Conversionomics
One truism I often hear is that it's better to avoid loss of users early in an experience "toward the top of the funnel" than at the end of a flow. In other words, if you focus on attractive offers, strong demand creation, and then creating highly usable designs in the first few steps of an experience -- and get people to "convert" through the first few steps -- you are home free and don't have to worry about much else.
This does indeed sound as if it should be true: Intuitively it seems like you never want to lose customers at the beginning of a process. But does the math work to say that strong conversions at the top of a flow are better than strong conversions at the end? Nope. It turns out that losing, say, 50% or 60% or 96% of your users affects the total end conversion exactly the same whether you lose those potential customers at the beginning or the end or anywhere along the way.
Here's an illustration using our simple conversion modeling spreadsheet. In Conversion flow A, there is an 80% conversion rate on the first page, which is absolutely great:
Break our the champagne. After all, if you can get that kind of conversion rate at the top of a "funnel" flow of pages, you're all set, right? Well, not so fast; look at how the total conversion rate decays to 4%, because of all of the other steps that are at 40% and 50%.
In fact, consider what would happen if you swapped the place of the 80% conversion step with one of the 50% conversion steps: That is, if you had an initial conversion rate of 50%, but the last step had an 80% conversion rate. The total of 4% would be exactly the same:
Of course, if you focused on improving all the steps and not just the first one, you could boost the conversion well beyond that 4%. Bringing you happier customers and more money at the same time. And that's why you want to focus on the total picture, and not just the first few steps.
Technorati Tags: Design Web-Design CustomerExperience
Tunes: 43: The Decemberists: Summersong
This does indeed sound as if it should be true: Intuitively it seems like you never want to lose customers at the beginning of a process. But does the math work to say that strong conversions at the top of a flow are better than strong conversions at the end? Nope. It turns out that losing, say, 50% or 60% or 96% of your users affects the total end conversion exactly the same whether you lose those potential customers at the beginning or the end or anywhere along the way.
Here's an illustration using our simple conversion modeling spreadsheet. In Conversion flow A, there is an 80% conversion rate on the first page, which is absolutely great:
Break our the champagne. After all, if you can get that kind of conversion rate at the top of a "funnel" flow of pages, you're all set, right? Well, not so fast; look at how the total conversion rate decays to 4%, because of all of the other steps that are at 40% and 50%.
In fact, consider what would happen if you swapped the place of the 80% conversion step with one of the 50% conversion steps: That is, if you had an initial conversion rate of 50%, but the last step had an 80% conversion rate. The total of 4% would be exactly the same:
Of course, if you focused on improving all the steps and not just the first one, you could boost the conversion well beyond that 4%. Bringing you happier customers and more money at the same time. And that's why you want to focus on the total picture, and not just the first few steps.
Technorati Tags: Design Web-Design CustomerExperience
Tunes: 43: The Decemberists: Summersong
