If you’re advertising online (which we hope you are!) there are certain metrics that you really should be paying attention to. These are click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. It’s pretty easy to get these two mixed up, so we thought we’d just go through, as you may have guessed, the basics.
CTR – Click Through Rate
Click through rate is the percentage of people who click on your online ad, such as a google ad made in Adwords. It can be determined using an equation.
[box] # of Clicks / # of Impressions = CTR[/box]
So say you had an ad that 100 people saw (100 impressions) and 10 people clicked on (10 clicks). That would give you a CTR of 10% (Which, by the way, would be a huuuuge CTR. The average click through rate is closer to 2%, but for example sake…let’s roll with it). That means 10% of the people who see your ad click on it, leading them to your site or landing page.
Conversion Rate
Your conversion rate, though similar to click through rate, isn’t quite the same. The conversion rate is based off a particular action you want someone to take on your page. So if you have a landing page with a form visitors can fill out to receive more information about your service, the people who fill out the form are your conversions. The conversion rate equation looks like this:
[box] # of Actions Taken / # of Visitors on Page = Conversion Rate[/box]
Let’s look at another example (does this feel a little like a math class to anyone else?): If you have 100 visitors on your landing page, and 10 of them fill out your form to receive more information about your services, your conversion rate is 10%. (Again, a 10% conversion rate would be very impressive.)
Click through rate and conversion rate are two of the most important metrics used to determine the success of your online marketing efforts – click through rate before people visit your site and conversion rate while they are there.
Not advertising online yet?
