CTR vs. Conversion for Users with High Intent to Buy

[adamvickersav]

Hi,

I work for a web startup that aggregates sports and concert tickets available on the secondary market. So, for example, if you looked up a Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Redskins game, we would show you the best deals currently available on StubHub, RazorGator, TicketsNow, etc. For each game/concert, we list the available tickets and then have links that allow the user to click through to the secondary market where they can buy the ticket.

Presumably users have a high intent to purchase when they click through to one of these links. They have evaluated all available tickets and deliberately chosen one. They are clicking on a link that says "BUY NOW" in bold.

I know it's perhaps naive to ask what conversion rate we should expect, but can anyone provide analogies to conversion rates in similar companies? We're surprised by how many users are clicking through but how few our purchasing.

More broadly, I'm having trouble finding resources for people who use affiliate programs like we do. It seems nearly all affiliate advice/tips on the internet are geared towards people who are running Adwords campaigns and then trying to get a certain % to convert once they click on the ad. Can anyone direct us towards advice/resources/comparisons for sites like ours that don't use Adwords but instead are trying to convert users who've already explicitly said they want to purchase.

Thanks.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Adam,

Average ecommerce conversion rates are 2% but some companies and markets obviously get higher or lower than that. I don't know what the industry averages are in your market.

Originally Posted by adamvickersav

More broadly, I'm having trouble finding resources for people who use affiliate programs like we do.

So are you an affiliate for all these companies who's tickets you display? Is that what you are saying?

Originally Posted by adamvickersav

It seems nearly all affiliate advice/tips on the internet are geared towards people who are running Adwords campaigns and then trying to get a certain % to convert once they click on the ad. Can anyone direct us towards advice/resources/comparisons for sites like ours that don't use Adwords but instead are trying to convert users who've already explicitly said they want to purchase.

Confused about this part "but instead are trying to convert users who've already explicitly said they want to purchase."

How are they explicitly telling you they are ready to purchase? How are you getting your traffic? Via natural search results?

[adamvickersav]

Hi Linda, thanks for your reply.

Originally Posted by Linda Buquet

Average ecommerce conversion rates are 2% but some companies and markets obviously get higher or lower than that.

Do you mean that 2% of users that arrive on an affiliate's landing page end up making a purchase, or 2% of users that click through from an affiliate's page to a merchant end up making a purchase? Sorry about my naïveté.

Originally Posted by Linda Buquet

So are you an affiliate for all these companies who's tickets you display? Is that what you are saying?

Yes, exactly.

Originally Posted by Linda Buquet

Confused about this part "but instead are trying to convert users who've already explicitly said they want to purchase."

How are they explicitly telling you they are ready to purchase? How are you getting your traffic? Via natural search results?

They're clicking on a big button that says "BUY NOW". Does this show more purchase intent than a typical affiliate click-through?

Yes, getting traffic through SEO and PR.

[Linda Buquet]

Originally Posted by adamvickersav

Do you mean that 2% of users that arrive on an affiliate's landing page end up making a purchase, or 2% of users that click through from an affiliate's page to a merchant end up making a purchase? Sorry about my naïveté.

Ecommerce conversion rates of 2% are regardless of source. So that's people that land on the retailers site from a variety of traffic sources.

With affiliate conversion rates it would be clicks to merchant vs sales.

It could not be 2% of users that land on the affiliate page without clicking because affiliates can do lots of things on their site that affect click through rates.

So for instance if an affiliate had an offer that was not targeted well at all to their traffic their click through and conversion rate would probably be low. If they had well targeted traffic and good ad/banner placement they could have great clickthrough rates, but if the merchant converted poorly their click to sale ratio could still be low.

"They're clicking on a big button that says "BUY NOW". Does this show more purchase intent than a typical affiliate click-through?"

Oh I thought you were saying you knew that they CAME INTO your site with the intent to purchase. Wasn't sure how you could know that. I see. The majority of retail purchases fall out after people hit the buy now button. That's why you see so many articles about shopping cart abandonment. They could be clicking "buy now" to see price, window shop, get more info, etc. And yes a large majority of affiliate links say "buy now".

I'm not aware of any stats specifically regarding affiliate conversions in general. Some affiliate programs publish their conversion rates or will tell affiliates if they ask, but again it varies by industry, site design, retail price point and lots of other factors.

Sorry if I didn't answer your question more explicitly but hope I gave you sort of an overview.