Most people associate conversions with the moment a website visitor becomes a paying customer. While a transaction is the ultimate conversion, it’s not the only measure of success.
There are other smaller actions that website visitors can take towards your main conversion goals. These small steps, known as micro conversions, are “hidden” conversion gold mines for any website.
Micro conversions have a significant impact on the overall conversion rate of a site. That’s because a micro conversion provides deep insight into how visitors are behaving and navigating through the sales funnel.
In this guide, I’ll explain everything you need to know about leveraging micro conversions to improve the overall conversion rate of your website.
What is a Micro Conversion?
Micro conversions are incremental steps that website visitors take to show interest in your brand, products, or services.
Most people don’t land on a website and immediately click on the “buy now” button. They take smaller actions before completing a “macro” conversion.
What’s the difference between a micro conversion and a maco conversion?
Macro conversions are the ultimate goal of your website. In most cases, macro conversions are transactional. Purchasing a product, subscribing to a service, requesting a consultation, or signing up for a free trial would all fall into the macro category.
Micro conversions typically fall into one of two categories—process milestones or secondary actions. A process milestone represents linear movement toward a macro conversion (such as adding an item to the shopping cart). Secondary actions (such as mentioning a brand on social media) don’t directly work towards the primary goal, but they are still indications of potential macro conversions in the feature.
For example, let’s say I stumble upon one of your blog posts. I found the article interesting, so I shared it with my friends on social media. I also signed up for your email newsletter to receive similar posts in the future.
I didn’t buy anything, but my actions are still significant to your bottom line.
By implementing and tracking micro conversions on your website, you can analyze buyer behavior and better optimize your site for higher conversion rates.
Micro conversions allow you to nurture your leads, build better conversion funnels, and measure the effectiveness of your communication channels.
10 Micro Conversions You Should Use on Your Site
If you’re ready to unlock hidden conversions on your website, you need to start leveraging micro conversions. These are the top ten micro conversions that you should be using on your website to help drive macro conversions.
I’ll explain how each one can be used in greater detail below.
1. Email Newsletter
All websites across every industry should have an email opt-in form on the site. From small personal websites to international ecommerce brands and everything in between, everyone needs to leverage email marketing.
A website visitor subscribing to your email list is a huge win for your business. This micro conversion is the ultimate way to nurture that lead.
Here’s a look at some of the top reasons why people subscribe to email newsletters.
If you can come up with ways to fulfill these needs on your website, it increases the chances that people will subscribe and complete this critical micro conversion.
Once people opt-in, you’ll have a direct line of communication with them. You’ll be able to send them product updates, promotions, personalized recommendations, and other lead-nurturing campaigns to drive conversions.
Email marketing delivers a high ROI. For every $1 you spend on an email marketing campaign, you can expect to receive $42 in return.
Welcome emails alone have an 82% open rate. So you can potentially get a new subscriber to complete a macro conversion immediately after the opt-in.
An email subscriber is extremely valuable. This micro conversion helps increase the lifetime value of the customer.
2. Blog Comments
Don’t underestimate the value of a blog comment. While it may not be as impactful as an email opt-in, someone who comments on your blog posts is genuinely interested in engaging with your brand.
Think about the process someone goes through before commenting on an article.
First, they have to land on your post. Whether they found your blog through an organic search, navigating directly to your website, or found it on social media, the visitor had to take one initial step to land on your site.
Next, the visitor has to actually read and retain your content, which is huge. Think about how often you land on an article, skim it quickly, and just leave. Someone who does that won’t take the time to comment on anything.
A person who comments on your blog might agree with what you’re saying, disagree with you, or they just want to share their own thoughts and opinion. Whatever the reason might be, they are interested enough to engage with a comment.
This micro conversion entices that visitor to come back to your site in the future. Maybe they want to continue having a discussion in the comments or share their opinion on another post.
Regardless of the reason, you’ll have a greater chance of getting a macro conversion from someone who is constantly coming back to your website. So do your best to encourage comments on all of your posts. Respond to comments and push for the conversation to continue.
3. Add to Cart
A website visitor can’t buy something until they add it to their shopping cart. This micro conversion is a requirement in the purchase process.
However, not every add-to-cart session ends with a sale. Take a look at the average ecommerce conversion funnel.
But those abandoned carts aren’t a lost cause. These visitors are already familiar with your brand and have identified specific products that they’re interested in buying. You can get them to convert in the future.
Even if you don’t improve your transaction rate, just by increasing the number of sessions with an add-to-cart, you’ll ultimately increase your sales volume.
How can you improve your add-to-cart rate?
There are subtle changes you can make on your website to optimize this crucial mico conversion. Something as small as moving the add-to-cart button to a primary point of focus on the screen can make a huge difference.
Use a heatmap to make data-driven design changes. Tools like Crazy Egg make it easier for you to get this mico conversion right.
You’ll get visual reports displaying exactly how visitors behave on your website. Use that information to optimize your add-to-cart button. You can even use Crazy Egg to run A/B tests.
4. Sharing Content
Social sharing is another major micro conversion win. While the share itself doesn’t necessarily put money in your pocket, the impact of that share is priceless.
Content sharing is essentially free marketing for your website. Depending on how the person shares your content, it can be exposed to hundreds or even thousands of other people. As a result, it creates brand awareness for your company.
Sharing can come in all different shapes and sizes. It could be as simple as forwarding an email newsletter. Or maybe someone shared one of your social media posts with their followers.
