The Blog on Branding

Measuring Micro-Conversion Actions

Conversion rate is often seen as the number of customers purchasing a product vs. the number of customers viewing your website. However, there are many smaller events that encourage customers to continue viewing your site or remind them of your products after they’ve left. These are also conversion actions, and are critical in keeping potential customers coming back for more. In order to use them effectively, you need to clearly define each conversion action, how to measure it, and what its value is. This article discusses several micro-conversion actions and their use based on the advice of internet expert Tim Ash.

“I did want that watch…”




Read on to learn how to use various micro-conversion actions in the categories of:

• Page Views
• Participation
• Purchasing

Page Views

You can use page views and related statistics to measure significant micro-conversion actions. One significant micro-conversion action is the click-through-rate.

Click-through-rate:

• Measures how many people click through to another page on your site
• Gauges the effectiveness of your website
• Easily measured
• Informative

However, the click-through rate is not the most effective measure in every situation. For advertisers, for example, page view statistics can be more important than click-through rate. Internet users rarely click on ads; instead, they remember the product or service and come back to it later. Ash also mentions the average advertising revenue per page view as a measure for advertising effectiveness and micro-conversion actions.

Page views are also important for websites with an educational focus. Whether you are a non-profit organization trying to raise money for political campaigns or a business selling a highly specialized product or service, many websites target education of customers as a primary goal. In this case, page view statistics as well as time spent on the pages serves as a good measure of a micro-conversion action.

Participation

“Put me in, coach!”



Many websites are structured so that visitors can participate without actually having to make a purchase. This participation represents important micro-conversion actions that can later lead to large sales.

The download rate or printout rate of special offers or coupons is one good measure. Many websites offer free online offers that do not require customers to submit personal information, hoping that this will inspire them to return for more products. The rate at which these offers are downloaded, printed, or used is an important measure of a micro-conversion action.

The form-fill rate measures more involved participation by the visitor. The form can vary from a brief survey to a highly detailed form or application. The form-fill rate is an excellent concrete measure of smaller conversion actions and provides consumer information which can lead to larger ones.

Purchasing

A purchase is always viewed as a conversion action, but there are several ways to measure how successful and profitable the conversion was.

The sales conversion rate is the most basic measure; it is the percentage of visitors to your site who complete a purchase.

The shopping cart abandonment rate is used to see how many visitors start the check-out process but never finish it. See this Branding Brand blog post for great tips on how to avoid shopping cart abandonment.

“Not everyone embraces the cart the way these guys do!”


The revenue per visitor and profit per visitor statistics can be more detailed and useful. Revenue per visitor is particularly useful when deciding which products or services to focus on. If you have a high sales conversion rate but are selling only your cheapest products, you can change the focus of your site in order to raise revenue. Using both statistics allows you to measure the effectiveness of the changes; if your revenue goes up while your sales conversion rate goes down, your website is successfully channeling customers through desired conversion actions.

Measuring revenues, as with other conversion actions, doesn’t have to be limited to retail sales. This article describes how to adjust the revenue per visitor statistic to apply to other aspects of business, such as marketing, advertising, and customer support.

Similar adjustments can be made for any of the measures discussed in this article. The important thing to remember is that you can measure conversion actions in any way tailored to your business, as long as they are easily defined and concretely measurable.

Profit per visitor is closely related to revenue per visitor, but useful in a different situation. If your products have different profit margins, you can use this measure to determine how much profit you are making. Your revenues can be very high while your profit is still low, and using both statistics allows you to catch this and work to correct it.

Clearly defining small conversion actions along the path to the ultimate conversion action increases the effectiveness of your website. Targeting many of these defined conversion actions at once is the most effective way to lead your customers to the the big sale. Micro-conversion actions aren’t limited to the ones listed here, nor do they have to be specific to retail sites; they can be tailored to any business or organization and used to increase the ultimate conversion rate.

Eliza Dreier Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.