Member Avatar for dolphins

Hey everybody! I too am creating my own community right now, and trying to figure out if I'm "in-line" when it comes to its membership ratio. For every 1000 unique visitors, I'm getting about 5 people to become members, so about .5%.....What does everybody think should be considered the norm?? How much is everybody else at???? :?:

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This thread raises the common question of whether raw sign-ups are the right benchmark. asked about membership ratios, urged better targeting and retention, and stressed that a small number of engaged contributors is more valuable than a large number of inactive accounts. The pragmatic focus is therefore on measurable activation and retention, not on a single conversion percentage.

Key metrics to instrument and monitor:

  • Sign-up conversion broken down by traffic source and landing page.
  • Activation: share of new accounts that take a first meaningful action (for example, create a post or reply) within a short window.
  • Retention cohorts (7/30/90-day) and DAU/MAU to gauge ongoing engagement.
  • Time-to-first-contribution and posts/comments per active user.
  • Email open/click rates and invite/viral factor.

Concrete, high-impact tactics that follow from those metrics:

  • Reduce friction: shorten the registration flow, make nonessential fields optional, and offer social login.
  • Clarify value quickly: benefits and next steps visible above the fold on top landing pages.
  • Make the first meaningful action extremely easy (one-click reply, quick comment box, guided first post).
  • Surface live activity and social proof so visitors see a working community.
  • Use lightweight capture (email or newsletter) for visitors not yet ready to register and retarget drop-offs with tailored messages.
  • Seed and highlight starter threads so new members can contribute immediately.

Run controlled experiments and measure lift in activation, not just raw sign-ups. Change one variable per test, track the whole funnel with the events signup_started, signup_completed, first_post, and session_start, and prioritize changes that increase the percent of new members who become active contributors.

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Member Avatar for etechsupport

You can increase the ratio of your visitors if you target your visitors however I am not sure whether you are taking help of some company who claim to generate unique visitors to your site, alternatively you should implement some method and technique to retain them so that they can visit your site more frequently.

Member Avatar for dolphins

All the trafffic that it is getting is totally organic. It's getting close to 1,000 unique visitors a day. Majority of it coming through search engines.

With completely organic traffic----what is everybody else's ratio to new members. I'm seeing about 5 new members for every 1k uniques, or close to it. How's everyone else doing???

Member Avatar for etechsupport

If its organic traffic you should expect atleast 2% conversion rate.

Member Avatar for dolphins

Oh my gosh...I'm going to go start crying right now...I'm at about 1/4th of that...

Member Avatar for Dani

There is no best number. For me, I get about a 5% conversion rate for search engine traffic and about a 3% conversion rate overall. But there is a difference between members and actie members. I would rather have 1 really active, dedicated member than 100 members who registered and never visited again.

Don't judge success on numbers. Is your community growing as much as you'd like it to? Has activity slowed down recently? Browse this forum for other member-boosting and community-building activities for your community.

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