Any action you want your visitor to take can be considered a conversion. Tracking conversion numbers is simply a game of counting how many took that action. And while that is important, it’s the actual conversion rate that holds more value for you.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”@StoneyD”]Your conversion rate tells you how good of a job you are doing at converting your existing traffic.[/inlinetweet] The better your conversion rate, the more conversions you’ll get. For example, if you have a 1% conversion rate, you’ll get one conversion for every 100 visitors. Improve your conversion rate to 5% and those same 100 visitors now give you 5 conversions.
If your conversion rate stays at 1%, the only way you can get those five conversions is by bringing in an additional 400 visitors. That’s not always as easy as it sounds.
There is nothing wrong with bringing in more traffic, but why go out to find 400 more visitors when you can get more sales out of the current 100 visitors first? After you have improved your conversion rate, then you can go after more traffic. And when you do, instead of getting five conversions out of 500 visitors, you’re now able to get 25 conversions out of that same 500 visitors. That’s a much bigger win!
Kind of makes you wonder why people spend more time trying to bring in more traffic before they try to improve their conversion rates!