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What Is A Conversion

A conversion isn't necessarily a sale. In the most general terms, a conversion is when a visitor to your website takes the concrete action on your site that you want him to take.

With that definition, you can see that the meaning of conversion changes depending on where "it" (the concrete action) happens. For example:

• On a website opt-in page or "squeeze" page (where you're collecting email addresses), a conversion is a sign-up—somebody fills out your form and joins your mailing list.
• On a sales page, a conversion typically is a click on an order link or button and a completed sale.
• On an affiliate review page, a conversion is a click on an affiliate link and a completed referral sale.

While conversion doesn't necessarily mean sale, when you're affiliate marketer, that's the kind of conversion you care about most.

A sign-up on your opt-in page is great, because that means you can promote to that new subscriber in the future. But what you're really after is an affiliate product purchase.

You have to track this. It's known as your conversion rate (CR). There are several steps, from a sign-up to an affiliate link click to a purchase from the affiliate product sales page, but what you want to measure is a simple percentage:

Affiliate product sales / Visitors to your site = Affiliate CR

In simple language, what percentage of your visitors actually buy the affiliate product you're promoting?

Once you know what that percentage is, you can work on improving it by improving your free opt-in offer or your review page copy, or by finding a better product to promote.