We need to talk about Conversion – Part 2

In our previous article on conversion, we challenged the traditional concept of a conversion event as simply being a booking made, introducing the more relevant “net conversion rate” to take cancellations into consideration. We talked about the change of mindset that is needed for conversion rate optimisation (CRO) to adopt that wider focus. And we stressed the equal importance of CRO activity after the booking as well as both before and up to the point of booking. The relevance of website conversion rate as an isolated metric to guide direct booking strategy was thrown into question and a more relevant and insightful booking engine conversion (BEC) rate was instead proposed. In this follow-up article on conversion we go further and ask, why are people so hung up on average rates at all, given that there are so many disparate variables?