Rate flat while cost per conversion climbs means the auction got more expensive — a bidding change, not a landing-page one. Rate falling while cost climbs means the traffic changed, and the fix is on your site.
A high rate on cheap conversions can still lose money. Value per cost prices the same clicks in revenue, so a campaign with the better rate and the worse value per cost is converting the wrong customers — usually a discount-led search term doing its job too well.
Impression share tells you how much of the auction you're winning. A strong rate with low search impression share is the clearest scale signal in the account: the traffic converts and you're only buying part of what's available.
Common misreads
Neither is wrong. Google divides by paid clicks; Google Analytics divides by all sessions. A shop with plenty of organic and repeat traffic will always show the lower number on the site side.
You removed clicks from the bottom of the fraction. Check that Conversions and Cost/Conv. moved the right way too — a better ratio on fewer sales is a smaller business, not a better one.
Google splits the credit for one conversion across the clicks that led to it, so partial values are normal. Read the decimal as a share of an order rather than as an error.
Also called
Conversion Rate · click conversion rate · ad conversion rate
See yoursYour Conv. Rate on the summary cards, and the same column on every table — campaigns, products, search terms, countries and channels.
Open Google Ads →