goal 1 = view product
goal 2 = add to cart
goal 3 = confirm
goal 4 = register account

often, ‘micro’ conversions are necessary for a/b or multivariate testing since your ultimate goal may not have enough successes to adequately evaluate or interpret test results.

this is one of the questions I’ve asked myself a couple of times before - I think I understand your point about conversion rates..your opinion seems to be that “yeah (macro) conversion rate is the metric I want to increase eventually - but we have to measure and improve other things to get there (overall site experience”.

Or well that’s what I had been thinking until I read this post hehe ;).

“A quick note: Your micro conversions don’t have to lead up to the macro conversion (though in this case they kind of do)”

—> What’s the point of micro conversions not leading up to the macro conversion? Why would you care for micro conversions if they do NOT lead up to the macro conversion?

- I can only imagine this if you’re making a site for fun (not working for somebody’s e-commerce site)

- or if they micro conversion helps get people to buy offline

but what would be the point of a micro conversion (say posting photos/registering) if they did not lead up to a higher macro conversion rate in the end?

This one got me puzzled (because I’m sure you have a point, but I guess I’m missing it!)…?

Kristen: You can use the E word here, I mean that! The story in your comment is great, using the Micro to see where / why the Macro might be dropping.

See you in SFO!

Alice Cooper Stalker: In answer to your questions at the end of your comment….

That is precisely the place that something like a survey (or other primary or secondary market research) can be of great help.

For example at my last company we were using a onexit survey to measure things like “likelihood to recommend” (net promoter) or “likelihood to buy offline” etc, things that our micro conversions (”% who viewed the product pages”) would never be able to quite answer.

It was also perfect context to the web analytics data.

Chris: Your comment reminded me of sending our online conversion reports to the Sales team. As we got better on our website (and you bet we did!) the Sales team would cringe (some would even hate us) because every dollar converted online was a dollar they could get less commission on because they were responsible for sales through the real world stores of our retail partners!

So you are absolutely right, high conversions might have multiple nuances and you have provided great examples of why and recommendations for what to do. I am grateful for that thanks!!

For any web analytics metric (or any other metric for that matter) it is critical to keep sight of what the organization is trying to achieve and then struggle as hard as possible to glean all the necessary context. That’s how we can peel the layers and make our efforts more profitable.

Thanks so much again for adding such a wonderful comment.

-Avinash.

Nice post. On a (slightly) related topic: Is a high, or increasing site conversion rate always a good thing?

Sometimes I think it’s a warning that something is going wrong.

Let’s assume you are a retailer (not hard for me) and you a rational being (harder for me). You want to spend money creating traffic to your site until the last dollar you spend creates just a dollar in marginal, incremental profit (and the nest dollar spent would create less than a dollar in profit).

That’s the point you want to stop spending, go and make the site work harder to increase conversion, so that marginal cut-off point advances.

But what if your understanding and control of your marketing activity is sub-optimal? A high conversion rate could indicate you aren’t spending enough money (or rather creating enough traffic - I’m assuming you need to spend to get visitors).

Every extra dollar you spend will probably reduce your overall site conversion (because you’re going to buy the best quality traffic first, right?) So as you spend more, your conversion drops until that marginal cut-off.

If your conversion rate is significantly higher than you peers, you might be missing an opportunity to generate more traffic, and more profitable sales.

C

Great post. I work for a food manufacturing/marketing company. We do not sell products online so there is no e-commerce transaction. Our BIG conversion is to try to get people to register with our site. Our micro-conversions are recipe-related tasks that visitors conduct. People view recipes. People print recipes (higher level of engagement than just viewing becuase they are committing resources…paper and ink from their printers). People email recipes to friends. People review recipes, etc…etc… These are our micro-conversions.

What I find interesting is looking at the relationships between these microconversions from a high level. What percentage of people that view recipes are likely to go the extra mile and print them? What percentage of people that view recipes are likely to email them? Are there relationships between your micro-conversions and your BIG conversion?

I hate to use the “E” word, but we use micro conversions as indication of positive behavior - or Engagement. For an informational site, we look at things like reading a white paper, pages per visit, completing an internal search, etc. as small success events indicating a positive Engagement with our site.

