🧢 Coach T's Recap
Conversion rates over 100% aren’t errors, they're a reflection of real consumer behavior. These patterns give you valuable insights into your audience’s decision-making journey, highlighting opportunities to adjust your messaging or identify barriers to conversion.
When looking at brand funnels for yourself or the competitor set, you might notice an unexpected trend. More people investigating your brand than considering it. Or a preference score that’s higher than usage. That’s not a glitch in the matrix, it’s a reflection of how real people move through your brand funnel in non-linear ways.
Let’s unpack what’s going on and why it’s actually a good thing for understanding your brand’s true role in the category.
Wait, how can conversion rates be over 100%?
In a traditional funnel model, each stage is expected to get smaller - awareness → consideration → usage → preference. So when you see numbers that go up instead of down, it can seem counterintuitive.
But these patterns reflect reality. The way people engage with brands isn't always step-by-step.
Here’s what non-linear journeys can look like 👇
Higher investigation than consideration: In higher-involvement categories, people often look into a brand before they’ve added it to their consideration set. It’s research-first, then decide.
Higher preference than usage: In categories with greater barriers to entry (like universities or luxury goods), people might want a brand they can’t yet use. Preference builds ahead of usage.
These aren’t mistakes, they’re insight. They help uncover category dynamics, brand perceptions, and decision-making behaviours that a simple top-to-bottom funnel can miss.
Why don’t the funnel questions follow a strict path in the survey?
At Tracksuit, we don’t assume everyone moves through the funnel in a straight line, because that’s not always how real people make decisions.
If someone is aware of your brand, we ask them every funnel question (except for preference, which is only asked if respondents consider a brand).
The benefits of taking this approach 👇
It reflects real behaviour: People don’t move through a funnel like a straight line. They jump around, skip steps, and make decisions in unique ways.
It surfaces hidden stories: Someone might not consider your brand now, but they might still be investigating it or have a preference for it in the future.
It helps identify opportunity: A mismatch between preference and usage could signal untapped demand. Higher investigation than consideration might highlight a perception issue to work on.
This approach gives you a more complete, more human view of your brand’s role in the market.
💡 What should I do if I spot a non-linear pattern?
Dig deeper! Non-linear conversion rates can be rich with meaning.
Ask yourself:
Is this a category-wide behaviour, or something unique to our brand or a competitor?
Could there be a barrier stopping people from moving from one stage to the next?
What perceptions might be influencing these results, and how could we shift them?