Conversion has fallen.
That’s useful to know.
But it doesn’t tell us what to do.
Because “conversion is down” can describe all sorts of different things.
Perhaps the mix of traffic has changed.
Perhaps mobile conversion has moved but desktop hasn’t.
Perhaps new-customer conversion is down while existing customers are behaving exactly as before.
Perhaps one important product is out of stock.
Perhaps you’ve increased prices.
Perhaps customers are taking longer to make a decision.
Perhaps conversion hasn’t really deteriorated at all – you’re just bringing a lot more people into the top of the funnel.
Same headline metric.
Very different commercial stories.
Which is why I’d be wary of jumping straight from:
Conversion is down
to:
We need to improve conversion.
First:
Whose conversion? Where? Since when? And what else changed at the same time?
That’s usually where it starts getting interesting.