In addition to posting highly shareable content on your distribution channels, you should also encourage sharing on your website. Make it as easy as possible for website visitors to complete this micro conversion. Simply add social sharing icons to your blog posts and content pages; we do this here at Crazy Egg. Check out this example from a recent post about building a brand:
These icons on the left side of the screen make it possible for people to share our content with just one click. As you can see, we encourage email opt-ins as well with a sticky bar at the top of the screen.
Both of these micro conversion elements are easy to add to any website.
5. Ebook Download
Consider offering a free ebook on your website in exchange for an email address. This essentially kills two birds with one stone.
On the one hand, you’re getting a new email subscriber, which is an important micro conversion that we’ve already discussed. But the ebook download itself is another micro conversion on its own.
A person downloading an ebook is clearly interested in your industry. This download will provide them with more information about a particular topic or category.
For some websites, ebooks are a macro conversion.
But even if you’re selling ebooks on your site, you could always offer a free chapter download as a promotional method. The sample chapter or freebie could be enough to entice visitors to convert and buy the whole thing in the future.
6. Watching a Video
In today’s day and age, every website should be producing video content. I’d start by uploading your video content to YouTube, and then repurpose it on all of your distribution channels, including your website.
For starters, videos will drive more people to your website in the first place. In fact, videos appear 70% of the top 100 search listings. Google, the world’s largest search engine, owns YouTube, the world’s second largest search engine.
Consumers are 64-85% more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it.
So by producing and showcasing product videos on your website, it drastically increases the chances of driving macro conversions. That’s why 88% of ecommerce websites say that videos on product pages have helped increase conversion rates.
Video consumption has become part of the consumer purchase process.
Here’s something else to take into consideration. Videos drastically increase the length of time visitors spend on your website. Users spend an average of 7 minutes and 21 seconds on pages with video content, compared to just 2 minutes and 48 seconds on pages without video.
Getting people to watch video content is a significant micro conversion win.
7. Viewing Multiple Pages
Measuring pageviews is a crucial KPI that’s often overlooked. But visitors who visit multiple pages are more likely to convert.
You can assume that pageviews indicate a visitor’s level of engagement with your content. More pageviews would imply a high engagement level.
But with that said, pageviews alone could be a deceiving statistic. Some websites experience high page views and low conversions because users are navigating but failing to find what they’re looking for; this is not good.
You can use online tools to figure out how visitors are interacting with your website content. In addition to heatmaps, Crazy Egg can record visitor sessions. These reports show you exactly how people are browsing as they navigate from page to page.
By viewing session recordings, you’ll be able to figure out if people are getting stuck or experiencing pain points in the navigation. Then you can optimize your site based on this data.
8. Filling Out a Form
Online forms are excellent mico conversions that you should be encouraging on your website. The process of completing a form helps to fulfill steps in the conversion cycle.
In many cases, websites implement short forms to convert users. Shorter forms are easier to fill out and produce a low amount of friction. But they aren’t ideal in every scenario.
In terms of lead generation, multi-step forms will be more beneficial to your overall conversion rate. Multi-step forms are more relevant to the user, improve the data you collect, and allow you to send more personalized follow-up messages.
According to a recent case study from Venture Harbour, multi-step forms can help increase conversions by up to 300%.
In addition to lead generation forms, you could also encourage visitors to fill out surveys to engage with your brand online.
Whether you’re using short forms, long forms, multi-step forms, or some other variation, like a survey, your forms will ultimately help you drive micro conversions on your website.
9. Creating an Account
Always encourage site visitors to create an account or user profile on your website. This allows you to personalize their content and offer relevant recommendations.
While 7% of visitors clicking on a product recommendation might seem like a low number, those clicks result in 24% of orders and 26% of total revenue.
Website visitors who click on product recommendations are 5.5 times more likely to convert than ones who didn’t click. Personalization increases the likelihood that a prospect buys a product by 75%.
So while an account creation doesn’t directly monetize a site visit, the impact of that micro conversion can lead to multiple sales in the future.
10. Brand Mentions on Social Media
Earlier, we talked about the importance of encouraging content sharing on multiple channels, including social media. Brand mentions are similar, but not quite the same.
With a brand mention, people aren’t necessarily sharing a piece of content that you created. Instead, they’re organically talking about your brand. But this is still a free promotion for your business.
Here’s an example. Let’s say someone buys something from your ecommerce website. When it arrives, they take a picture of the product, upload it to Instagram, and tag your brand.
While the brand mention itself doesn’t necessarily drive revenue, the result of this micro conversion is extremely valuable.
Not only is the customer more likely to buy from you again, but it increases brand awareness for their friends, family, and followers.
Come up with clever ways to encourage brand mentions on social media. Create brand hashtags, run contests, giveaways, and other promotions that entice users to mention your brand online. Use your website to promote these campaigns and get more people to talk about you on various social channels.
Final Thoughts
While micro conversions might not seem like a big deal, they are crucial to the success of any website. Some micro conversions are actually a necessary step in the conversion process.
By tracking micro conversions, you can improve the buying experience for people visiting your website.
Use tools like heatmaps, A/B tests, and session recordings to make data-driven design decisions that will improve the performance of your micro conversions.
Micro conversions help increase brand awareness and drive engagement for potential leads. By following the tips and best practices that I’ve outlined in this guide, you can turn these hidden conversions into a gold mine for your website.
