Free Trial Average Conversion Rate and Other Metrics

Following Lincoln Murphy’s post on SixteenVentures.com (talking about conversion average rate for free trials, pricing pages or Freemium for SaaS or Web Apps), conversion rate average figures will do no good, as it doesn’t reflect the whole picture and usually lacking context.

It’s hard to know what metrics are being used for the “average conversion rate” and Lincoln claims that looking on average numbers to plan businesses around might make us average ourselves – and who want to be considered average?

Every company aspires to increase their conversion rate figures but Murphy’s suggestion is to figure out where you are today and then figure out how to make it better.
Meaning, if you’re at 1% conversion rate, reaching 2% is achievable, even though it’s 100% increase over what you have now.

I agree that context is crucial and also explained about this in “Measure trial conversion rate” webinar. Furthermore, in order for each SaaS business to understand where they stand, a lot of other metrics need to be taken under account besides conversion rate from free to paying customers. For example – do you also review unique visitors to your website? Social media mentions? signups, churn rates, customer lifetime value, account activation rate, account usage statistics, etc.?
All of these are metrics that should be taken under consideration in order to reflect the whole picture for a SaaS company and to allow it to set its goals.

Which metrics do you use to make your goals setting?