Macro & Micro Conversions: What They Mean and How to Track Them

The internet’s come a long way since the days of only being able to track website hitsWeb page hits were all the rage in the early days of the internet, but have since been replaced by far more granular, valuable data. as a measure of success. Now site owners have a vast array of metrics at their disposal, and this information helps them track and improve their business operations.  

This is the case with conversion rateA conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that take a desired action on your site. optimization (CRO). Although for CRO to function at the level you expect, it’s important to focus on the correct metrics. This is where macro and micro conversions come into the equation.  

Understanding a website conversionA conversion is a desirable result on a website that leads to an action such as completing an order, filling out a form, or simply clicking on a link. 

Before tackling specific metrics, it’s important to gain a full understanding of conversions in general. Every website is built with a business-related purpose. It could be to sell products or services, generate leads, or simply to supply information. Either way, when a visitor completes a desired action when on a site, this is defined as a “conversion”.  

While conversions, in general, are nice, businesses need to accurately track these for the full picture. This brings us to the conversion rate. The conversion rate measures the number of website visits against the number of conversions. By doing this, you can measure the success of your marketing campaigns – along with the overall value of your site.  

This is vital to understand what is and isn’t working with your promotional efforts, giving you the knowledge to know where your marketing dollars are best spent.  

Top-level conversions, aka those that result in immediate sales or leads, tend to be the only focus for online business owners. Yet there’s an issue with this narrow viewpoint. Judging top-level conversions solely can provide a distorted figure. After all, only a minimal number of site visitors actually rock up and convert, which means you’re only seeing a restricted number of outcomes overall.  

Conversions should be tracked and measured, absolutely. Yet they only represent a tiny proportion of your site’s traffic. Due to this, it’s easy to miss the bigger picture. Ultimately, the visitors that didn’t convert will generally supply the most valuable insights for your business.  

The result: you have to go beyond only tracking those conversions at the top level. You have to start breaking it down for more juicy data. You have to use macro and micro conversions. 

What is a macro conversion?  

Now, if you’re on this page, at this point, you likely only have one question on your mind: What are macro and micro conversions?  

Let’s start with the easier to explain of the two. As you might gather from the name, Macro conversions refer to user actions that represent your website’s primary objective. This is simply another name for what is essentially your primary – or top-level – conversion point, as discussed in the previous section.  

Below are a few examples of a macro conversion: 

• If you operate an eCommerce store, the main macro conversion is a visitor completing a purchase.  

• If the primary objective is to collect a user’s data, this could be a visitor completing a lead generation form.  
• The completion of a subscription sign-up for a recurring service.  

What is a micro conversion? 

Based on the above about macro conversions, it shouldn’t take too much effort to work out what the micro counterpart entails. Rather than focusing on the primary actions of a website visitor, micro conversions are all about those secondary actions, those smaller steps which indicate a conversion will be completed.  

Even though they’re not incorporated into the overall conversion rate for your site, micro conversions are incredibly helpful in learning about the effectiveness of your sales funnel. It supplies you with information about weaknesses that could be present within your funnel, presenting the chance to optimize performance – and increase overall conversion numbers as a result.  

For instance, say people are flowing through your sales funnel seamlessly. No issues are cropping up, and people are navigating through your pages as expected. At least, that’s until they hit the page where they select shipping. This section alone is causing 80% of your site visitors to abandon ship.  

That’s bad. Yet by tracking your micro conversions, the good news is you have identified the weak link in your sales funnel. You can then improve the user experience (UX) by fixing this issue, removing the barrier that was preventing visitors from getting to the finish line – and turning it into that all-important macro conversion.  

While micro conversions are integral to follow for sites of all sizes, they are especially important for those with low numbers of traffic. Why? Well, if a low-traffic site only receives a couple of conversions each day, you’re only being fed crumbs in terms of data if you solely study macro conversions. By looking through all micro conversion stages, low-traffic sites suddenly gain a lot more data they can use to improve how their business operates.  

Common micro conversions 

Unlike macro conversions, there are numerous examples of micro conversions. This shouldn’t be a surprise due to how many steps they account for during the sales journey for website visitors. General categories for micro conversions include engagement-based conversions, interaction-based conversions, and navigation-based conversions.  

For specific micro conversions, let’s take a look at a standard eCommerce customer journey for someone on the hunt for a new jacket:  

1. The journey begins by visiting the intended website.  
2. The visitor views the category page. In this case, it’ll be the ‘jackets’ page. 
3. For more specific results, they’ll click on a sub-category page. This could be a specific jacket style, for instance, or a certain color.  
4. Once they have found a jacket that grabs their interest, they will click to view the individual page.  
5. If it ticks all the right boxes and is in stock, the jacket will be added to the shopping cart.  
6. The potential customer moves onto to the checkout process.  #
7. They enter their details, including their name, contact details, and delivery address.  
8. With the address in place, they can confirm the shipping option for their purchase. This could be next-day delivery, for example.  
9. Payment information is then added to the order.  
10. Finally, the order is placed. 

