Lets run those numbers one more time

Real world conversion rates for online services/applications are hard to come by so was pleasantly surprised to come across the following from the 2007 SXSW event in Austin.

The post is entitled Web App Autopsy and it is a writeup by ReadWriteWeb of a discussion between 4 online services. The presentation is a zip file from here.

In the midst of all the gems were the following:

For every 100 visitors to Wufoo 7 signed up for the free service and 1 for the paid service
For every 100 visitors to Blinksale 11 signed up for free and 1 for paid
For every 100 visitors to Feedburner 8 signed up for free (paid n/a)
For every 100 visitors to regonline 1.52 signed up for free and 1.14 for paid

Those figures are lower than I would have expected (especially after attending the Selling Online Subscriptions Conference) - however they are all either strongly B2B services or at least B2Geek (in the case of Wufoo and Feedburner).

I would be interested in seeing similar stats for services more like dbTwang - offering a portfolio of services and content into a strongly motivated niche consumer audience.

I don't suppose anyone can oblige :-)

keith

Comments

[Alan O'Rourke]

All our projected figures for http://www.toddle.ie are based on a 1% conversion rate to paid user. Based on current figures that is looking pretty accurate. I just ran the numbers on http:/www.whenismywedding.com and the conversion to subscribers is also 1%. That seems to reflect your figures above. However I do believe they can be improved with a bit of tweaking over time.

[keith bohanna]

Thanks for that Alan. I guess I would put toddle into the B2B camp and whenismywedding is definitely B2C - although single event focused.

Wait and see if anyone else drops by :-)

keith

[John O'Neill]

I researced this recently as we are considering allowing (thus encouraging) online purchase.

1% visitor conversion rate is actually very impressive.
If a webmaster works hard for traffic and crosses the relevance boundaries, he may increase traffic but a significant amount of traffic will have a negligable chance of conversation.
I'd say that you should expect a high percentage of relevant pay per click conversations but your organic conversation will depend on how broad or narrow your topical reach is.

All of the above assume well integrated entry to checkout web presence.

John

http://www.backupanytime.com/blog

[keith bohanna]

Appreciate that John and look forward to hearing about your conversion successes.

keith