I'm surprised I missed this long post by Eric Peterson on visits and visitors; I think I'll try to get him to go over it with me when I corner him for the first round of beer at the Emetrics Summit next week in DC.
It's a long post. I think what he's saying - if you compare the order conversion rate to the buyer conversion rate you'll tell how effectively the referral source of traffic to a site helped sell the products and services on your site...or something like that.
Order Conversion Rate (OCR) defined as the number of orders taken divided by the total number of visits to the web site during the same period. Buyer Conversion Rate (BCR) defined as the number of customers converted divided by the total number of visitors to the web site during the same period.
I liked how Eric took a real example to show how comparing the both rates tells him something about the referral site:
- Google Japan (www.google.co.jp) referred visitors to my site have a buyer conversion rate of 4.5% and an order conversion rate of 3.4% (a difference of 24 percent)
- Hurol Inan (www.hurolinan.com) referred visitors to my site have a buyer conversion rate of 1.0% and an order conversion rate of 0.9% (a difference of under 5 percent)
- Avinash Kaushik (www.kaushik.net) referred visitors to my site have an order and buyer conversion rate of 0.0%
What does this tell me?
- Visitors from Google Japan visit more often before making their purchase, but when they make up their mind a higher percentage are likely to complete the transaction.
- Visitors from Hurol Inan are less likely to make the purchase, but those that purchase don't take multiple sessions to complete the transaction.
- Avinash doesn't link to my site or talk about my books very often
Well, I don't know if the last one is true or not - I think Eric will end up buying Avinash a round of beers too...if Avinash drinks...which I don't know if he does.
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