In this post, we will cover macro and micro website conversions, how they differ and the roles they play in overall performance.
Once the business objectives have been clearly defined and understood, the next logical step towards a successful measurement and optimisation strategy involves identifying the various conversion types that can occur on the website in question.
These conversions can broadly be split into two categories: macro (or primary) conversions and micro (or secondary) conversions.
Macro conversions
Most website owners focus heavily on tracking and optimising their primary conversion point (or macro conversion); this might be an order completion for an e-commerce website, a completed contact form for a lead acquisition website or a subscription sign up for an online software provider. These overall conversions are commercial outcomes that deliver against the company’s main objective.
The previous post included an example long-term objective which was to double revenue in two years. For this objective the website in question would most likely be e-commerce and therefore the macro website conversion would be a completed order.
Examples of macro conversions can generally be categorised as follows:
Revenue based conversions
E-commerce order completion
Paid subscription sign up
Lead/member acquisition conversions
Application form completion (e.g. credit card provider or mortgage advisor)
Member sign up (freemium software or social media platform)
Enquiry conversions
Contact form completion (for websites without e-commerce)
Phone call (driven from websites without e-commerce)
The above list is not definitive by any means but it does provide a guideline of the most common types and examples of macro conversions for typical websites.
Micro conversions
Macro conversion performance is of obvious importance. However fixating solely on this single metric (or any single metric) is ill-advised. This alone will not paint the full picture of performance and in fact there may be a multitude of other user actions that indicate changes in performance. These actions are often referred to as micro conversions and mark an outcome on a website that is of less importance than the primary, or macro conversion. This is a concept that Avinash Kaushik, the renowned analytics and digital marketing evangelist, has blogged passionately about in the past.
Taking an e-commerce website for example, the macro conversion would be an order completion whereas micro conversions could include sign up to an email newsletter, a PDF brochure download, a Facebook like, etc. In this case these actions indicate user engagement and potentially even lead users to complete an order at some point in the future. However in isolation they do not generally drive revenue or customer acquisition at the point of their conversion.
Micro conversions could also include more standard actions such as viewing a product page or adding an item to the shopping basket. They can also include less obvious conversions such as click-through from search results (CTR could justifiably be counted as a micro conversion rate).
Examples of micro conversions can often be categorised as follows:
Navigation based conversions
Viewing a product page
Entering the checkout process
Reaching an application form
CTR from search results
Interaction (or completed action) based conversions
Adding a product to the cart
Downloading a PDF brochure
Watching a promotional video
Social actions
Email newsletter sign up
RSS subscription
Request a call back
Engagement based conversions
Time on site over a certain threshold
Number of pages viewed above target
Visit frequency/recency above target
Identifying macro and micro conversions
As the macro conversion is the primary desired action on the site this should be obvious to identify and will generally be a single action. There may be exceptions to this for large or complex online businesses but typically a website will have one primary conversion point.
The process for identifying micro conversions is not complex in itself but the larger the website, the more time that will be required to produce a definitive list of micro conversion points. The process is time consuming and somewhat laborious, but highly worthwhile nonetheless for mapping out all conversion performance indicators and influencers.
There are certain tools which can help streamline the process of documenting a micro conversion walk-through for a website (e.g. Notable, which allows you to annotate and group full page screenshots) but the process must be completed manually where possible to ensure all micro conversions are identified.
It is important at this point to note that micro conversions don’t necessarily lead to macro conversions, although this is often the case. For those micro conversions that are expected to start users on a path to overall conversion, these should be mapped out accordingly so the analytics solution in use can be configured to track how effective certain micro conversions are at influencing subsequent macro conversions (e.g. using custom variables).
Thank you so much Guys.
Stay Fit, Take Care & Keep Smiling :-)
Kranti Gaurav
XLRI Jamshedpur
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