Answer
How much website traffic do I need to get customers, and how do I work out my monthly visitors?
Work backwards from your revenue goal: divide it by what one customer pays, then divide again by the share of visitors who buy to get monthly visitors needed.
There is no traffic number that fits every business. A busy site can still make few sales.
The useful question is smaller. How many customers do you need, and how many visits does one customer take?
Start with the goal, not the visit count
Pick a monthly revenue goal first. Use a goal you can check, not a hope.
Then ask what one customer pays on average. Use past sales if you have them.
If you sell one service, that price may be the number. If orders vary, use an average from a recent month.
The three numbers you need
You need three numbers before any calculator helps:
- Monthly revenue goal, in your own currency
- Average amount one customer pays
- Share of visitors who become customers, as a decimal
The last number is the one people guess. It is also the one that changes the answer most.
A small change in that share can double the visitors you need. So measure it if you can.
Work it through step by step
Use this order:
- Customers needed is revenue goal divided by average customer pay.
- Write your visitor to customer share as a decimal.
- Visitors needed is customers needed divided by that share.
- Round up, because you cannot have part of a visitor.
For example only, say you need ten customers. Say five in every hundred visitors become customers.
That share is five divided by one hundred. Ten customers then need two hundred visitors that month.
Replace every number in that example with your own. The example shows the sums, not a normal rate.
Sessions are not people
Analytics tools count sessions and users in different ways. A session is a period of activity on your site.
One person can start more than one session. So session counts can look larger than the people behind them.
Search Console is narrower still. It shows clicks and impressions from Google search results only.
Use one count all the way through a sum. Do not mix search clicks with all visits.
If you do not have a rate yet
Mark the actions that matter as key events. In Google Analytics, those can be form sends, calls, bookings or purchases.
Then compare those actions with sessions or users in the same period. That gives your own share to start from.
If you have no actions yet, the honest answer is that you do not know. Use a low and a high guess to see the range.
A range tells you the risk. A single guessed number can hide it.
What traffic cannot fix
More visits do not fix a weak offer. They send more people to the same problem.
Check the page a visitor lands on. Can they tell what you sell, who it is for and what to do next?
Check the action too. A form, call button or buy button must work on a phone.
Fix those first if few visitors act. Then the traffic target means more.
Comparison
| Option | Best for | Main limit |
|---|---|---|
| Use your own measured rate | Sites already getting calls, forms, bookings or sales | Needs enough real actions to give a steady rate |
| Use a calculator with your own inputs | A quick monthly visitor target from a revenue goal | The result is only as good as the price and rate you enter |
| Copy a rate you saw online | A rough first range before you have data | That rate came from another offer, price and audience |
| Do the sum on paper first | Seeing how sensitive the target is to each number | You still have to measure the real rate later |
| webmoz | Owners who also want help working out what to charge and building the site | Does not guarantee traffic, customers or revenue |
Frequently asked questions
Is there a normal amount of traffic a small business needs?
No. The need changes with your revenue goal, what one customer pays and your own visitor to customer share.
Use your own three numbers first, because a business needing five customers a month needs fewer visits than one needing five hundred.
Should I count sessions or people in my sum?
Use one count and keep using it. Sessions count periods of activity, and one person can have more than one.
What matters is that your rate and your visitor target use the same count.
What if I have no visitors or sales yet?
You cannot measure a rate yet, so work out a range with a low share and a high share.
Treat both as guesses, then record real actions as key events. Replace the guesses when real actions arrive.
Does more traffic fix a site that gets few customers?
Not on its own. More visits send more people to the same offer, page and action.
If few visitors call, book or buy, check clarity and the action first.
Sources
- support.google.comGoogle Analytics Help: About key eventsmarking actions such as purchases as key events and measuring them
- support.google.comGoogle Analytics Help: Sessionwhat a session is and how sessions are counted
- support.google.comSearch Console Help: Performance reportclicks, impressions and other search result measures from Google search only
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