Are Higher Conversion Rates Always Better?

Are Better Conversion Rates Better?

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The answer may surprise you.

I often hear people talking about how *great* their data capture/squeeze page is performing and how *well* it’s converting visitors into leads.

But the real question is do higher conversion rates lead to more money?  There’s a time and a place for high conversion rates and there’s a time where you DON’T WANT OR EXPECT HIGH CONVERSION RATES.

The short answer is that “it all depends”.

What is the purpose of the application?

What is it that you’re looking to accomplish?

Is it at the beginning of your marketing funnel or deeper in it?

Is it to qualify or further qualify a prospect?

These are all critical questions that need to be addressed.

To me, conversion rates on a lead capture page aren’t necessarily about how “well” the page converts…it’s about how much money is each conversion worth to you and your business – based on my objective for that specific page.

I don’t believe in qualifying prospects, on the initial data capture page, but qualifying them early on in your marketing is essential.  Remember, how big your list is isn’t relevant to paying your bills – having a targeted list who actually WANTS to hear from you and engages in your correspondence is what’s important.

An audience who wants to hear from you = money in the bank.

Here’s an example of what I mean and why diving deeper is always critical…

This page converts at 86%

If I just left it at that and said this page converts at 86.1% it would be an honest statement, but there would also be more to the story.

There’s always the “other side” and other pieces that need to be evaluated when looking at just raw numbers.

Knowing that a page is converting at 86.1% is pretty meaningless – that doesn’t tell us whether that page is making money or not – it tells us it’s converting prospects into leads, but nothing more.

If I just left it at the little chart, one would likely assume it’s making money – but with only that information, we’re speculating and assuming.

Let’s dive in further and share some other nuggets that are relevant to understanding the above numbers.

This is an opt-in page after someone buys an upsale to one of my online products.  So, not only did they buy one product…but they bought two and spent nearly $400.00 in total.  If that page converted at anything less than 50% I’d have to be doing something seriously wrong.

I would expect conversion rates to be extremely high.  These are buyers who have given me at least 30 minutes of their time to get to this point in my marketing funnel.

Not only does this page target my perfect target audience, but they’ve paid out almost $400.00 to get what I have.  That specific page they’re opting into is for a consultation on how to best use and apply what they’ve just purchased.

Now, let’s look at a page where the conversion rates STINK…

Wow…quite a bit different, right?

This page is converting at 1.9%.

Pretty stinky?

Again, these stats don’t tell the whole story at first glance.  We need to dive in a bit here.

The specific page being referenced by these stats offers a 2 hour private coaching session with either myself or one of my certified specialists.  It’s promoting a service that I DON’T want everyone to purchase.  The purpose of this product is to guide them deeper in my marketing funnel where the ticket prices of what they’ll purchase is substantially higher.

On this version of that specific page, there’s been 6218 unique visitors with a conversion rate of 1.9% (I’m only focusing here on unique visitors, not repeat traffic from the same person).

Dollars to donuts when I include the back-end offer for this particular product, it CRUSHES the site that converts at 86.1% from a revenue standpoint.  Each conversion is worth over $1,000.00 on average compared to just $400.00 for the other funnel.

Understanding the PURPOSE and what you’re looking to accomplish is what you should be focusing on.

Yes, your conversion rates are important – looking at the entire marketing process and what each conversion is worth, from each specific purpose, is FAR MORE IMPORTANT.

Don’t look at just the performance of one specific piece of your campaign – how does your funnel look when you analyze all the components?

When you look at the bigger picture, what do you see with your marketing funnel?

High conversion rates aren’t always something you’re seeking (or shouldn’t be).  This is why creating sub-lists, and LISTENING to the needs of your audience is critical – don’t dump all your prospects into the same list.

Listen to what their needs are and ACT on it.  Separate them based upon their wants and needs and have a funnel that’s catered to the desires of that prospect.

In closing, NEVER take data at first glance.  I just shared a data capture page that converts at a paltry 1.9%, but has made my company well over $100,000 in revenue.  Always ask the important questions when you’re analyzing your data – there is a place for higher converting pages…there’s also a place in your marketing funnel for pages that don’t convert well.

IT DEPENDS ON THE SPECIFIC PURPOSE AND ALL THE VARIABLES ASSOCIATED WITH IT.

The bottom line is that it depends on the purpose and what you’re looking to accomplish.  Conversion rates are an extremely important metric to evaluate the performance of a campaign.

What’s substantially more important is the metric of dollars and cents going into your bank account.

Let me know your thoughts by submitting a comment and “LIKE” it “SHARE” it and all that cool stuff.

Never stop going forward.

Never stop testing.

Never stop making progress.

And most important, NEVER GIVE UP ON YOU.

Terry Duff