Two of the most popular terms that you will come across when you start your online presence journey, is the “Leads” and “Conversions”. Both tend to be confusing, and people often mistakenly interchange them with one another. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will be able to understand and differentiate the two.
With that said, Leads and Conversions can be used in many fields when it comes to online presence. They both have a strong tie to the online shopping world.
E-COMMERCE / ONLINE SHOPPING
In this day and age, we spend most of our time online accessing data and connecting with others. However, a determining factor of the continuity of the internet world is “shopping online”. With the Asian players getting into the game of online Grand Marketplaces like Alibaba, online shopping can become a political driving factor between countries and nations.
According to Wikipedia, Asia-Pacific increased their international sales over 30% giving them over $433 billion in revenue. While the US is at $364.66 billion. These stats alone can give you a clear indication of the massive size online shopping has reached.
In simple terms, E-Commerce or Online Shopping is the purchase and sale of goods and/or services via the internet. Both of these terms are affiliated with other marketing terms, but the two most common ones are Leads and Conversions. For the latter term, it is associated with Conversion Rates.
Leads vs Conversions
According to Kings Of The Web:
“Conversion is when visitors (traffic) to your website take any sort of action besides only viewing the site”.
Keeping that in mind, a Lead is the more advanced form of the Conversion. The visitor who has taken action on your site, and is now a potential buyer/subscriber, has now been converted from a visitor to a Lead. Let’s use this scenario as an example. You own an online bakery selling cupcakes and cookies. Every day, you get hundreds of visitors (traffic) coming to your website. Let’s say some of your visitors are from another country. Unfortunately, they would never be able to buy your baked goods because you only ship locally. The odds of these visitors taking any sort of action is slim to none, so they will not be converted to leads.
However, let’s say you have another visitor who is in the local vicinity. They have an upcoming baby shower to host and might be interested in ordering cupcakes for the party. It’s safe to say this visitor would be considered a legitimate Lead. In other words, your service and/or products interest them, and the odds of action are HIGH.
Conversion and Conversion Rates
It is important to know the difference between Conversion and Conversion Rates. Conversion(s) is just the action, but not the metric that will help you define your goals and make decisions based on the analytics reports.
Knowing your Conversion Rate will make it easier to determine fluctuations to your website. Knowing these changes will then allow you to make more precise and calculated business decisions, resulting in more LEADS. It goes without saying that more leads = more selling opportunities. And of course, the more you sell, the more dollars in your pocket.
