You Say Conversion, I Say Confusion…

The end game for all search marketers - whether we’re focused on getting you on page 1 in Google search results, or social media optimizing your business, or fine tuning your PPC campaigns - is, obviously, conversion.

Ahh, the holy grail of conversion - the sweet spot where traffic meets action, which results in revenue!

But what, exactly, is a “conversion”? Is it solely the empirical evidence of a sales lead?

The buck stops where?

Shockingly, not every action taken by your visitors results in a “ca-ching” (in the case of e-commerce) or even necessarily a phone call or email. Say what?

Leading web behavior research firm, Enquiro, explains it well in their report, “Inside The Mind of the Searcher [PDF]:

“…The shopper never converted by offering her contact information or making a purchase. The entire research process was done anonymously… By all performance metrics typically used by search marketers, this [experience] would have been unsuccessful.

Yet, in all likelihood, it will lead to a sale… and should be considered as a very successful online search interaction. This points out some of the shortcomings of current conversion-based search ROI analytics.”

So while I am tracking every variable of metrics possible for my clients to ascertain conversion results from our search marketing work, I may be missing out on intangible payoffs, such as:

See it, like it, bookmark it, share it, think about it… come back to the company later - offline or online - and buy it! Sweet spot, anyway you look at it.