5 ms·

<a very small amount> increased by "311%" is still a <very small amount>, this is a way to oversell numbers, imho. The rest of the article is not bad, shame ab

by recuter 13y ago

<a very small amount> increased by "311%" is still a <very small amount>, this is a way to oversell numbers, imho. The rest of the article is not bad, shame about the title.

coherentpony 13y ago
Amen. Percentages are how to entice fools.
- tghw 13y ago
  Did you know over 1,000,000 people in the US have top secret clearance? That's a huge number! Or it's ~0.3% of the population. That's a tiny number! It really depends on context.
  - coherentpony 13y ago
    Did you know that about 0.3% of the US population has top secret clearance? That's a tiny number. But about 0.01% of the world population have US top secret clearance? Woah, that's even tinier.
stevenklein 13y ago
I definitely agree that the actual conversion rate of traffic to paid user is low -- we're hoping to get that number up to around 1% some day. I wouldn't say it's misleading though since we did actually triple the visit to paid conversion rate.
- badclient 13y ago
  He is not saying much about your actual conversion rate. He is saying more that you don't have enough data to make the claim in the title. For example, imagine if your conversion rate was 0. Then one day you got a few sales. If someone made a post claiming 10,000+% increase in ROI, we'd be pretty appalled.
- timr 13y ago
  "we did actually triple the visit to paid conversion rate." Well...maybe. What are the numbers? If you converted 4 people on 1000, the 95% confidence interval runs from 0.2% to 1%. The difference between 1 conversion in 1000 and 4 in 1000 isn't significant. But if you converted 40 on 10,000 (vs. 10/10,000), that is significant. So if you've got big numbers to back up your tiny conversion rate, you should just write that into the blog post to silence these sorts of critiques. You don't even need to be specific -- saying that your N is of a certain order of magnitude would be enough to make most reasonable people take you seriously.
waleedka 13y ago
Keep in mind it's a paid, and pricy, service with a very specific type of customer. Don't compare it to conversion rates of other services that have a wider audience. Tripling the conversion rate is huge for them, and no small task.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  It would have been more honest to talk about how they increased their conversion rate from N% to M%, this we increased our good rate by Y% or decreased our error rate X% is the oldest trick in the book for academic papers (one that is likely to earn one a well deserved beat down by the PC).
  - jonny_eh 13y ago
    For the sake of a headline, giving a relative difference is perfectly ethical I think. While providing the absolute difference is much more meaningful, it just wouldn't get nearly as much attention. Lying is of course unethical, but a relative difference is hardly a lie, just spin.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Why not do both then? Provide absolute and relative differences, at least let us know what the destination is: we increased our conversion rate by %300 to %.424. BTW, the article gets this right, its the title of the blog post that leaves out the crucial information.
lbarrow 13y ago
0.5% conversion is pretty good for a SaaS product that only targets businesses.
- rschmitty 13y ago
  I would have thought businesses are most likely to use a SaaS product. Is Netflix considered SaaS? Perhaps my mental definition is way off on scope of SaaS. Honest question, not trying to be sarcastic
  - andrewmunsell 13y ago
    Netflix isn't really a SaaS because it's not providing "software" (the first "S" in SaaS)-- it's providing content. On the other hand, Google Calendar, Gmail, etc are providing software and would probably be considered SaaS products. You're providing the content and Google is providing the means of managing it.
- wwwong 13y ago
  For a landing page, this is pretty bad unless you're getting a ton of irrelevant traffic from press or other distribution channels. Hard to imagine what 99.5% of the traffic is doing on the website.
- jjmardlin 13y ago
  Especially since this appears to be the full funnel, from visit to paying, this is not bad at all.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

by recuter 13y ago

<a very small amount> increased by "311%" is still a <very small amount>, this is a way to oversell numbers, imho. The rest of the article is not bad, shame about the title.

coherentpony 13y ago

Amen. Percentages are how to entice fools.

tghw 13y ago
Did you know over 1,000,000 people in the US have top secret clearance? That's a huge number! Or it's ~0.3% of the population. That's a tiny number! It really depends on context.
- coherentpony 13y ago
  Did you know that about 0.3% of the US population has top secret clearance? That's a tiny number. But about 0.01% of the world population have US top secret clearance? Woah, that's even tinier.

stevenklein 13y ago

I definitely agree that the actual conversion rate of traffic to paid user is low -- we're hoping to get that number up to around 1% some day. I wouldn't say it's misleading though since we did actually triple the visit to paid conversion rate.

badclient 13y ago
He is not saying much about your actual conversion rate. He is saying more that you don't have enough data to make the claim in the title. For example, imagine if your conversion rate was 0. Then one day you got a few sales. If someone made a post claiming 10,000+% increase in ROI, we'd be pretty appalled.
timr 13y ago
"we did actually triple the visit to paid conversion rate." Well...maybe. What are the numbers? If you converted 4 people on 1000, the 95% confidence interval runs from 0.2% to 1%. The difference between 1 conversion in 1000 and 4 in 1000 isn't significant. But if you converted 40 on 10,000 (vs. 10/10,000), that is significant. So if you've got big numbers to back up your tiny conversion rate, you should just write that into the blog post to silence these sorts of critiques. You don't even need to be specific -- saying that your N is of a certain order of magnitude would be enough to make most reasonable people take you seriously.

waleedka 13y ago

Keep in mind it's a paid, and pricy, service with a very specific type of customer. Don't compare it to conversion rates of other services that have a wider audience. Tripling the conversion rate is huge for them, and no small task.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
It would have been more honest to talk about how they increased their conversion rate from N% to M%, this we increased our good rate by Y% or decreased our error rate X% is the oldest trick in the book for academic papers (one that is likely to earn one a well deserved beat down by the PC).
- jonny_eh 13y ago
  For the sake of a headline, giving a relative difference is perfectly ethical I think. While providing the absolute difference is much more meaningful, it just wouldn't get nearly as much attention. Lying is of course unethical, but a relative difference is hardly a lie, just spin.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Why not do both then? Provide absolute and relative differences, at least let us know what the destination is: we increased our conversion rate by %300 to %.424. BTW, the article gets this right, its the title of the blog post that leaves out the crucial information.

lbarrow 13y ago

0.5% conversion is pretty good for a SaaS product that only targets businesses.

rschmitty 13y ago
I would have thought businesses are most likely to use a SaaS product. Is Netflix considered SaaS? Perhaps my mental definition is way off on scope of SaaS. Honest question, not trying to be sarcastic
- andrewmunsell 13y ago
  Netflix isn't really a SaaS because it's not providing "software" (the first "S" in SaaS)-- it's providing content. On the other hand, Google Calendar, Gmail, etc are providing software and would probably be considered SaaS products. You're providing the content and Google is providing the means of managing it.
wwwong 13y ago
For a landing page, this is pretty bad unless you're getting a ton of irrelevant traffic from press or other distribution channels. Hard to imagine what 99.5% of the traffic is doing on the website.
jjmardlin 13y ago
Especially since this appears to be the full funnel, from visit to paying, this is not bad at all.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]