Tell me more ×
Answers OnStartups is a question and answer site for entrepreneurs looking to start or run a new business. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 1 down vote favorite
1

I am building a website. In my website I'd like my user to register. Also I am planning to launch some very active Google Adsense advertisements, targeting my ads to the travelling field.

What is considered to be a successful signup rate for a website? My website doesn't have any reputation yet. My website offers a free tool to help organize information, so it doesn't depend on other user's input. I read somewhere that anything beyond 7% signup rate is very optimistic. Is that true?

share|improve this question

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

This question can't be answered in the way you want. Let's say you have a website that people can sign up for a free book on stamp collecting. If the only people that visit your site are stamp collectors, you are probably going to have a very high signup rate. If you get a lot of visitors that dislike stamp collecting, your signup rate is going to be very low (no matter how much you optimize your site).

In summary of the above info, whilst your signup rate can be improved by optimising your website, the quality of traffic you bring to your site will likely have a bigger impact. With that in mind, signup rates aren't really the best thing to measure in their own right (ie. 6% could be great or terrible). You really only measure signup rates to gauge improvement or reduction once you have your own baseline.

What you can measure early on is how much it costs you to bring a visitor to your site (advertising), what your signup rate is (now you can tell how much it costs per signup) and then if you can estimate how much a signup is worth to your business (lifetime value might be $1000), well now you know how much you can afford to pay to bring someone to your site to make a profit.

Above all else, only care about metrics that you are going to be able to act on. If you are going to effort to collect metrics that you won't be acting on, you are probably wasting your time.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

I would say closer to 2-3% is what you should expect, based on everything I've read, and the sites I've run personally

share|improve this answer
I see, well does this read seem to be logical to you?socialmediatoday.com/bilaljaffery/268821/… – vondip Dec 20 '11 at 23:38
Certainly, what part of that could be construed as illogical? I think it's common sense to reduce all sources of friction in acquiring customers/users. Don't make them sign up unless you absolutely have to, and when you do, it better be a super easy process. – mark hill Dec 20 '11 at 23:56
by what's written there they're speaking on something close to a 50% percent signup. Seems rather high. – vondip Dec 20 '11 at 23:58
2  
Re-read it, that's not what they're saying. They are saying that about 50% of people would come back to a site or make a purchase if there was a social sign in, but the way I interpret that, is 50% of the 2-3% that actually signed up for the site, not just the visitors. – mark hill Dec 21 '11 at 0:02

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.