Conversion: Turning Visitors into Bookings

Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who complete a booking. For escape rooms, a good conversion rate is typically between 3% and 5%. That means for every 100 visitors, 3 to 5 actually book. The difference between 3% and 5% can mean tens of thousands of dollars in annual revenue — and it often comes down to small, fixable issues on your website (from page speed to clear design).

Over the years, we've spent a great deal of time trying to attract visitors to our website. One thing that really surprised me recently was looking at the total visitor numbers in GA4. We had almost exactly the same number — within 1% — for the last three years.

I'm always trying different forms of marketing: Google Ads, the odd Facebook and Instagram campaigns, and so on. So it was genuinely surprising to see that total traffic to the website has been practically static. If you're in the same boat, improving your SEO can help — but so can making more of the traffic you already get.

We're not an escape room that chases awards to pull people in. We're in the solid 95% of the market — just trying to attract local customers.

I would have expected a fair bit of fluctuation in visitor numbers. But once I realised it's been flat for three years, it hit me — it might well stay that way for the next three.

That's a slightly sobering thought.

"What's a poor boy going to do?" to borrow a line from an old song.

Well, as it turns out, there's quite a lot.

Once you accept that your potential audience isn't unlimited, you stop chasing more and more traffic and start working with what you already have. That's where conversion comes in — turning more of your existing visitors into actual paying customers, instead of letting them leave and never come back.

Let's put some numbers on it. Say you're getting 35 bookings a week from 1,000 visitors. You don't need to be a business genius to see that turning those 35 bookings into 40 is a 14% increase in revenue.

But the more interesting number is profit.

If your costs don't increase much — for example, if staff are already scheduled — then most of that extra revenue drops straight to your bottom line. If you're running at, say, a 40% profit margin, a 14% increase in revenue could translate into something closer to a 30–35% increase in profit.

And what if you push from 35 bookings to 45 or even 50? That's where things start to get really interesting.

That's the beauty of conversion. You're not standing outside with a megaphone shouting, "Hello world, come and see me!" — which is exhausting and expensive. You're simply getting more value from the traffic you already have.

So what are we really talking about? An extra 5–15 bookings from 1,000 visitors. In percentage terms, that's convincing another 1–1.5% of your visitors to book — and that can have a huge impact on your profit.

Of course, if it were that easy, you'd already be doing it.

So let's look at why that isn't happening — and what you can do about it.

Conversion optimisation isn't about tricks or manipulation. It's about removing obstacles between a motivated visitor and the action they already want to take. Most people who land on your website are already interested in escape rooms — your job is to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes.

In this section, we'll cover the entire customer journey: from the moment they land on your site to the confirmation email after booking. Every step is an opportunity to either gain or lose a customer.