[jasonlfunk]

The title is wrong. Ghost didn't increase their conversion rate by 1000%. They found a segment of their user base that converted 1000% more than another segment.

It is not included in this post whether the overall conversion rate actually improved substantially after the changes were made.

[johnonolan]

Hey Jason, that's actually pretty true. We found a segment which converted 1,000% better and then managed to increase the number of people in that segment by 370%

The title of the post is "How we Figured Out What Makes People Love Ghost 1,000% More" - which I think is still pretty accurate :)

[gabemart]

> The title of the post is "How we Figured Out What Makes People Love Ghost 1,000% More" - which I think is still pretty accurate :)

I disagree. If you choose the bucket "people who subscribed to Ghost Pro", they would convert ∞% better than the bucket "people who didn't sign up for Ghost Pro". That doesn't mean that signing up for Ghost Pro makes people love Ghost ∞% more.

More generally, how can you tell if people installing a custom theme makes them love Ghost more, or if people install a custom theme because they love Ghost more?

Getting more people into the bucket of "people who installed a custom theme" doesn't actually help your bottom-line conversion rate until you can establish unequivocally that the people you've added to the bucket convert at the same rate as the bucket did before they were added to it.

[fredophile]

> Getting more people into the bucket of "people who installed a custom theme" doesn't actually help your bottom-line conversion rate until you can establish unequivocally that the people you've added to the bucket convert at the same rate as the bucket did before they were added to it.

This is incorrect. Let's say we have two buckets, A and B, where bucket A is people who haven't used a feature and bucket B is people who have. If some testing shows that people in bucket B convert far better than people in bucket A you make a change to get more people into bucket B. The change is successful if more people end up in bucket B and bucket B still outperforms bucket A and the total contribution coming from bucket B is higher. Bucket B doesn't need to perform equally well before and after the test.

Using the numbers from the link bucket B was performing at 10x the conversion of bucket A. Out of 10,000 users bucket B contributed 70 subscribers. After the changes bucket B received almost five times the users as previously and converted at four times the rate of bucket A. Out of 10,000 users bucket B contributed 884 subscribers. If the change had no impact we'd expect more users in bucket B but not more subscribers. These numbers aren't really accurate since I took them from the diagrams in the article and they change what they're looking at between the two. To be correct you need to compare the same thing before and after changing a feature.

[mintplant]

> and then managed to increase the number of people in that segment by 370%

Did this end up raising overall conversion rates proportionally? It could be that users who would already have converted in the end are more likely to bother to set up a custom theme.

[jeangenie]

I'd be interested to see raw numbers since there are many possible values for y=x/3.7.

[jasonlfunk]

I was referring to the title of the HN post, which has subsequently been updated. :)

[Mandatum]

A segment which did not exist prior to their changes, thereby increasing their conversion rate from X to 11X, as there was a 10X increase in conversions post-change.

[jasonlfunk]

The segment did exist - users who added a custom theme. Of that segment, they converted 10X more than those who didn't add a custom theme. Ghost then responded by making it easier to add a custom theme, but we aren't told what effect that had on overall conversion.