What is a conversion?

A conversion is an action you’ve decided to count as a result on your website. The word comes from the idea of a visitor “converting” from someone who’s just looking into someone who takes a step, such as sending an inquiry or signing up.

Visit counts alone don’t tell you whether your site is doing its job. If more people visit a piano school’s site but trial-lesson bookings stay flat, people are stopping somewhere along the way. Once you decide what counts as a conversion, you can read your numbers in terms of results rather than traffic, and it becomes easier to choose what to fix.

What should you count as a conversion?

A conversion should be an action that matters to your business. It looks different for different businesses:

Business	Example conversions
Class or school	Booking a trial lesson
Online course	Starting a free trial, buying a course
Clinic	Sending the appointment form, tapping the phone number
Small company	Sending the contact form, downloading a brochure
Freelancer	Sending the project inquiry form

In Google Analytics 4, the actions you count as results are called key events. The word “conversion” now refers to actions used to measure Google Ads campaigns (Analytics Help). Many other tools simply call these results conversions.

Macro and micro conversions

It can help to split conversions into two sizes:

• Macro conversions are the final results: sending an inquiry, booking a trial, making a purchase.
• Micro conversions are the smaller steps before them: signing up for a newsletter, downloading a file, tapping a phone or LINE link, viewing the prices page.

A small business may only get a handful of bookings a month. Counting the smaller steps too helps you notice changes sooner. Keep in mind, though, that tapping a phone number means someone tried to call, not that anything was agreed. Read micro conversions separately from macro conversions.

How are conversions counted?

Most web analytics tools use a tag on your pages to count events like these as conversions. What is web analytics? explains how tags work.

Counted when	Example
A thank-you page is opened	The /thanks page shown after submitting
A form is submitted	Sending the contact form
A link is clicked	A phone number (tel:), email, LINE friend add or brochure file
An action you define happens	Watching a video to the end, or another event you choose

Once you’ve set it up, submit the form yourself once and check that it’s counted. Counts can drift from reality in a few ways:

• Some tools count twice if someone reloads the thank-you page. How many times a conversion counts per visit depends on the tool and its settings.
• Anyone who knows the thank-you page’s URL can open it without submitting anything.
• If you embed a form from another service, your site’s tag may not see the submission.
• Some visits are never recorded, for example because of ad blockers.

How do you read conversion rates and funnels?

The conversion rate is the share of visits that led to a conversion:

Conversion rate = conversions ÷ visits × 100 (%)

For example, if your site gets 400 visits in a month and 8 trial bookings, the conversion rate is 2%.

Tools differ in what they divide by. Google Analytics 4 has a session key event rate, which divides by visits (sessions), and a user key event rate, which divides by visitors (users). For a single form, you might use a submit rate based on how often the form was viewed. When you compare numbers, make sure they use the same denominator.

When visits are low, a single booking moves the rate a lot. Look at the counts as well as the rate, and compare over longer periods.

Funnels and drop-off

A funnel lists how many people reached each step on the way to a result. It’s named for its shape, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.

Step	People (example)
Arrived on the site	400
Viewed the prices page	120
Opened the booking form	30
Sent it	8

In this example, few visitors move on to the prices page, so that’s the first place to look. Is it hard to get from the home page to the prices? Knowing which step loses people lets you start with the one change most likely to help, instead of rebuilding everything. What is web analytics? covers how to read drop-off field by field within a form.

Which source gets credit for a result?

Many people visit a few times before they sign up. Say someone first visits a cooking school’s site from Instagram, then searches for the school’s name a few days later, comes back and books. Deciding which source gets credit for that booking is called attribution.

Approach	Gets the credit in this example	What it tells you
First touch	Instagram	Where people first heard of you
Last touch	Organic search	What they used right before signing up

Neither is “correct”. Use the one that answers your question. First touch helps you find channels that introduce new people. Last touch shows what tips people into booking. Some approaches also share credit among the steps in between. Google Analytics 4 lets you choose between data-driven attribution, which assigns credit based on your data, and models centered on the last click (Get started with attribution).

A tool can only know someone’s first source if it recognizes them as the same person from an earlier visit. Switching between a phone and a computer, or clearing browser data, breaks that link (What are cookies?). Personal recommendations, or someone searching your name after seeing a flyer, are also hard for tools to see. Adding a “How did you hear about us?” question to your booking form fills in what the numbers miss.

Where should a small business start?

Trying to count everything at once makes it hard to know which number to watch. This order works well:

1. Pick one or two results that matter most (trial bookings, inquiries).
2. Pick a few smaller steps that lead up to them (viewing the prices page, downloading a brochure).
3. Write down each one’s name and how it’s counted.
4. Test each one yourself to confirm it’s counted.
5. Compare with the previous period at a regular interval, such as once a month.

A freelance designer, for example, might count “sent the project inquiry form” as the main result, and “went from the portfolio to the prices page” as a step leading up to it. Some tools also let you enter a value for each conversion so you can see a rough revenue estimate.

What privacy points should you keep in mind?

A conversion is a record that a visitor inquired or signed up. Keep these points in mind:

• Don’t put email addresses or names in thank-you page URLs or conversion names. A URL like /thanks?email=... is sent to your analytics tool as is.
• Keep what people type into forms only when you really need it, and decide how long to keep it.
• Explain in your privacy policy what information you send, to which company’s tool, and why.
• If your tool can show one person’s journey, limit who can see it, and make sure you can delete someone’s data when they ask.

Google Analytics prohibits sending personally identifiable information, and Google advises keeping it out of URLs, page titles and campaign parameters (Best practices to avoid sending PII). Counting results accurately and treating visitors’ information with care go hand in hand.