There are two types of conversions: revenue conversions and pre-revenue conversions. Revenue
conversions are actual sales. A sale is a conversion goal. If you sell anything from your web site,
you should have a conversion goal for reaching the end of a sale. That might mean the goal is
achieved when a user clicks through to the “Thank You” page or when the order confirmation is
displayed. These conversions require the exchange of money for goods or services.
Another type of conversion is the pre-revenue conversion. Pre-revenue conversions are all the
other steps in the selling cycle — activities that lead up to the final sale. So, a pre-revenue conversion
might be something like having the visitor request additional information about a product
or service or sign up for a newsletter that’s offered on your site. These are valid conversions that
should also be tracked.
The types of conversions remain the same across the life cycle of your web site, but the actual conversions
may not. And that’s the reason you need to conduct regular conversion analysis. In your
conversion analysis, you’re looking for a number of things including an increase or decrease in the
number or pattern of conversions. Increases and decreases in these trends will help you to know
when something is working or when something needs changing.
When you see a changing trend in your conversion rate, you know it’s time to begin trying something
different. It may be that your products need to be changed, it may be that your newsletter is
no longer appealing, or it could simply be that your competition is funneling your audience away
from you.
One way to see these trends in your web analytics is to look at your sales cycle. Ideally, you should
know your sales cycle even before you put your web site online. The sales cycle is the steps that a
user takes to complete a sale. It’s usually divided according to the natural progress that visitors make
from entering your site to the completed sale.
This natural progression should be trackable with your web metrics program. One report that will
be extremely helpful will be a funnel report or sales funnel report. This type of report allows you
to set up a sales funnel on your web site and then track the effectiveness. It also shows where your
site visitors might fall off in the process of making a purchase. You can then use that information to
change and improve elements of your SEO and your web site that might be causing that fall-off.
Conversions are the ultimate goal in all your search marketing efforts. Yes, you want to drive customers
to your site, but more than that, you want those customers to do something. That something
is your conversion and if you analyze the conversion process, you’ll be able to track patterns of what
works and what doesn’t.
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