There appears to be confusion regarding the exact definition of what constitutes a conversion, despite the fact that internet marketing consultants do agree that tracking email-to-website conversions is more important than open and click rates.

The latest chart from Marketing Sherpa has revealed that 48 per cent of business to business (B2B) advertisers view a website conversion from email clickthroughs to be when a product or service has been purchased on the web.

In comparison, just 21 per cent of business to consumer (B2C) online PR professionals share the same opinion.

And 13 per cent of B2B marketers feel that a conversion is when specific action - such as downloading content - is taken by users, with a further 13 per cent believing it to be when a registration form is completed.

Again, these figures are lower for B2C players, registering 18 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.

The news source noted that this could be down to the differences in the sales cycles between B2B and B2C firms, with the latter described as "often short and sweet".

B2B processes are, according to the publication, often "long and complex".

Whatever their opinions regarding what a conversion actually entails, brands may benefit from using Google Analytics on their web pages as a way to monitor their traffic.

The search engine recently made changes to its service, adding extra features such as Annotations, which allows users to leave notes - either shared or private - on over-time graphs.

This could help save time as, Google noted, "tribal intelligence … tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all".