On one of your posts about engagement, I mentioned we created a weighted model that combines these positive behaviors into one number to monitor on a monthly basis (with the help of the talented people at ZAAZ). It’s not the most intuitive process for leadership to understand, but we use it to complement the macro conversions and watch for pain points in our site. If our macro conversions are down, usually our micro ones are too, but we can get an idea of where we should focus our attention and start testing.

Thanks again for another great post. Hope to see you in San Francisco!

No doubt micro metrics demand more attention than what they have been traditionally given and this becomes more obvious when you view these metrics in light of non-ecommerce based sites. For e.g. look at the following metrics we used for a yoga website.

• Number of people reading Articles on yoga
• Number of people reading various Programs available with the institute
• Number of people using the Contact us page

Managing these metrics well was resulting in positive business growth i.e. customers were landing at the institute after interacting with the website. This suggests that these ‘soft’ metrics DO add value to the business in many ways.

The scene however changes when you have an ecommerce site. Businesses tend to put all their efforts in managing ‘Macro’ conversion rates (e.g. customers joining online) and ignoring the benefits that come out of the Micro metrics (e.g. customers physically coming to the institute and joining) thus loosing business.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=724735&op=1&view=all&subj=732214187&id=500386740

:)

I think micro actions, as you describe, it is slightly different from what I was hoping to communicate in the article. The concept of micro actions is a important one and bears understanding and quantifying. But micro conversions are tasks all by themselves, some people will convert on the site but many others are there for other purposes and my point of view is that we should measure that aggressively.

So, at the risk of confusing the issues, micro conversions are accomplishments of other goals for which people are on the site (other than what you think the site’s primary purpose is).

Helen: It would be very difficult to totally “dedupe” the numbers in the scenario you describe, but I think that there is still value from measuring both macro and micro.

Exactly as you mention cleanly segmenting people will help improve the quality of data (so say start with the 100 that convert, then degrade them into small buckets), understanding the purchase behavior will help as well (this post: Excellent Analytics Tip#6: Measure Days & Visits to Purchase) and finally if you trend the numbers over time and complement them with something like 4Q (or another such tool) then I think you’ll be kosher: Have greater confidence in the data and do a great job of measuring both macro and micro.

Thanks for the great comment, always nice when someone makes you think. :)

Ned: You are right, that would work as well. My stress in this post was that micro conversions can be different customer tasks or different customer segments. But. . . .

It is certainly advisable that you track the “steps leading up to macro conversion” and then eliminate barriers. In this scenario you might have micro conversions that lead directly into a macro conversion.

Chuck: Great add and a perfect use of this concept. It is also a great use of Omniture Discover since it allows so much more flexibility in defining segments and structuring your queries.

My thought though is that if you have defined those segments right then atleast it will help you explain to your management about content consumption and success of each of those segments (even if success is not ordering something) and secondly perhaps you’ll get a better feel for what kinds of things might in the end lead in a macro consumption and what does not.

Maybe adding in a survey or some remote usability might even add color to your Discover analysis, to add to the testable hypothesis that you are already generating.

-Avinash.

One thing we like to do with these events is not just view them over a segmented denominator, but use them to DEFINE visitor segments.

We’re an Omniture shop, so we use Discover to isolate these cohorts, look at their usage patterns to get a feel for how the user experiences are different, apart from the fact that one converted and another didn’t. Did they view our beautiful flash demo? Do they come back?

Of course this doesn’t tell you exactly what to do next, but it usually generates a lot of hypotheses and testable propositions.

Cheers,

Great post, but I think it is important to note that there probably is overlap between micro and macro conversions. Following your “Traffic to Website” chart, one visitor could have inflated the Research micro conversion yet performed one macro conversion. Because of duplication, it is difficult to divide total traffic into these conversion buckets and thus accurately assess the whole picture.

Maybe this is where segmentation analysis is helpful? What percentage of traffic researched and bought something? How many visits did this take? Maybe I’m straying too far from your original concept =)

Thanks,

Helen Vetrano

It was really thread bare analysis{Mi&Ma Analysis}. Since micro study we have to prove before management & management think thier own way!!!

Regards

Praveen Pandey
India, Pune