Our Woefully Bad Website Conversion Rate, and Why Its Okay!

Every week, Meg, Jen, and I sit down to plan the Studio Weeklys—working out the flow of each newsletter, deciding who’s writing what, and figuring out how we’re going to promote it. We each bring our ideas to the table, running them past one another to sense-check whether they feel right for The Fabled Thread and, more importantly, whether you’ll find them interesting. So last week, when I casually suggested an article about our website conversion rate, there were some raised eyebrows. It’s not exactly a creative topic, nor does it sound particularly thrilling. It’s pretty dry.

BUT. Let me explain why I wanted to write about this—and why I think website conversions are actually weirdly fascinating. You can let me know, once you’ve wasted five minutes of your life reading this, whether I’ve convinced you or not.

Before I go into the article, for anyone who doesn't know, let me quickly explain what the website conversion rate is: Essentially, it’s the percentage of people who visit your website and actually buy something. If your conversion rate is 1%, that means 1 in every 100 visitors makes a purchase. It’s a key metric businesses use to gauge how well their website is working—not just in persuading visitors to buy, but also in bringing the right kind of audience in the first place.

Our website conversion has been a discussion topic for us recently as we just started some paid advertising and our historical conversion rate came up in a discussion with the team who are helping us run paid ads. To be totally transparent, our conversion rate is low. Embarrassingly low. Let me be totally, brutally open about how low… Over the past 30 days, our conversion rate was 0.17%.

For context, the general rule of thumb for ecommerce is 2%. At 0.17%, we need 588 people to visit our website just to get one order. 10 times as many as the rule of thumb. That’s... not a great outlook. But this raises a much bigger, much more existential question—one that every business owner wrestles with at some point:

Who are you really trying to serve? Are you optimising your business for the first-time visitor, making their experience as smooth and seamless as possible? Or are you prioritising your existing customers, deepening the relationship with the people who already love what you do by bringing them things outside of their purchases - creating something more than just a shop front?

Of course, in an ideal world, you’d do both. But the reality is, you inevitably end up leaning towards one. And that’s why I think this seemingly dry, spreadsheety topic of conversion rates is actually something worth writing about. It's easy to get swept into group-think, benchmarks, and comparison when you run a business, or to dream about some magic success formula which will make the hard job of keeping a business going become a breeze. But I think its hugely important to question the common wisdom - because quite often being out-of-line with the norm isn't a bad thing!

Sidenote: We’ve now added the ability to comment on our articles, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this—because honestly, I don’t think there’s a simple right answer. Also let me know how you think we are doing on either front - maybe you guys have some suggestions for things you would like us to change!