Not all conversions are created equal

Interesting little piece reported by e-tid (registration required) on conversion rates for different search behaviour. Concludes that - not surprisingly - users of general search engines are poor converters when searching with generic terms (I assume such as a destination name), especially when compared to those customers using a suppliers name in a search. Comscore Media Metrix has more on the study in their press release. This confirms my belief that you can no longer look at conversion as one number in business planning and tracking. It has to be worked on a channel basis. That is looking at conversion from each source of customers - PPC, direct marketing, email campaigns, affiliate referral etc. It is also important to find ways to capture where a customer was first introduced to a site differently from where the customer ultimately was led to purchase.