The Difference Between Conversion and Completion for Online Leads
The term “conversion” gets thrown around a lot when talking about leads generated in the online channel. After much research and real-world experience, I have come up with a visual graphic that simplifies and clarifies the entire online lead conversion process. This can be applied to both online advertising as well as any lead process that you are tracking.
Please do not snatch this graphic, if you want to use the concepts, you are free to, but make your own graphic and make it an example that fits your business or organization.
The first and most difficult part is getting high organic page rank for your website, or paying to have online advertising drive traffic to your site. Once you start to generate traffic, a certain percentage of those visitors will visit your contact or application forms. Next, your goal is to have those visitors submit a form, called a completion. Using the term ‘conversion’ for all different stages of the engagement process is a big mistake. You need to ensure that your definitions are clear to your end user, whatever terminology you use. I like to use conversion to symbolize that you drove traffic to an intended page on your website. If you then also motivate the end-user to submit and complete your lead process, you are that much closer to a sale. In the ecommerce realm, its possible to actually measure sales through the online channel as well.
Someday, I hope tools like Google AdWords more clearly differentiate between the different types of conversions in ways other than having a label for your conversion type in the setup of the code. I think they actually should be separated out and the terms should be more clearly defined across the industry. This will help remove the gray area for both those in the profession as well as those the end users trying to interpret what a conversion really is and what it means to their bottom line and ROI.
Nice point, reminds me of when I first learned about Goals in Google Analytics. After setting goals and assigning dollar values based upon the average transaction values I went to GA and thought we’d racked up a heap of conversions only to learn that most of them were just as you said-getting the visitor onto desired pages of the site and not necessarily sales. Needless to say after learning this both AdWords and GA were tweaked to be a little bit more practical.
Yes, the tools themselves have improved, but I think its all lost for the client. The minute you say “conversion” they assume it is a sale. I’ve found its an especially important distinction with those your are giving the data to!
Right, I have stopped using the two terms interchangeably for this very reason. And you’re right it is crucial the marketing providers explain this to their clients upfront.