The biggest mistake in Facebook conversion optimization

That’s assuming that every single time you meet someone, they’re in the mood to buy.

I used to run analytics and optimization for a major dating site. It took 24 visits on average before the user paid for a subscription. One person took even 6,735 visits.

And 13 days from their first visit, they converted. They went through a natural process of browsing profiles, signing up for matches by mail, flirting with a few users, getting up the gumption to reach out, and finally putting in a credit card to make it happen.

Respect the dating ritual– to get the user to the next step in the buying process, as opposed to asking for marriage on the first date. That is, if you have a product with a consideration cycle. If you’re in B2B, this is mandatory.

Are your marketing channels working together?

We found that paid search, affiliates, display, and email worked in concert to nurture users. Do you know when your channels are working during the conversion process?

If you’re not looking at view through conversions, multi-funnel conversions, and other forms of attribution, you’re throwing away money. You get this free in Google Analytics and now in Facebook’s revamped analytics.

Same thing for the Facebook offsite conversion tracking pixel. Optimize for both the assist and the final conversion event.  Most dating sites allocate $4-5 of credit for a profile creation event, since they know that 1 in 25 profiles result in a conversion.

Are you looking for a one-night stand or a relationship with your users?

You can still measure ROI in social– looking at the incremental value you generate at each touch. At the Conversion Conference in San Francisco this spring, we’ll look at techniques at every stage of the funnel– what tactics work and how to measure it.

Got any burning questions for us?

About the Author

Dennis Yu is an international speaker and author on Facebook analytics and conversion optimization. He is formerly of Yahoo! and the founder of BlitzMetrics.

He has been featured on CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, TechCrunch, NPR, and PubCon. He writes a regular column at allfacebook.com/author/dennis.