Of course conversion rate will always matter but what happens when your site’s conversion rate is consistently below 1% or .5%? It won’t be long before conversion rates less than 1% are the new normal.

There are two forces at work here: 1. Increased com­pe­ti­tion as peo­ple spend more time shop­ping online—more shop­ping equals more vis­its per pur­chase and con­ver­sion rates will nat­u­rally fall. 2. Increased mobile vis­its where shop­pers seem to pre­fer to use smart­phones to browse, price check, and find store loca­tions – not purchase.

Lower conversion rates aren’t a bad thing since incre­men­tal traf­fic still means more revenue. What will be bad is if the only metric you look at to measure success on your site is your conversion rate. What about the other 99% of traffic? Is that not worth trying to quantify?

No one gets married on the first date, likewise no one buys something the first time they meet your site. How many little interactions, downloads, engagement, likes, views, subscriptions, reviews does it take to add up to a conversion?  Like Avinash says, If you solve for conversion rate are you solving for all your traffic and are you improving the website experience for all your customers?