2 builders who never spoke to each other

Do the funnel arithmetic before blaming the product

Work backwards from visitors through signup and conversion rates and you can see whether the gap between sales is a product problem or simply too few people arriving. At small numbers the top of the funnel is the only lever worth pulling, because moving a conversion rate on a hundred visitors a day changes nothing.

The method

1. 01

   Use these funnel benchmarks to size your traffic need: roughly 0.75-1% of visitors start a trial, and 40-60% of card-upfront trials convert to paid.

2. 02

   Model your funnel backwards from visitor counts before choosing channels, so you know what a visitor is actually worth to you.

3. 03

   Do the funnel arithmetic before blaming the product, because a tiny top of funnel can make the expected time between sales longer than your patience.

4. 04

   At low traffic, chase a tenfold increase in visitors before touching conversion rate optimisation.

5. 05

   Prioritise top-of-funnel work over other fixes because it compounds regardless of method: a ten percent lift in the right kind of traffic should eventually produce ten percent more money.

What it returned

• $19

  Benchmarks Justin collected from Rob Walling and Patio11; at $19-99/month tiers with a card upfront, 200-300 trials a month makes a decent business.

• 1,000

  Benchmark chain: 1,000 daily visitors yield 60 free signups at 6%, then 3 paying accounts at 5% of signups, spending $10 to $100 a month each and taking 30 to 60 days to convert.

• 5

  With 5 to 30 daily visitors, perhaps five a day with real intent, four email addresses collected a week, and a guessed 2% purchase rate, Zue calculated roughly one sale every twelve and a half weeks

• 0.9%

  Jason Cohen's point that moving conversion from 0.9% to 1.1% is irrelevant at 100 visitors a day, while getting to 1,000 a day matters.

Sources

• Do you need marketing tracking and automation?Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Focus on the main thing · undated
• How many trials should I be getting for my SaaS?Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · How many trials should I be getting for my SaaS? · undated
• When Your Business Refuses to Make MoneyCory Zue · coryzue.com · Hypothesis 5: The top of my funnel is just way too small · 2017-08-07
• Product-led marketing - by Kyle Poyar - Lenny's NewsletterKyle Poyar · lennysnewsletter.com · How to get traffic and users for your product at a near-$0 CAC · 2023-03-28