It can be difficult to make sense of online marketing jargon, especially when everyone is using abbreviations that you are not familiar with.
That’s why we decided to compile a sales funnel metrics dictionary that covers the most important terms that you need to know.
We recommend bookmarking this page so that you could easily come back to it if you ever need to look something up!
Traffic sources is a metric that shows where your traffic is coming from.
Here are the three most common sources of organic traffic:
Also, if you run paid advertising campaigns, make sure that your analytics app categorizes paid traffic as a separate traffic source that you can then break down and analyze by campaign.
Unique visitors is a metric that shows how many individual people have visited your website during a specific time period.
This metric is calculated by looking at the number of unique IP addresses and assuming that each IP address is one person.
Of course, it’s possible for several people to use the same IP address. Plus, back in 2022, it was estimated that bot traffic accounted for 30.2% of all web traffic. We can probably safely assume that this number has increased significantly since then, especially considering the recent proliferation of AI bots.
While unique visitors is a helpful metric, it’s far from perfect in terms of accuracy so keep in mind that the real number is likely much lower than what your analytics show.
New visitors is a metric that shows the number of unique visitors who have never been to your website before.
A visitor is considered to be a new visitor if they don’t have any cookies from previous visits to your website on their device.
Of course, people might delete cookies when clearing their browser history or access your website from different devices, so this metric isn’t completely accurate.
Returning visitors is a metric that shows the number of unique visitors who have been to your website before.
A visitor is considered to be a returning visitor if they have cookies from a previous visit to your website on their device.
Again, people might come to your website after having deleted the cookies or they might be accessing your website from a new device, so this metric isn’t completely accurate.
“Bouncing” is a term that is used to describe a visitor landing on a page and then leaving it immediately without interacting with it or exploring any other pages on that website.
The bounce rate shows what percentage of visitors bounce.
“Exiting” is a term used to describe a visitor leaving the website.
The difference between bouncing and exiting is that in the case of the former, the visitor leaves immediately after landing on a page.
Meanwhile, in the case of the latter, the visitor leaves after interacting with the page and possibly also checking out other pages on that website.
The exit rate shows what percentage of visitors exited your website through that page.
Conversion rates show what percentage of people who were exposed to a call to action ended up taking that action (“converting”).
The visitor-to-lead conversion rate shows what percentage of people who visited your opt-in page converted into leads by giving you their email addresses.
The lead-to-customer conversion rate shows what percentage of leads converted into customers by purchasing something.
The customer-to-repeat-customer conversion rate shows what percentage of first-time customers converted into repeat customers by buying something from you again.
A downsell is an offer that you present to the potential customer after they have rejected your core offer. It’s supposed to be a downgrade from it.
The downsell conversion rate shows what percentage of people who were presented with a downsell ended up purchasing it.
An upsell is an offer that you present to the potential customer after they have accepted your core offer. It’s supposed to be an upgrade on it.
The upsell conversion rate shows what percentage of people who were presented with an upsell ended up purchasing it.
A cross sell is also an offer that you present to the potential customer after they have accepted your core offer, but instead of being an upgrade on it, it’s supposed to be complementary to it.
The cross sell conversion rate shows what percentage of people who were presented with a cross sell ended up purchasing it.
The overall conversion rate of your sales funnel shows what percentage of people who visited your opt-in page converted into paying customers by purchasing something from you.
The open rate shows what percentage of people who received your email opened it.
Meanwhile, the average open rate shows what percentage of people open your emails on average.
The clickthrough rate (CTR) shows what percentage of people who opened your email clicked on the call-to-action link within it.
Meanwhile, the average clickthrough rate shows what percentage of people who open your emails click on the call-to-action links within them on average.
The email conversion rate shows what percentage of people who opened your email ended up buying something as a result.
Meanwhile, the average email conversion rate shows what percentage of people who open your emails end up buying something as a result on average.
The bounce rate shows what percentage of your email subscribers didn’t receive the email that you sent because of a delivery failure.
Meanwhile, the average bounce rate shows what percentage of your email subscribers on average don’t receive your emails due to delivery failures.
The unsubscribe rate shows what percentage of people who received your email ended up unsubscribing from your email list.
Meanwhile, the average unsubscribe rate shows what percentage of people on average end up unsubscribing after they receive an email from you.
Impressions show how many times people have seen your ad.
The way impressions are calculated varies from platform to platform but typically, a substantial part of the ad must be visible on the user’s feed for at least 1 second for it to be counted as an impression.
Cost-per-mille means cost-per-thousand. It shows the cost of a thousand ad impressions.
Cost-per-click shows the cost of one ad click.
The clickthrough rate shows what percentage of ad impressions converted into ad clicks.
Cost-per-lead shows how much money on average it costs you to acquire one lead.
Customer acquisition cost shows how much money on average it costs you to acquire one customer.
Customer lifetime value (CLV) shows how much money the average customer spends on your products and services throughout their entire lifetime as a customer.
It’s also common to call this metric lifetime value and abbreviate it as LTV. Make sure to remember that the terms CLV and LTV are synonymous!
The ratio between the customer acquisition cost and the customer lifetime value is arguably the best indication of the overall trajectory of your business.
Generally speaking, you want it to be as low as possible because the lower the ratio, the more profitable the business.
For example, if your customer acquisition cost is $1 and your customer lifetime value is $10, your CAC:CLV ratio is 0.1, which is great. You can make a ton of money that way.
Meanwhile, if your customer acquisition cost is $1 and your customer lifetime value is $1, your CAC:CLV ratio is 1, which means that you are breaking even on customer acquisition.
And if your customer acquisition cost is $1 but your customer lifetime value is $0.50, your CAC:CLV ratio is 2, which means that you are losing money on customer acquisition.
Gross revenue shows the total revenue that the company has generated during a specific period of time.
Net revenue shows the revenue that’s left after you subtract refunds from your gross revenue.
Gross profit shows the amount of money left after you subtract the cost of products and services sold from your gross revenue.
Gross profit margin shows what percentage of your gross revenue is gross profit.
Net profit shows the amount of money left after you subtract the cost of products and services sold, all operating expenses and all taxes from your net revenue.
Net profit margin shows what percentage of your net revenue is net profit.
Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.
He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?
His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.
This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.
But you can also get it directly from us for free…
All we ask is that you pay for shipping!
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View Comments
Super!
Thanks.
Doug
You're welcome Doug.
This is an awesome article! Shared it on LinkedIn and FB.
Thank you for putting this together!
Maybe at some point, put together an article on how to come up with the lifetime value of a customer. That would be awesome to see how y'all calculate that figure.
I'm not sure if CF makes it possible to do it without having to manually look across all funnels and see all the different products someone has bought across funnels.
Hey Jason,
Thanks for the share! I'll be adding in more details on that for sure. Currently CF doens't have LCV in their metrics but that would be a great idea for the feature request area which you can post here: https://support.clickfunnels.com/support/discussions/5000010316