What is a micro-conversion?

A micro-conversion is a small, extra action that a visitor to a website takes that shows they are getting closer to their main goal. A micro-conversion is not the end goal, like a purchase or a form submission. Instead, it shows that someone is interested and wants to take action. These are like the breadcrumbs that your customers leave behind to show you where they go on your website.

To understand the journey, let’s look at a typical e-commerce customer path:

If you needed to buy a new winter jacket online, you would go through a process known as a "ecommerce customer journey." It would look something like this:

• Go to the site
• Look at the category pages (e.g., jackets & coats)
• Look at a sub-category page (e.g., women's winter jackets)
• Filter by size, color, or brand
• Read customer reviews on a specific jacket page
• Add the item to your shopping cart
• Go to the checkout page
• Type in your delivery address
• Choose a shipping method, like express delivery
• Put in your payment details
• Place the order

Every step before placing the final order is a micro-conversion. Each one gives you useful information about your customer's journey and what they want.

The Path from Visitor to Customer

You need to think like a detective to see how powerful micro conversions are. Every move a user makes gives you a hint about what they want and are interested in. The last piece of the puzzle is the macro conversion. The micro conversions are all the clues you get along the way. You can find out exactly where users are getting stuck and what to do to help them reach your ultimate goal by learning to recognize these signals.

These are what these important clues look like for different kinds of businesses:

For an online store:

The journey isn't just about putting things in your cart. It's a lot of little promises.

• If someone clicks on the internal search bar on your website, they are looking for something specific, which makes that search a strong micro conversion.
• If you click on a "quick view" button or zoom in on a product picture, it shows that you are more interested.
• A user is seriously thinking about buying something if they read reviews or add it to their wishlist, even if they aren't ready to buy it right now.

For a Local Service Business:

You're not selling a thing; you're selling trust. Micro conversions tell you how likely someone is to use your service.

• When a user clicks on the "Services" or "About Us" page, they are judging how trustworthy you are.
• Seeing examples of your work in your photo gallery is a big vote of confidence.
• If someone fills out a simple inquiry form or talks to a live chat bot, they are a warm lead and are one step closer to making a phone call or booking.

For a B2B and SaaS Company:

Micro conversions are important for B2B and SaaS companies because they help you nurture leads over time and show you how close a company is to becoming a client.

• Someone who downloads a case study or watches a demo video is looking for a solution that you offer.
• People who click on a pricing page or sign up for a free trial are very likely to be interested in your product as a way to solve their problem.
• If someone uses a chatbot to ask a specific question, it could be a sign that they are very interested in what you have to offer.

For a Blog or Content Publisher:

If you don't sell a physical product, micro conversions can tell you how loyal and engaged your audience is if you don't sell a physical product.

• If someone signs up for your newsletter, it's a clear sign that they want more of what you have to say.
• If someone clicks on an affiliate link in your article, it means they trust your advice.
• Sharing an article on social media is a strong micro-conversion that shows how valuable your content is and helps you reach more people.

Each of these little things is a hint. You can see the whole picture of your customer's journey and find out where your website is working and where it's not when you start to put these clues together.

Why micro-conversions matter

Micro-conversions are a key part of figuring out your business's marketing and sales funnel. You can learn a lot by looking at these small actions:

• Find Leaks in Your Funnel: Figure out where users are leaving. If a lot of people add things to their cart but never check out, for example, you know that your checkout process is the problem, not your products.
• Make A/B Tests Better: Set small goals for your A/B tests, like micro-conversions. This lets you get results that are statistically significant faster, especially for long conversion funnels.
• Make your user profile more complete: Knowing what pages a user visits and what content they interact with can help you make content and marketing campaigns that are more relevant to them.

Micro-conversions can be very helpful for websites that don't get a lot of traffic.

It can be frustrating for new or low-traffic websites to only look at macro-conversions like sales or contact forms. You might not get any conversions for days or weeks, which means you won't have any data to look at. This problem can be fixed with micro-conversions.

You can still learn how people use your site even if you only get a few visitors. Did they push a button? Did they read the whole blog post? This information gives you important information about what is working and what isn't, so you can make decisions based on data that will eventually lead to more macro-conversions.

How to keep an eye on micro-conversions

To track micro-conversions, you need to set up a system that keeps track of every important action a user takes on your site. Most of the time, this is done with web analytics tools. There are two main types of tools to use.

How to track micro-conversions in Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the most widely used tool in the business for keeping track of how people use your site. The most recent version, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), is based on an event-based model that makes it easier than ever to track small conversions.

1. Define Your Events: First, figure out the little things you want to keep track of, like clicks on buttons, plays of videos, and downloads of PDFs.
2. How to Set Up Events in GA4: You can make and set up these events with Google Tag Manager (GTM) or the built-in GA4 interface.
3. Mark as a "Conversion": To see these events as key performance indicators, all you have to do is mark them as "conversions" in your GA4 dashboard.

You can make your own reports and funnels to see your data and understand the whole user journey on your site once you're done.

How to use behavior analytics tools to keep track of micro-conversions

Use behavior analytics tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg to learn more about the "why" behind your data. These tools let you see how people use your site in a visual way.

1. Put in the Code: Put a little piece of code on your website.
2. Set up heat maps: Make heatmaps for the most important pages on your site to see where people click, scroll, and spend their time.
3. Keep track of user sessions: You can see exactly what users do on your site, from their mouse movements to their clicks and scrolls, by recording anonymous video sessions of them.

This gives you the qualitative data that Google Analytics doesn't, so you can see how frustrated or confused a user is in real time.