Understanding Online Conversions

First, it’s important to understand the definition of a conversion.  Every website is created with a specific goal in mind that helps a business succeed.  The goal should be tied to a visitor’s activity on the website.  When a visitor performs a specific activity that helps a business succeed, this is referred to as a conversion (Measure the outcomes, n.d.).  Conversions can be analyzed in various ways.  This post will go over two ways companies should be looking at their data to help drive additional success.

Macro and Micro Conversions

A website’s success shouldn’t be defined by one metric.  Instead, companies need to understand macro and micro conversions.  A macro conversion is what most people would imagine as the goal of a website.  For an ecommerce website this would be an order or revenue generated activity.  However, micro orders can be important for these businesses as well.  A micro conversion looks at activities visitors perform before converting a macro conversion.  Examples of a micro conversion could include an email sign up, creating an account, or hitting certain pages on a website (Track your micro, n.d.).

The question becomes how do businesses use this information to create more conversions?  This is where micro conversions become very important.  Understanding the website activities that lead to a conversion will help businesses strategies what tactics they need to optimize towards.  An example can be seen with email sign ups.  The marketing agency Convert published an article related to this concept.  The image below demonstrates a key idea from their study and shows that only 3% of visitors to a website generate a macro conversion on their first visit (Heijden, 2015).

Understanding the remaining 97% of visitors is important as companies try to convert them into customers.  A repeat visitor is more likely to convert on a website (Heijden, 2015).  Therefore, companies can use their micro conversion data to help drive repeat visitation.  If a company has obtained a visitors email address through a sign up page, they can send emails to try and bring the visitor back to their website.  Another tactic could be the use of remarketing ads through paid social or display advertising.  The pie chart above shows that each of these channels has a role in driving visitors to the shopping cart.  This shows that there is value to obtaining a micro conversion and companies need to understand how they can optimize their strategies based on this information.

The Value of a Page

One of the micro conversions previously mentioned was hitting certain pages on a website.  Every page on a website has a purpose to the visitor.  Some are geared towards providing information while others try to push a visitor down the purchase funnel.  However, a conversion might not happen without all the pages a visitor consumed.  Therefore, a company needs to understand what pages visitors consume before generating a conversion.  Once they understand this information, they can try to drive more traffic to these pages and optimize a visitor’s experience.

In order to analyze this information, companies need to apply a value to each page that was consumed before a conversion.  Adobe Analytics allows companies to perform this task by applying a participation score that gives equal credit to each page in the conversion path.  The image below demonstrates this process.  At the bottom of the image a $100 purchase is made and each page the visitor consumed saw a $100 credit (Gaines, 2010).

This can be done across any conversion.  Although the example showed revenue, companies could also use email sign ups, downloads, or any conversion type they are tracking.  When companies start to analyze the overall data, they may find that their highest traffic pages aren’t the most valuable.  The example below shows this story for a subscription based conversion (Gaines, 2010).

Conversions help companies generate a profit.  However, companies need to understand how they obtained a conversion in order to drive additional activity.  Be sure to find the story that helps your company be successful.

References:    

Gaines, B. (2010, March 11). Summit Topic #3: Participation. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/summit-topic-3-participation/

Heijden, D. (2015, January 8). Measuring Micro Conversions. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from http://blog.convert.com/measuring-micro-conversions.html

Measure the outcomes of your advertising and marketing campaigns. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2015, from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2665457?hl=en

Track your micro conversions. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2015, from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2665210?hl=en&ref_topic=2665176