Mentor
Related Posts
Conversation Starter
Conversation Starter
Additional Posts in Digital Marketing
Coach
January Digital is hiring across a variety of teams! We lead businesses to grow and adapt through strategic consulting, digital media excellence and data driven analytics. Additionally, we are proud to be named a Best Workplace by Ad Age, Fortune, and Inc. for our focus on building great people and cultivating an innovative culture. Learn more + apply here! https://www.januarydigital.com/careers?hsLang=en
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
If I had to pick one main KPI for most A/B tests, I’d go with conversion rate as the lead, with retention rate as an important secondary. Conversion tells you if the experiment is working now, not months from now. A/B testing is about learning fast, and if the winning variant doesn’t improve conversion in the short term, retention will never have a chance to matter. Retention is valuable, but it’s a lagging metric. By the time you see an impact there, weeks or months could pass, and you might have been optimizing the wrong thing all along. Another risk is that high retention with low conversion leaves you with a leaky funnel. You might celebrate that your few customers stick around while ignoring the fact that not enough people are coming through the door in the first place. On the flip side, the same clarity, value proposition, and UX changes that drive conversions often improve onboarding, which can lift retention later.
I think the best approach is to think in two phases. First, optimize for conversion so you’re feeding more qualified customers into the funnel. Then, once you have volume, run retention-focused experiments on those cohorts to see if you can keep them longer. That way you win both short-term gains and long-term loyalty without betting blind.
+1
Both have their importance, for sure. I lean towards conversion rates because they give better insight into what people respond to. With that, ideally, we should have better retention as a byproduct.
Bowl Leader
I’m a UX designer that focuses on retention, meaning that my team works on the app and site that provides our company services. If we don’t provide ease of use, they rarely come back. SM1 makes valid points. For us, conversion sometimes feels like a Band-Aid fix. Yes, you’ll see that revenue boost quicker, but it doesn’t help if they grow into short-term, unhappy customers.
They both matter, but they're different. The primary should probably be conversion rate, as that's something that's fast enough to allow you to assess it and iterate to the next test. But retention rate matters in that it gives you insight into long-term appeal and whether loyalty is being generated. So it's not an either/or proposition.
They're both important. Conversion rate is more valuable in the short term. Retention rate is more important in the long run. I don't think you should really be prioritizing one over the other, as they each have their place. If I was put to it, I'd probably choose conversion. Not because I think it's more important, but because it's the metric management obsesses over the most.