The more time I spend around web services, the more I see 2% conversion rates show up all over the place. About 2% of people who visit a WordPress.com blog leave a comment. 2% click on “related articles” below a blog post. 2% of Evernote users buy their premium service. Same with 2% of Box.net users. We see similar numbers with WordPress.com premium upgrades. Is this a coincidence, or is there an underlying law that drives this? If you put something for free on the Internet and ask people to engage and take some sort of action, 2% of them will do so on average? I say on average, because I’ve seen 1-5% ranges on various services, but the 2% number seems to be the most common.
The 2% rule
Comments
9 responses to “The 2% rule”
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I think the same is true of anything. Those willing to help out with plugin development, or donate, or help at a club will be a tiny minority of the total users. Is it human nature? Are we all selfish at heart?
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It will be interesting how this changes as the Internet continues to expand its audience. What happens to that number as Internet users become, on the average, less technical?
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Hi Tony — For decades, 2% has been the rule of thumb for expected response rates to direct-mail campaigns. More randomly (or maybe not), when the Washington Post had the concert violinist Joshua Bell play as an anonymous street musician in a commuter plaza, the donations he received amounted to a 2.5% response rate from those who passed by: http://www.stevekrause.org/steve_krause_blog/2007…
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Sorry about the name spelling above, Toni!
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[…] Toni Schneider notes that this rate is about 2% for WordPress.com, for Box.net, for Evernote, and for many other freemium services. He wonders if there is some kind of “2% rule” at work. […]
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You're getting 2%? Tell me your secret. 😉
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As contacts multiply and grow exponentially, will the 80/20 rule expire and now new on-line business will expect business from 2% of their on-line business contacts? 98/2 now?
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And as longas I am not being spamy it always works out about 2% click on ads. So where can we go on this one?
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[…] was a good chance that others did too. Assuming there are 10 million WordPress.org blogs, and that only 2% of them made a similar donation, that would amount to $2,000,000 of donations distributed among […]
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