Unique Visitors to Registrations, Percentage

[CarlosAT]

Thanks for the info James. I know I'm kind of aiming high, but I've been pretty good converting internet leads in the past, so I'm hoping to be able to do 1% conversion from registration to sale. For some, this may seem like a lot, but if you are only managing one lead per day, it should be completely doable.

So if I do some marketing to get 300 unique visitors into my website and I get a 10% registration rate, that's around 30 leads a month. 30 x 6 (months) = 180 registrations, times that by 1% and I'm at 1.8 sales.

You may say, yeah, in a perfect world, but I try to remain optimistic. After all, it is and LEC and I already have experience converting online leads.

[jamesww]

I think the time line you set for yourself is the issue. I have a very good rate of conversion of registrations to clients and transactions. I seem to be lagging a bit on turning my traffic into registrations from what I hear on here. I see about 2.3% unique visitor to registration. I force registration after 3 listing detail pages. I wish you the best of luck and I hope you reach your goal.

[Mitch]

Carlos - Don't shoot so low for your conversion rate. Implementing a solid follow up system should get you a 3% or more conversion.

[CarlosAT]

Thanks Mitch, inside me I am aiming higher so we shall see.

James - that's interesting info. I have another website allowing 3 views before registration and I get around the same results as you. I'm changing the IDX search on that site and that is one of my biggest reasons. I think forcing right away is the way to go, specially if you don't get many leads. If you are getting too many leads to handle then the 3 free views helps screening out buyers who may not buy for a while. For me, I want every lead I can get.

[Maui]

I don't mean to hijack your thread, I am hoping somebody can define 'unique visitor' and how that is tracked. If somebody browsed my site 5 days in a row, would that be considered one unique or five?

Back to your thread, thanks for sharing your experience as it definitely helps others.

[CarlosAT]

A unique visitor is a brand new visitor to the site. You may have 3000 visits but only 2000 of those were new and 1000 returning. So in your example above, 1 unique visit.

[Bob Crain]

Keep in mind that if the visitor deletes or clears their cookies then they might be viewed as a unique visitor every time they come back.

[webmaster]

Also keep in mind the timeframe.

For instance Bob has had a site with us for YEARS! - Now if he goes and looks at his "absolute unique visitors" for this month via Google analytics and then compares that to his new leads for this month (new leads / visitors) he should get his conversion rate, right? Wrong!

You see - what about all those folks that signed up 6 months, a year, 2 years ago that still get email updates from the site? They are "absolute unique visitors" for "this month" but because they are already registered from months past, they actually should not be counted in the conversion calculation because they have 0% of registering (they are already registered)

So in most cases (unless your site is brand new) your conversion is a lot better than you think (Bob yours for instance is a lot better I would assume even though 6% isn't bad at all for mostly organic traffic.

I wonder if there is a mathematical formula we could come up with to take into account returning visitors and their effect on conversion rates over time.

Ironically if you do a GREAT job on follow up, blast emails, drips etc - your conversion on paper will actually be lower (visitor to lead) - Buddy Blake is a good example of someone who is great at this, but I think he'd be happy to trade that conversion number for the one that matters (lead to sale)

Some food for thought -

Keep in mind that if the visitor deletes or clears their cookies then they might be viewed as a unique visitor every time they come back.

[webmaster]

incidentally one of my socal customers mentioned her stats got a heck of a lot better when she stopped having her site be the site that loads when she opens a browser (she switched it to Google) if you have your website as the thing that loads when you boot up, consider changing it and see if it effects your stats or not.

[CarlosAT]

Checking stats is overrated IMO. You certainly need to be aware of your numbers but to what extend? There are so many things that can skew stats. I believe the true focus should be on leads to sales.