Quote Originally Posted by shrimp-gumbo-mmmhhh View Post

Quick Question for you Eric,

Do you recommend filtering out IP's (office IP's) for tracking or not? My conversion numbers are lower because I have mine filtered out... customers call me and I enter the order for them and those orders don't show up.

Shrimp-Gumbo
Good point here. I like to exclude my IPs only because I am always on client sites whom I work with testing conversion principles to help increase sales. So with that respect, I don't want my presence to skew the data reported.

However, I would have to say that the answer in your case comes down to "how" do you want to track your results and "what" do you consider a conversion?

Would you consider a conversion being you entering the data for them or would you consider it only being a conversion when they complete the transaction on their own? There is no right or wrong answer here, but it does cover an important analysis point (depending on which route you choose).

If you track yourself as a conversion (entering orders for them) then it makes it more difficult to determine if a change you made to your website actually increased conversion or not.

Why? Because let's say you alter the "checkout confirmation" page to keep users from bailing at that point (at this point they SHOULD be out the door with the product as it is the last step in the process and all "personal data" has been entered thus eliminating that barrier to purchase) and in altering that you end up getting 10 calls from users wanting you to complete their order. All10 made it to the "last step" yet you completed their order for them.

If you reported the conversion of that sales funnel as "100%" then I would say that is inaccurate. Why? Because in this example the ABANDONMENT rate at that point is actually "100%" (0% conversion rate). The only reason they completed the sale is because you did it for them.

You can see how trusting yourself as a conversion can really turn on you in the end (what happens if you are not around to place the sale for them?)

I prefer to count a conversion as the CUSTOMER completing the action (whatever that action may be) as it provides more reliable data figures for analyzing what the true effect on conversion is.

Hope that helps.