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Quote:
Originally Posted by femdomdestiny
Measure most of us are using is conversion rate and how many visitors you need on average before getting a sale with a sponsor.
This way you can see what is converting better and where to point your traffic. You can also see what are best traffic sources. (paid campaigns, PPC, SEO, social networks...)Of course, never forget that sites can go out of the game, so diversification is crucial. Especially when it is not easy to replace all links and content in a short time period.
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So based on that quote, conversion rates never sway in either direction, it is what it is and can't be optimized? I find that to be incredibly short sighted imho...
Conversion rates are the 30000 ft view of a sales funnel, traffic/sales. The easiest metric to evaluate. There should be a funnel setup for any traffic coming to a site. You should WANT to know the metrics of someone who turned into a mailer signup, free trial, lead or a full sale from ANY marketing you are doing, paid, organic or otherwise. Then know if that converted into something else afterwards.
Does optimizing your traffic ever come into play? Aside from "this source is only converting at 1:10000 and this other one is converting 3:10000 so let's throw more to that one?" or is there deeper evaluation and optimization being tested such as various A/B testing of various landing pages, price points, geo-target, promotions, etc?
One thing I have seen since the wild wild west days in the early 2000s in this industry is the move to really understand marketing in the digital age by those who understood where the digital age was headed. Previously, money was made hand over fist throwing anything up and few cared about any sort of metrics aside from the above mentioned Conversion Rate (CR).
Now, since tube sites and the continuing consolidation in the industry, you see more companies adapting marketing methodologies and techniques in order to not only stay relevant, but also increase revenue overall.
You should understand to improve traffic quality, analytics are ABSOLUTELY what addresses this issue.