Determining Micro-conversions In Internet Marketing
About five years ago, all that anybody wanted was to be at the top of the heap in Google results
. Search engine optimization success became a goal in itself and in the process, plenty of money was spent while plenty of people forgot that the site had to be designed to achieve its goals (usually aimed at profitability) to be sustainable.
The result has been an evolution from focusing on search engine marketing, link building and viral marketing, and instead focusing on conversion rate optimization and improvement through web analytics and similar business intelligence. And in 2010, we find a further refinement of our approach is necessary. Not only does a focus on the single-number conversion rate create some pretty low-return, disappointing results, it is actually misrepresents the true value of the website to the business.
The new approach to web analytics and internet marketing includes the concept of micro-conversions - we review the ideas here, and how they might be applicable to your business.
What are micro-conversions?
A site's ultimate conversion goal might fit into a wide variety of categories. Ecommerce sites are ultimately aiming to sell products; other sites aim to sell subscriptions, to get people signed up to an email list, to have people subscribe to an RSS feed or to have people click away from the site, and thus make the owner money on the ads.
Micro-conversions are any small steps towards these ultimate goals that may lead to a conversion on another platform, or at another time. Micro-conversions recognize that there is still value in internet marketing, article marketing, press release distribution etc, even if many of the new visitors to your website brought by these means don't immediately convert. The activities that constitute micro-conversions will differ from site to site; some examples are:
Making an enquiry about a product
Saving a product to a wishlist
Joining an email list (if that is not the site's main conversion measurement)
Looking up map directions to a physical store
If you sell products via various platforms (for example, via an eBay or Amazon store as well as your own website), even looking at several related products could be viewed as a micro-conversions, it could well lead to a sale through your eBay or Amazon store instead, where pricing is different.
Setting your micro-conversions
Sometimes the activities which constitute a micro-conversion and arise from your web marketing strategy are self-evident. Sometimes you may not even be aware of the enormous proportion of users that micro-convert on your site, and the activities that most people come for.
An easy way to find out is creating an exit survey for your site. These must be brief (as they pop up when people are ready to leave anyway), and permission for them should ideally be gained at the start of the visit. These exit surveys should ask 3 main questions to help you with your internet marketing and website design strategies:
What was the purpose of your visit today?
Were you able to fulfill that purpose?
If not, why not?
Measuring micro-conversions
Once you've identified your micro-conversions, it is a simple matter of using your web analytics package to track both macro- and micro-conversions. Once you start making changes that are geared towards improving micro-conversion rates, you'll almost certainly see macro-conversion rates go up as well. For instance, if your website design makes it easier to find the directions to your store, or your customer enquiry response time is faster, you'll obviously sell more products.
Micro-conversions make the entire practice of web analytics, conversion optimization and internet marketing much more positive - they allow you to see the true results of all your hard work, and also improve your ultimate goal attainment rate.
by: Gregory Smyth
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