Micro conversion: why the little things matter

Like it or not, most first time visitors to your website won’t be handing over their digits on their first visit to your website. No matter how compelling your value proposition is.

Their journey from discovery of your product to conversion is in most cases several visits long, involves comparisons, further research, and maybe a trial offer before you convert an expected percentage of site visitors.

Getting leads across the line is often thought about in terms of form optimisation and security/ speed of your payment gateway. But a lot happens before that point, and to a much larger percentage of users than to those who eventually convert.

There’s an opportunity at this early stage to convert also. Maybe not to a final sale but to the next step on the buyer journey. As users convert from first time visitors, to prospects, to interested and repeat buyers they convert from one step to the next.

Valuable micro-conversion points like sharing a blog post, downloading a whitepaper or even using your search tool indicate user interest or intent. And fostering that interest through to the next stage is a relatively low-cost and measurable step to take.

While macro changes such as design and UX overhauls often yield material results, the long term averages tend to return to trend. Lifting that baseline through micro-conversion optimisation is a strategy for those interested in long-term returns over continually chasing expensive short-term gains.

So what can you do to get started?

Know your popular content

Use Google analytics to filter your content by view, downloads, shares and concentrate your efforts there.

Play to your strengths

Find out which micro conversion points are already working already and build on that. As an example, if you’re getting a lot of strong social activity, make sure that it’s easy for your users to do.

Know your weak points

Is your website design less than contemporary? Maybe you already know your forms could be better, perhaps your website speed sucks. Invest across the whole website to ensure one part is not letting you down.  

Don’t stop testing

Test your CTA’s. Colours, copy, placement etc. Test and then test some more. It’s cheap to do and will yield incremental uplift.