Conversion Rates − The One Metric to Have

If William Shakespeare were writing Hamlet in 2015, he might have been tempted to write the famous protagonist soliloquy as, “To convert or not to convert?” due to today’s author and playwright blogging importance in promoting their creative work. Whether “Modern” Shakespeare would be looking to create an email contact list, RSS feed subscribers list or free Q1 of Hamlet download, micro-conversion rates per event, based on Shakespeare’s unique website visitors, would have been the key performance indicator providing him with actionable outcome intelligence.  

Website conversions and the related metric of conversions per unique visitor, allows a website owner to identify the most important visitor behaviors that directly support achievement of its key business mission. Industry-competitive micro-conversion rates suggest the entity’s website is successfully drawing high-quality prospects to its website and incentivizing them to complete a desired event (Kaushik), be it provide individual contact information, print discount coupons for bricks-and-mortar purchases or buy products. Low conversion rates are a key diagnostic that prospect acquisition tactics−organic search rankings, pay-per-click (PPC) or social media referrals−are underperforming, call-to-action content isn’t effective because of poor content design and site navigation, or event closed-step process may not be completed because of technical problems, require too much information or confuses users.

GetResponse, a leading email marketing software platform, had a low “Free Trial” conversion rate. The “Free Trial” signup was excluded from the homepage where the “Buy Now” call-to-action was located, but was accessible on a limited number of pages. In A/B testing of website content, the “Buy Now” and “Free Trial” offers were located on the homepage, using separate gold and blue click-through buttons, respectively. Test results showed a 158% increase in trial offer signup conversions that were ultimately upgraded, with no change in initial purchase conversion rates. (A/B Split Testing Case Study)

In an effort to provide real-time proactive user support for shopping cart, retail product comparison and the landing page lead generation process, Intuit completed A/B testing by providing online chat or telephone contact popup windows during sessions that allowed visitors to connect with live Intuit support. Proactive support contact increased Intuit shopping cart conversions over traditional user initiated support, by 20%, retail product comparison conversions by 211% and lead conversions by 190%. (Petrovic)

As can be seen in the GetResponse and Intuit examples, the desire to improve micro-level conversion rates combined with effective A/B testing design, can often help discover small website fixes that can result in big results.

Sources
A/B Split Testing Case Studies. (22 November 2011) Whoa! Free trial button did not decrease paid signups, but increased trial signups by 158.VMO [website] Retrieved from https://vwo.com/blog/a-b-testing-free-trial-button/

Kaushik, Avinash (2010) Chapter 5: The Key To Glory: Measuring Success. Web Analytics 2.0 (pp.145-166). Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc.-

Petrovic, Jan (9 August 2010) Blog Home « Previous Post Next Post » How Intuit Increased Conversion Rate by 211% Just By Using Proactive Chat. Proimpact7 [website] Retrieved from http://www.proimpact7.com/ecommerce-blog/how-intuit-increased-conversion-rate-by-211-just-by-using-proactive-chat/