The Conversion Rate Illusion: Why Your CVR Might Be Lying To You
If you're in growth marketing or CRO, you've likely felt that rush of dopamine watching conversion rates climb...
If you're in growth marketing or CRO, you've likely felt that rush of dopamine watching conversion rates climb. There's nothing quite like the validation of seeing your optimization efforts pay off in real-time.
But I need to tell you something that might be hard to hear: your conversion rate might be misleading you—and quietly draining your company's resources.
The Dangerous Illusion of a High Conversion Rate
Picture this scenario: an online clothing retailer introduces a mandatory detailed style survey before users can browse their collection. Initially, there's celebration as their conversion rate jumps significantly. Leadership sends congratulatory Slack messages. The optimization team is thrilled.
But within weeks, they notice something strange—overall sales are stagnating or even declining.
What happened?
The extra friction (the style survey) filtered out casual browsers and retained only the most committed buyers. On the surface, that sounds strategic—after all, who doesn't want high-intent customers?
Here's the reality: the total number of people entering the funnel dropped so significantly that even with the improved conversion percentage, the absolute number of completed purchases didn't improve. Even worse, it limited the brand's ability to nurture casual visitors into future buyers.
Instead of scaling demand, they narrowed their audience too early, turning away potential customers before the brand had a chance to build trust or showcase value.
What Smart Marketers Do Instead
Always pair your CVR with total conversions and revenue per user. This gives a much clearer picture of overall business health.
This isn't just theory—I've seen too many marketing teams celebrate prematurely when their performance was actually deteriorating beneath the surface.
The Vanity Metric Trap
Too often, teams celebrate superficial victories. Consider this example: a SaaS company simplifies its signup form and sees CVR double overnight. Management is ecstatic about the improvement, but deeper analysis several months later shows these new users have significantly lower lifetime value (LTV) and much higher churn rates.
What happened here? The shorter form attracted less committed users who signed up impulsively, ultimately hurting long-term profitability. The simplified form increased conversions superficially but reduced customer quality dramatically.
The Better Way Forward
The most successful growth marketers I know focus on holistic business health:
Focus on Revenue-Driven Decisions – Prioritize total revenue and profitability over isolated CVR improvements.
Use Segmented Analytics – Break down metrics by audience segments to understand the full impact of any optimization.
Strategically Balance Friction and Intent – Introduce purposeful friction where appropriate to ensure you're attracting high-quality customers.
This approach requires more sophistication than simply tracking conversion percentages, but the payoff is substantial: sustainable growth built on genuine customer value rather than metric manipulation.
In the next newsletter: I'll dive into why real optimization is about profit, not just percentages, and how different traffic sources carry vastly different levels of intent (and what this means for your conversion strategy).
Until next week,
Atticus
Did you find this valuable? Forward to a colleague who's obsessing over CRO. They'll thank you for the perspective shift.
P.S. Reply to this email with your biggest conversion optimization challenge—I read every response and often use reader questions as inspiration for future newsletters.