What’s the Difference: Micro Conversions vs Macro Conversions?

Chances are, you won’t convert a website visitor on their first visit to your website. That’s why what you do in-between matters. 

Tracking your clients’ micro conversion metrics tells you where to optimise your pages and nudge website visitors to complete your desired goal. But what exactly are they, and how can you track them for all your clients in a scalable way? 

What is a micro conversion?

A micro-conversion is critical between when potential customers first visit a website and when they complete the final goal. Micro conversions are the incremental steps or sets of secondary actions that indicate a visitor is on the path to converting. 

For instance, a micro conversion might be any one of the steps that lead up to purchase (or a conversion), such as: 

• Adding a product to a shopping cart.
• Selecting shipping options.
• Filling out payment information.

Three types of micro conversions

There are three micro conversions: Navigation, Engagement, and Interaction. Differentiating between these types helps you know what to do next.

1. Navigational Micro Conversions

The following navigational data tells you where the website visitors are: are they browsing products or services, reading reviews, or filling out contact details? 

If visitors aren’t spending enough time here before abandoning a page, you might need to optimise it with better images and copy. You might also want to direct your visitors to high-intent pages before making a bid to convert directly. 

For instance, when visitors enter the checkout process, you’ll need to remove any roadblocks that might prevent them from completing it. Is the website too slow? Are there too many steps? Could you benefit from a last review or testimonial to seal the deal? These are all things that can help push that micro-conversion toward an actual purchase. 

Identifying micro navigational conversions is key to fixing any holes in your sales funnel and ultimately results in increased revenue. 

Metrics to track: 

• Time spent on pages you identify as high-intent.
• Time spent on crucial conversion pages like the checkout or demo request pages.
• Number of visits to purchase supporting pages such as testimonials.
• The number of times visitors go to a lead-gen form is for a non-eCommerce website.
• Clickthrough rate from a SERP to see if an ad did its job.

2. Engagement Micro Conversions

This metric tells you how long visitors spend clicking around a website and whether they are returning visitors. Engagement micro conversions indicate high intent. 

Metrics to track:

• The number of pages viewed above a target.
• Time spent on a page above a target.
• Frequency of visits above a target and recency of visits.

3. Interaction Micro Conversions

This micro-conversion indicates what a website visitor does while on a webpage. For instance, they might add a product to the cart, download a resource, watch a promo video, or initiate a live chat for assistance. 

Metrics to track: 

• Time on page.
• Click-through rate (CTR).
• Bounce rate.
• Pageviews on product and funnel pages, such as form and contact information.
• Tracking micro-conversions allow marketing agencies to channel new prospects toward completing the desired action using email marketing, retargeting campaigns, and on-site conversion optimisation.