Conversion rate benchmarks are everywhere. Almost all of them are useless without context. A 3% conversion rate is excellent for cold traffic to a B2B SaaS demo request. It is poor for a branded search campaign to a simple contact form.
The number that matters is not your conversion rate. It is your conversion rate relative to what is achievable given your traffic source, offer, and industry. This post gives you the benchmarks broken down by those dimensions, so you can actually evaluate whether your pages are underperforming.
A few caveats up front: these are based on accounts we manage and industry data we track. Your specific numbers will vary. The goal is to give you a useful reference point, not a hard target.
Why Conversion Rate Benchmarks Are Usually Misleading
The most commonly cited benchmark is 2 to 5% for landing pages. That is a mix of everything: all channels, all offers, all industries, all intent levels. It is about as useful as knowing the average height of a person on Earth.
The benchmark that matters is specific. Google Ads branded search converts at a different rate than cold Meta traffic. A free trial offer converts at a different rate than a demo request. A $49 SaaS product converts at a different rate than an enterprise software inquiry.
So before you compare your conversion rate to a number you read somewhere, identify which specific benchmark applies to your situation. That is the only comparison worth making.
Benchmarks by Traffic Source: Google Search vs. Meta vs. Direct
Google branded search (people searching your company name) converts at 15 to 25% on a well-built landing page. If you are below 10% on branded search traffic, something is wrong with the page or the offer.
Google non-branded search (commercial intent keywords) converts at 4 to 8% for lead gen and 2 to 4% for ecommerce with cold traffic. This is where most accounts live and where most benchmarking conversations happen.
Meta Ads cold traffic converts at 1 to 3% for lead gen and 1 to 2% for ecommerce, depending on how cold the audience is. Retargeting on Meta can hit 5 to 10%. Direct traffic (users typing your URL directly) is usually 5 to 15%, since that audience already knows you.
Benchmarks by Offer Type: Demo Request, Free Trial, Lead Magnet, Purchase
Demo request pages in B2B SaaS: 3 to 6% from Google non-branded search is solid. Below 2% suggests a friction issue (too many form fields, weak social proof, headline that does not match the ad). Above 8% is excellent, though sometimes a sign the conversion bar is too low and lead quality will be poor.
Free trial pages: 5 to 12% from paid search. The range is wide because free trial pages vary a lot in friction (credit card required vs. not). No-credit-card free trials consistently convert 2 to 4x higher than credit-card-required.
Lead magnet downloads: 15 to 30% from cold traffic is typical if the offer is specific and the value is clear. General ebooks and whitepapers underperform. Specific, tactical guides (like an audit checklist) outperform. Purchase pages on ecommerce: 1 to 3% from cold paid traffic, 4 to 8% from retargeting.
Benchmarks by Industry: SaaS, Ecommerce, Professional Services
B2B SaaS: demo request and free trial pages from paid search average 3 to 6%. If your product has a long sales cycle or a high ACV ($50K+), expect the lower end of that range. Buyers in complex purchases do more research before converting.
Ecommerce: purchase pages from Google Shopping average 1.5 to 3.5%. From branded search, 4 to 8%. The biggest variable is price point. Products under $100 convert at higher rates than products over $500, all else being equal.
Professional services (law, accounting, marketing, consulting): 4 to 8% from Google search on service-specific keywords. These buyers have commercial intent but often want to call rather than fill out a form, so phone call conversion actions often outperform form submissions. Track both.
The Bigger Question: Revenue Per Visitor vs. Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is not the most important metric on a landing page. Revenue per visitor is. A page with a 2% conversion rate and a $500 average order value generates $10 revenue per visitor. A page with a 5% conversion rate and a $100 average order value generates $5 revenue per visitor. The lower-converting page is worth more.
This matters for CRO decisions. If you can increase conversion rate by running a lower-friction offer (a lead magnet instead of a demo request), you will see more conversions. But if those conversions are lower quality, your pipeline revenue per visitor might actually drop.
Always measure both. Run conversion rate as a directional indicator, and revenue per visitor or pipeline per visitor as the decision metric. The latter is harder to track but is the number that connects to the business.
How to Diagnose a Below-Benchmark Conversion Rate
Start with qualitative data before you test anything. Heatmaps tell you where visitors are spending attention and where they are dropping off. Session recordings show you what the experience actually looks like for real users. User surveys (even a single exit survey with one question) often surface the specific objection that is preventing conversion.
The most common causes of below-benchmark rates: headline that does not match search intent, form that is too long (more than 5 fields for a lead gen page is usually too many), social proof that is too generic or missing entirely, and an offer that is not compelling enough relative to the ask.
One diagnostic shortcut: look at your mobile conversion rate separately from desktop. If mobile is converting at less than half the desktop rate, the problem is mobile UX, not the offer. Fix the mobile experience before testing copy or layout changes.
The Fixes That Move Conversion Rate the Most (Ranked by Impact)
In order of how much conversion rate lift we typically see: headline specificity (matching the ad's promise to the page's headline), form friction reduction (fewer fields or multi-step forms), social proof relevance (specific names and results, not generic testimonials), and offer clarity (a clear statement of what the visitor gets by converting and what happens next).
Below those four: page speed (especially on mobile), trust signals (privacy policy, security badges, review counts), and CTA copy. CTA button copy tests do move conversion rate, but usually by less than the bigger structural changes above. Fix the headline before you A/B test button color.
The highest-impact change we have seen in a single test: moving the primary social proof from below the fold to above it. In one case that alone moved conversion rate from 2.1% to 2.8% in 30 days. Proof of the offer's credibility, shown before the visitor decides whether to keep reading, consistently outperforms proof shown after.