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Understanding % Conversion Rate Differences: Uniques vs. Totals

Avatar of Christian B.Christian B.
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Hi guys! 👋 Looking for help in understanding % Conversion Rate differences between "Uniques" and "Totals". Here's my problem. I am monitoring the step conversions between the most important steps of our app funnel (rental car comparison & booking app). This funnel has the following steps:

  1. 1.

    Start session

  2. 2.

    Make a search

  3. 3.

    Open an offer

  4. 4.

    Select Extras

  5. 5.

    Check booking summary

  6. 6.

    Submit booking

P.S. Users need to do all these steps to be able to submit a booking. So what I am looking at apart from the overall CVR (step 1-6), are all Micro Conversion Rates (e.g. step 1-2, step 2-3 etc.). When I compare the values for "% Conversion Rate (Unique)" and "% Conversion Rate (Totals)" that Mixpanel gives me for most of my Micro Conversion Rates, they all look relatively the same, with the "% Conversion Rate (Totals)" being slightly higher than the "% Conversion Rate (Uniques)". This is NOT the case for my last funnel step (Step 5-6; Summary --> Submit). Here, for reasons that I do not understand, my "% Conversion Rate (Uniques)" remains stable, but "% Conversion Rate (Totals)" drops since late August. And as I am struggling to understand the exact difference between "% Conversion Rate (Uniques)" and "% Conversion Rate (Totals)", I am similarly struggling to find an explanation for my phenomenon. Hoping to reach someone who can shed some light on that issue and help me understand what might be going on. For any potential Berliners here, happy to buy you a coffee haha ☕ ✨ Cheers, Chris 🤓

6 comments

  • Avatar of Johannes K.
    Johannes K.
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    Not 100% sure, but gutfeel is that Uniques would be counting each user once only whereas Totals could count users many times. Therefore your drop could show that repeat users are going through the funnel less frequently than new (first time) users? Can you show how you created the report?

  • Avatar of Christian B.
    Christian B.
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    Hi Johannes! Thanks for replying. The report is based on a simple 2-step funnel behavior that I created with a 7-day conversion window and % Conversion Rate as the default metric. I the duplicated the same funnel behavior and only changed from % Conversion Rate to % Conversion Rate (Totals) . This is when I see the drop for % Conversion Rate (Totals) then.

  • Avatar of Christian B.
    Christian B.
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  • Avatar of Johannes K.
    Johannes K.
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    Did you see this? This would support my point above that when you choose Totals it may include users multiple times. Don't know your product, but maybe new users are more likely to convert vs returning users who browse more?

  • Avatar of Christian B.
    Christian B.
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    I agree, and this is how I interpreted this as well. What I was wondering about though is particularly why all of a sudden in August the Totals conversion would drop so significantly. I will do more digging into our releases around that time to see if I can find an explanation. If I find something, I will update this thread for sure. 🙂

  • Avatar of Johannes K.
    Johannes K.
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    Ende der Schulferien vielleicht 😉

    😄1