Unlock HubSpot Conversion Rate Secrets: A Practical Guide for E-Commerce Success

Understanding your conversion rates is crucial for any e-commerce business. Knowing how many visitors turn into customers, and what influences that process, allows you to optimize your marketing efforts and improve your bottom line. If you're using HubSpot to manage your customer relationships and sales processes, you'll want to leverage its reporting capabilities to track these vital metrics. However, calculating conversion rates within HubSpot, especially when dealing with data from multiple sources, can sometimes present a challenge. This article will guide you through a common problem and offer practical solutions to accurately measure your e-commerce conversion rates in HubSpot.

The Challenge: Conversion Rate Calculations in HubSpot Reports

Recently, a HubSpot Community member sought help with a specific reporting issue. They were trying to calculate conversion rates based on UTM parameters, aiming to understand the performance of different marketing campaigns. The goal was to determine the conversion rate between contacts, meetings, and deals, broken down by UTM source and campaign. The initial attempt to use a formula field resulted in an unexpected 0% outcome, highlighting a common pitfall in HubSpot reporting.

The issue arises from how HubSpot's formula fields operate within reports. They don't inherently perform aggregate calculations (like total meetings ÷ total contacts). Instead, they evaluate formulas on a row-by-row basis. This means that a formula like [MEETING_EVENT.hs_outcome_scheduled_count] / [CONTACT.hs_object_id] effectively divides the scheduled meeting count by the contact's unique record ID—a large, unique number. The result is a very small fraction that typically rounds down to 0%.

Workaround 1: Leveraging Workflows and Contact Properties

If you don't have access to HubSpot's Data Hub Pro or Enterprise (which includes Datasets, which offers more advanced reporting capabilities), a practical workaround involves using workflows and custom contact properties. This approach allows you to flag contacts who have completed specific actions, enabling you to calculate conversion rates based on these flags.

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Create a Contact Property: Begin by creating a new contact property (e.g., “Booked Meeting (Scheduled)”) with a yes/no value. This property will serve as a flag to indicate whether a contact has scheduled a meeting.
2. Build a Workflow: Set up a contact workflow that triggers when Activity = Meeting and Outcome = Scheduled. This workflow will automatically update the contact property when a meeting is scheduled. The action within the workflow should set the “Booked Meeting (Scheduled)” property to “Yes”.
3. Report on the Property: Create your report, grouping by UTM campaign/source. Then, display the % of contacts where the “Booked Meeting (Scheduled)” property is “Yes”. This will show you the conversion rate of contacts who scheduled meetings, segmented by UTM parameters.

This method provides a valuable estimate of your conversion rate, even without the advanced features of Data Hub. It allows you to track the percentage of contacts from each UTM campaign who successfully booked a meeting.

Workaround 2: Using HubSpot Datasets (Data Hub Pro/Enterprise)

If you have access to HubSpot's Data Hub Pro or Enterprise, you can leverage Datasets for more accurate and flexible conversion rate calculations. Datasets allow you to perform aggregate calculations, such as summing the total number of meetings and dividing it by the total number of contacts.

With Datasets, you can create custom calculated fields that perform these aggregate calculations directly. This eliminates the row-level calculation limitation and provides a true conversion rate per UTM campaign.

Here’s a general outline of the process:

1. Create a Dataset: Create a dataset that includes the relevant data, such as contacts, meetings, and UTM parameters.
2. Add Calculated Fields: Add calculated fields to the dataset to perform the necessary calculations. For example, you can create a calculated field that divides the total number of meetings by the total number of contacts for each UTM campaign.
3. Build Your Report: Use the dataset to build your report. You can then group the data by UTM campaign and display the calculated conversion rates.

Optimizing Your Online Store with ESHOPMAN and HubSpot

For businesses using HubSpot as their CRM, integrating an e-commerce platform directly into HubSpot can streamline operations and provide a more comprehensive view of the customer journey. ESHOPMAN offers a built-in storefront and e-commerce solution designed specifically for HubSpot. This integration allows you to manage your product catalog, process orders, and track customer interactions all within the HubSpot environment, simplifying HubSpot product catalog management.

By connecting your online store with HubSpot, you can leverage HubSpot's powerful automation and reporting features to further optimize your conversion rates. For example, you can use workflows to personalize the customer experience based on their purchase history or browsing behavior. You can also use HubSpot's reporting tools to track the performance of your online store and identify areas for improvement.

Whether you choose to use workflows and contact properties or leverage the power of Datasets, understanding and accurately measuring your conversion rates in HubSpot is essential for e-commerce success. By implementing the strategies outlined in this article, you can gain valuable insights into your customer behavior and optimize your marketing efforts to drive more sales. And with solutions like ESHOPMAN, integrating your online store creator directly with HubSpot becomes seamless, providing a unified platform for managing your entire customer journey.