What are typical conversion rate for websites then? They differ greatly dependent of the type of website and whether it’s selling a product or services. It also differs dependent of how the visitor found the site.

I’ve found with those I work with the typical conversion rate with ecommerce sites come out at around 3 to 6 per cent. The better the check-out process is designed the higher the conversion.

Sites that look to convert visitors into enquiries through a web form seem to come out at around 4 to 5 per cent. As with the ecommerce sites everything is dependent on how well the page is designed with a view to gaining the maximum conversion.

With both ecommerce and enquiry generation sites some types of visitors will always convert better than others. Direct visitors (those that enter the URL in a browser address bar) always seem to do well, often double the conversion from organic search.

Visitor who click on pay per click ads also seem to have a much higher conversion than those that come from an organic search.

Organic search engines visitors also seem to vary greatly between the engines. Oddly enough I’ve found Google often has the lowest conversion (but will always provided many times the volume of any other), Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Ask seem to perform well.