It’s nice to see high conversion numbers on your Shopify website, right?
Depends on the conversion.
Not all conversions are what we hope, and particularly for lead-generation, it can be necessary to think in terms of gross and net conversions.
Gross conversions are every conversion you get. Every piece of contact info, every form fill, and of course every online sale. It’s the sum total of all activity on your Shopify theme.
Net conversions are the total conversions that turn out to be legitimate leads and sales. These are the contact info form fills that are from legitimate, potential customers. To get a your net number, you have to calculate out all the dead leads, fake leads, and incomplete sales that don’t result in legitimate sales opportunities.
This is an important piece of data for you, as the owner of your Shopify ecommerce site, to get right and understand, especially if you work with a consultant or agency with your marketing.
The reason is that it’s the gross number that usually come through on your data reports. Data from resources like Google Analytics will show anything that appears to be legitimate activity.
But this is just data. It’s doesn’t take the step to interact with people on the other side of these actions. It doesn’t respond to the contact.
It’s in that response that you get your net conversions. This is where your lead-generation efforts are positively adding to your sales funnel.
This is all so important because every online conversion/lead generation campaign has gross and net conversions. In other words, every campaign has conversions that turn-out to be of no value. It’s an unavoidable cost of doing business online.
It’s your responsibility to make sure the ratio isn’t too far off. If your gross lead numbers are far higher than your net, it shows a serious problem in the audience your targeting or the conversion tactic you’re using.
High conversion numbers alone can actually be a problem if the net leads you’re getting are comparatively low. Generally, if you’re net conversions aren’t 2/3 it means your strategy is off.
This is also one of those areas where you have to guard against your stats being skewed. Traffic to your website and high ranking for low-value keywords are others to watch for.
If you’re getting high ranking on questionable keyword phrases, a lot of traffic to your website that’s outside your target audience, or high gross/low net conversions – and you’re marketing consultant is patting themselves on the back because of this “performance”, it’s time to look for an ecommerce marketing agency that values profitable results over data that can often mean just the opposite.