The initial visit to the website doesn’t register as a micro conversion. The same is applicable for when the order – or conversion – is complete. With that said, all of the steps in between (aka 2-9) are defined as micro conversions. This highlights just how many micro conversions play a role in the sales funnel and how much data you could be missing out on if your business only focuses on macro conversions.  

Of course, this is just an example of the customer journey. There are certain steps that can be skipped over. A visitor could land up on a specific product page via a Google search as an example. However, it still involves an assortment of micro conversions as part of the customer journey.  

What is the relationship between macro and micro conversions? 

As the example in the previous section showcases, macro and micro conversions go hand in hand with each other. You cannot have a macro conversion without a number of micro conversions that precede it. There’s also no overall purpose for micro conversions unless they result in a macro conversion.  

With all of this in mind, it’s essential to track both micro and macro conversions. Every micro conversion is effectively a process milestone. Each micro element also impacts – whether positively or negatively – the main step, aka the macro conversion.    

How to select the right conversions 

You know the importance of tracking both macro and micro conversions. However, before you move forward, you need to understand which conversions to track for your business.  

When it comes to macro conversions, you want to avoid an assortment of metrics to track. As a general rule of thumb, the fewer macro conversions you have in place, the clearer it is in terms of what you want out of your website. Think about it. If you only have 1 or 2 actions defined as macro conversions, it’s a lot easier to zone in on what truly matters to your business. 

As for micro conversions, it’s pretty much the opposite situation. You don’t want to put restrictions on the number of micro conversions to track. Ultimately, you want to cover as many of these steps as possible, assuming they are valuable and actionable for the customer path on your site.  

How to track conversions 

Great news: tracking micro conversions is made easy thanks to the power of Google Analytics. It might seem like a tricky task when attempting to track and measure every micro conversion step in the customer journey, but it’s simply a case of knowing what to do with the Google tools at your disposal.  

First, start by logging into your Google Analytics account. Then all you have to do is add your chosen micro conversion by creating an event. Alternatively, you can utilize the Google Tag Manager to trigger responses. It is also possible to assign each micro conversion step as a goal.  

Once a micro conversion is added to Google Analytics, it is possible to compare this data against other metrics. This includes the likes of page views, traffic sources, and macro conversions. By doing this, you gain a clear image of how all the data correlates and what aspects require improvement.  

How to successfully track micro conversions 

If you’ve been following along, you know the aim is to optimize the performance of your micro conversions. Putting together the track with these micro conversions ensures a smooth journey towards macro conversions.  

However, before it’s possible to optimize these micro conversions, you must understand what isn’t working correctly. To do that successfully, it’s essential you put in the research. That is where tracking micro conversions becomes key as you diagnose problems and push forward towards a suitable solution.  

Below is a quick look at the steps to take to successfully track micro conversions: 

• Spot the troublemakers: The first job is to spot the pages that are letting your side down. By using Google Analytics, it’s possible to see which pages are suffering from the biggest drop-off rates. Understandably, these are the micro conversions that are, for whatever reason, not getting the results you expected – and it’s consequently resulting in a breakdown in your sales funnel.  
• Analyze the issues: Once you know which pages are problematic, it’s a case of finding out why users are deciding to leave. It’s possible to analyze everything from elements being clicked to where visitors are hovering their mouse pointers. With this type of information, you can closely learn about the way visitors interact – or don’t interact – with page elements.  

• Seek feedback: You don’t have to use Google Analytics and research endless data for an answer. Instead, you can go directly to the source and ask for feedback from site users. This way ensures no guesswork is involved when working out why visitors are abandoning your site. For answers, ask open-ended questions like: ‘Why are you leaving the page?’ or ‘What elements are missing from the page?’  

Once you have successfully tracked your micro conversions, you’ll have ample data to make any necessary changes. For instance, if there’s a noticeable drop-off on product pages, this research will reveal what elements are not pulling their weight.  

Conclusion  

In this day and age, you cannot go into running any aspect of your business with just a one-dimensional view of the statistics. This is the situation with conversions. While it’s vital to track the performance of your macro conversions against site visitor numbers, measuring your micro conversions is equally as important.  

Getting the most out of your micro and macro conversions is possible with tools like Google Analytics. By closely monitoring all facets of your macro and micro conversions, you acquire a multi-dimensional view of your site’s performance. These added insights give you the knowledge and data required to further improve your business – and generate more conversions! With this, you can grow your business above and beyond your competitors.