SXSW: Web App Autopsy
Sean Ammirati of mSpoke is at SXSW in Austin, TX (USA). He is reporting for Read/WriteWeb throughout the event.
This afternoon I attended an amazing
panel titled
"Web App Autopsy". This was one of the panels I was most excited about when I was
getting ready to come to Austin.
The panel examined four live web applications (RegOnline, FeedBurner, Wufoo, and Blinksale) at an amazing level of depth. If you are involved in any part of designing, building or marketing a web application, then you really need to go download a copy of the slides.
While the entire presentation was packed with useful information, the data I found most interesting was around the conversion of site visitors to customers - both free and paying customers. The slide below shows a summary of the data the panel presented.
The panel had an interesting conversation explaining the above results. For example, it is interesting that Wufoo and Feedburner have a lower conversion rate to the free services than BlinkSale - even though BlinkSale asks more questions during the registration process.
It is also interesting that RegOnline has a much lower percentage conversion rate to free accounts than the other services, but then has a higher percentage of accounts that end up becoming paid members. It was noted that RegOnline has the highest organic result for the search term 'Online Registration' in Google - so this may have something to do with the poor conversion rate to free accounts. As you'll see in the slides (you have downloaded them right?!), RegOnline also has the highest revenue per customer by an order of magnitude.
When I started my career as a consultant, we did a lot of benchmarking for best and next practices. At my firm, we had a very good repository of data, on many industries, to use for benchmarks. However, we never found a great resource for online web applications. I've been out of consulting for years, but this data would have been invaluable. Is anyone aware of other resources like this to benchmark the performance of your web application? If so, please leave a comment below.
UPDATE: Also see our coverage of the panel The Figures Behind The Top Web Apps. It looked at 5 web applications and what it took to build and release those products.
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Amazing study.
But even more amazing that after two days, this is the first comment I see in your blog ...
But now the comments I wanted to make: I would love to read the comments from the panel. The presentation puts the data, but not really the answers to the why this is happening.
Is it design ? Form length ? Referrers ? You briefly talk about the organic visitors to RegOnline. Is that the only reason for the conversion ??
Yes, I know, nect time I should attend the conference .... :)
And regarding your question about other tools, I like Crazyegg and I blogged about it (in Spanish): Crazy egg: Mapas de calor . It can help you define what your customers do.
Posted by: hombrelobo | March 11, 2007 4:10 AM
Re: Blinksale's conversions.. it's interesting, but not surprising. You're not likely to be pointed to Blinksale or told about Blinksale without knowing what it actually is. Whereas lots of bloggers rave on about how useful FeedBurner is without describing what it does, so they get more 'browsers' than people who sign up.
Posted by: Peter Cooper | March 11, 2007 7:43 AM
hombrelobo, we only posted this a few hours before your comment :-) And it is the weekend...
Perhaps some folks who attended the panel will pop up in the comments here and answer some of your questions.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | March 11, 2007 12:27 PM
Hombrelobo,
I agree that would have been interesting. Unfortunately, the 'autopsy' moved quickly through a number of topics so the panel moved on.
However, I find Peter's explanation very likely to be correct.
- Sean
Posted by: Sean Ammirati | March 11, 2007 2:18 PM
Sorry, Richard .... I though it was a few days old ... it might be that I am so ahead of my time .... (yeah, right) :)
Posted by: hombrelobo | March 11, 2007 4:03 PM
Hee hee, it's always nice to think that :-) I could be totally pompous and say that's also why you subscribe to Read/WriteWeb ;-)
Posted by: Richard MacManus | March 11, 2007 7:52 PM
Great presentation, really really wish I was there for that one. It's what I lie awake at night thinking about. And those numbers, wow, Invaluable is right.
The monthly revenue numbers per users are pretty amazing. Doesn't Google get about $15 for search and about $9 overall? I read about it here;
http://www.startup-review.com/
Do you know what would be good? A wiki where you could go and put your data in, like in the pres, and it gives us industry info. Invite only maybe?
Posted by: Mick Liubinskas | March 11, 2007 8:17 PM
Hmmm, I see a revenue opportunity there Mick! :-) Great idea.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | March 11, 2007 9:42 PM
Thats invaluable data, it would be really interesting to see to what extent is design/copy playing a role in driving those conversions. The way the information is presented and consumed.
Mick,
Thanks for the link to Startup-review, great idea to have a central place to share similar data.
Posted by: pk | March 11, 2007 11:43 PM
I was one of the speakers on the panel. We did move through the topics pretty fast, but we wanted to try to get as much out there as possible. All of the panelists did have a 2 hour discussion before the panel, so we plenty more information to go around. We're planning a written version of the presentation, so be on the lookout for that.
Let me try to answer some of the questions in the comments.
- RegOnlines primary reason for the 75% conversion from free to paid is the pay as you go model vs the subscription model. Their much more limited free account (plus mislead google traffic) results in the lower free signup. But the majority of those who sign up for free do so knowing that they intended to pay.
- It was tough to narrow down what role design played. We could track little tweaks and how they affect overall conversion, but not the design as a whole. I remember talking with Bill from RegOnline and I think he had some stats about their redesign, but I don't know them off of the top of my head. I'll try to point him to this post, or get the data published.
Posted by: Ryan Campbell | March 12, 2007 12:09 AM
I am the speaker on the panel from RegOnline. Last April we cut 2/3 of the fields from our (RegOnline open account form) and then saw our sing-up rate triple. The way we did that was by asking for all the billing information later in the process when they are ready to start taking real registrations. We expect to see our conversions from free to paid to go down some, but happy to as our net # of paid users is increasing dramatically.
Hope this helps.
Posted by: Bill Flagg | March 12, 2007 11:25 AM
since my last link didn't work try this...
www.regonline.com/open
Posted by: William Flagg | March 12, 2007 11:29 AM
Do you know whether the paid numbers were a percent of the traffic that signed up (i.e. of 100 visitors to Wufu, 7 signed up for their free version and 1 signed up for their paid version) OR if the paid numbers were a percent of the traffic that already signed up for the free version (i.e. of 100 visitors to Wufu, 7 signed signed up for the free version and .07 signed up for the paid version x months later?
Obviously makes a huge difference.
Posted by: Brian P Halligan | March 12, 2007 6:25 PM
For all companies, the percentage is based off of 100. So, for Wufoo, if 100 hits came to the home page, 7 people created a free account and 1 person paid.
Posted by: Ryan Campbell | March 13, 2007 7:56 AM
How do you think about your website marketing? Reactive or proactive? The choice is yours. You can save money and time by starting with a proactive stance to determine what your customer needs and wants from your online offering.
Conversion consulting
Posted by: Donna Konley | March 26, 2007 9:54 AM