Google recently make a blog post about a free webinar they are hosting to teach people about remarketing.

However, that’s not the interesting part of the post. This is:

97% of new visitors do not convert the first time they arrive at your site.

To me, that says that if 97% don’t convert – 3% do convert.

I’ve long used a typical conversion rate as:

• Simple email collection: 5-25% (unknown sites 5-10%, established sites 10-20%)
• Whitepaper download (minimum data required) 10-15%
• Lead Gen 0.5-5% (again, depending on data required)
• Ecommerce – very expensive – 0.5% – 1%
• Ecommerce – inexpensive – 1-2% for less established stores, 2-3% for established
• and the list goes on (Premium members can see the full data here)

I mostly use those average conversion rates for establishing bids for brand new accounts before there is enough data to know your own conversion rates. Those numbers are based upon looking at tens of thousands of accounts over the years (and based upon direct keywords, conversion rate isn’t static – it’s based on the specificity and commercial nature of the keyword, referring site, etc).

Of course, some accounts do much better and others much worse – those are just starting places – not ending ones.

I have heard Google state before to use 2% overall conversion rates (which sounds like ecommerce to me – not everyone).

However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Google flat out state in public that 3% of visitors convert.