Hi everyone,
As someone who probably missed their calling as a data scientist, I’m always really fascinated by changing trends and trying to extrapolate meaning from them. Last month our coworking office made what I thought was more or less a completely lateral move in locations. We went from being in what was a neighborhood going through massive amounts of development with lots of fairly wealthy young families moving in, a low density of coworking offices, that was about an 18 minute drive to downtown to a location about 2 miles south, in an area that’s also fairly trendy and about 10 minutes away from downtown.
I’m too lazy to actually collect and log the data (OK, maybe I didn’t miss my calling) but some things I’ve noticed in our first month here:
-We’re receiving around 2-3x more inquiries and tour requests, but our conversion rate to members is lower than what it previously was (I’d estimate we had about a 20% conversion rate at our old location, and somewhere around 10-15% here).
-We’re receiving WAY more interest in reserved desks than we did at the old location
-What I think is most interesting, is that now people are significantly more likely to make an inquiry over the phone than they are through email or our contact form. Before, we would maybe get one phone call for every five emails, and now that number is flipped (much to my chagrin, I hate phone calls).
I’m very tempted to connect all of these data points, I think that because of the new location people are much more likely to want to come in on a whim. Most of the time when we get a phone call, they’ll want to come in within the hour, whereas if we get an email they’re more interested in setting up a tour on a later date. My guess is that people who send emails have already done their research and are more prepared to make a commitment, while people who call know less about the idea of coworking and are really just more interested in finding out if they’re more productive in a coworking office than their home or a coffee shop.
I’m curious if anyone else has experienced something similar, or reads these changes differently than I do. I’m also trying to figure out if there’s an actual way to use this data to increase conversions, as I’m not really coming up with any way to actually apply this to the business.