Conversions, what are they and why are they important?

What are conversions?

Conversions are a way to measure the success of your website. They measure when a website visitor completes a desired goal. They’re not always tied to money but can reflect how many people placed an order or clicked a button on our website.

It might seem like conversions always come with pound signs attached because you'll sometimes see them recorded both ways: either in terms of pounds spent (i.e., £40), units sold etc. Or they may include actions such as leads generated from forms submitted.

Why are conversions important?

Conversions are the lifeblood of online business. They're a way of measuring the success of our website or app at getting people to do what we want them to. Acting like a stake in the ground, they can help us improve our user experience and increase conversions through CRO.

They shouldn’t exist on their own, but along with other metrics like sample size and duration, so we can make informed decisions about our campaigns.

Macro vs Micro conversions

It's important to distinguish between micro and macro conversions; they're not equal.

Macro conversions are the end goal you want a visitor to take - typically something like buying stuff or signing up for a subscription.

Micro conversions are metrics that show us important actions users take on their journey to completing a macro conversion. This could include watching a marketing video, clicking a call-to-action button, creating an account, clicking a social link, or viewing a specific page in the funnel.

Generally, it’s best to avoid using micro-conversions to determine the success of an experiment. But, they can help support our ideas and give us deeper insight.

What should you track?

Most conversions fit into a few types: clicks, views, submissions, and purchases. The majority of conversions will come from one of these four actions. Your business should have one macro-conversion goal and supporting micro-conversion goals for every experiment.

DO TRACK: When tracking conversions, more data is better than less. It's better to err on the side of caution and track anything that could be useful rather than regret not tracking something later.

DO NOT TRACK: You can get away with not tracking some of the more granular site metrics if you have a winning test. We'll see those details reflected in our analytics anyway.

Phone calls or sales numbers can be used as a macro-conversion for businesses whose final conversion occurs over the phone. Call volume can be your micro-conversion, but sales numbers should still determine experiment success.

Summary

Conversions are a way of measuring the success of your website. For example, they can be used to track how many people take action on your site, such as making a purchase or submitting a form. Conversions are important because they help you improve your website through CRO.

Micro-conversions and macro-conversions are two types of conversions that you can track. It's best to track as many conversions as possible so that you can make informed decisions about your website.