“Average conversion rate” is one of those numbers that sounds useful and mostly isn’t, because everyone measures it differently and nobody tells you how. So rather than quote somebody else’s average, I’m going to give you our own numbers, and then tell you what changed them.
If you want the answer up front: for a service business sending Google Ads traffic to a page built for that search, somewhere between 15% and 30% of clicks turning into a call or an enquiry is what we see in healthy accounts. Pages that started around 5% have reached 20% to 30% after a rebuild. A whole website converts lower than that, because blog readers and job hunters are in the mix, so make sure you’re comparing like with like before you panic.
What a conversion rate actually is
Conversion rate is the share of visitors who do the thing you wanted them to do. For a service business that’s usually a phone call, a form or a booking. For an online shop it’s a sale. Same word, completely different numbers, which is the first reason industry averages are useless.
In Google Ads it’s conversions divided by clicks. Two things to know before you trust the figure. Calls straight from an ad can count as conversions without anyone visiting your site at all, which pushes the rate up. And if your tracking counts the same form twice, your conversion rate is fiction. Check that before you compare anything with anything. Our Google Ads audit checklist shows how.
Real conversion rates from accounts we run
Here’s what Google Ads traffic did in five of our accounts, for October 2026 or the nearest full period we have:
| Business | Clicks | Leads | Conversion rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uplumb, Brisbane plumber (October) | 211 | 63 | 30% |
| Melbourne Drains & Plumbing (October) | 807 | 142 | 18% |
| Master Plumber Services, Melbourne (October) | 328 | 52 | 16% |
| Cranbourne West Dental (first 19 days) | 413 | 62 | 15% |
| Highland Craft Renovations, small jobs (first 12 days) | 98 | 14 | 14% |
Every one of those counts each enquiry once, whether it was a call, a form or a booking. That matters more than it sounds. Count a form twice, as plenty of accounts do, and the same page suddenly looks twice as good as it is, which is why I keep going on about tracking before comparison.
You’ll also notice the newer accounts sit lower. That’s normal. The dental clinic and the renovation business were in their first few weeks, and the rate tends to climb as the junk searches get blocked and the pages get tightened.
What the before and afters look like
The biggest jumps we’ve seen came from rebuilding the page, not from touching the ads:
- SEQ Blocked Drains went from about 5% of visitors getting in touch to more than 30%. Read the case study.
- Dawson Electric went from 5% to 25% in under a week, on the same weekly ad spend. Read the case study.
- S&J Plumbing went from 5% to somewhere between 20% and 25%. Read the case study.
Think about what that means in practice. Going from 5% to 25% gives you five times the enquiries from the same clicks and the same ad spend. There’s no bid change, no new keyword and no clever campaign structure that gets anywhere near that.
What we change first on a landing page
Good design, for this purpose, isn’t about looking expensive. It’s about removing every reason someone might have to leave before they call. On almost every page we rebuild, these are the things we change first:
- Match the search. Someone who searched “blocked drain Coburg” should see blocked drains in the headline and Coburg underneath it, not your company history.
- Put the phone number at the top. A big tap-to-call button, and then again every screen or so. Most of these visitors are on a phone, often with a problem in front of them.
- Show real proof. Google reviews with names, photos of your team and your van, your licence number. Stock photos of smiling models in hard hats make people trust you less, not more, and most people can spot them in a second.
- Cut the form down. Name, phone, suburb and what they need. Every extra field loses people, and you can ask the rest on the phone.
- Say what happens next. “We’ll call you back within 15 minutes” does a lot more than “Submit”.
- Make it fast. A page that takes five seconds to load on a phone loses people before they’ve read a word.
- One page per service. Hot water and blocked drains get different pages, because they’re different people with different problems and different levels of urgency.
None of that needs a new website. Most of it is a day or two of work on one page, and it’s usually the highest-return day in the whole account.
Why a whole-site rate is lower
Your whole website will almost always convert below your ad landing pages, and that’s fine. Blog readers, people checking your opening hours, job seekers and existing customers looking for your phone number all count as visitors, and most of them were never going to enquire.
Just don’t compare your site-wide rate with an ad landing page rate, or with a number from a US SaaS benchmark report. Different visitors, different question.
Questions people ask me about conversion rates
What’s a good conversion rate for Google Ads?
For a service business with a page built for the search, 15% to 30% is what we see in healthy accounts. Under 10% usually means the page, the tracking or the searches need work, and it’s usually the page.
How do I work out my conversion rate?
Enquiries divided by visitors, times 100. Thirty enquiries from 200 ad clicks is 15%. Make sure the enquiries are counted once each.
Why did my conversion rate suddenly drop?
Check the tracking first. A broken form, a changed thank-you page or a routine website update often stops conversions being counted, so it looks like a drop when nothing about your customers has changed.
Is a higher conversion rate always better?
Not if the leads are rubbish. A page converting at 40% with people who never book is worse than one at 20% with real jobs. Judge it on booked work, not on the percentage.
Want more enquiries from the clicks you’re already paying for?
Send me the page your ads point to, or book a call below, and I’ll tell you what I’d change first. It’s what our conversion rate optimisation work is built around, and it sits alongside our Google Ads management.
