How to track micro conversions accurately

Failing to track how your users are ‘micro converting’ to crucial engagement actions on your website leads to friction in your macro conversions.

In our earlier article, we introduced you to micro conversions. We spoke about their definition, their relevance for your conversion goals and their tracking to optimize conversion rate. (Why should you be tracking them, and which ones should you track) If you missed it by any chance, no worries. You can read it here. It is titled What is Micro Conversion-the complete story. However, in that article, we just briefly outlined the process of tracking micro conversions and said we’ll be back with more. So here we are with the complete detailed process to help you assess how effectively you have captured the attention of your website customers.

There are 2 ways of tracking micro conversions, for conversion goal optimization. Both use Google Analytics.

The First option

It uses Google Tag Manager along with Google analytics as the micro conversions are tracked as events-

Events are simply the user interactions on your website. They could be file/page downloads, click of an ad, or even a video play.

The steps involved in tracking micro conversions as events

• Set up GTM account.
• Set your website on Google Analytics.
• Search for relevant micro conversion metrics for your website and create a trigger as well as a GA event tracking tag for that event. For example, if you own an e-commerce website, you will want to track the clicks on the ‘Checkout’ link.
• Go to GTM, click on ‘variables’ on the left-hand menu and check the box next to ‘click URL’
• Click on ‘Triggers’ to create a new trigger.
• Complete the settings circuit so the event is firing through every click and save the trigger with an easy name.
• Click on ‘tags’, then select ‘universal analytics’ for that tag and give it a descriptive name. Save it.

You have now completed the trigger as well as the tag and so you can publish the tag.

You will be able to track that event on GA and optimize conversion rate.

The Second option.

This option helps you track micro conversion metrics using GA with the help of goals.

There 4 different types of goals that you can set up in Google Analytics for conversion goals optimization

• Destination goal–when the user visits a certain URL/web page or an app screen.
• Duration goal–when the visitor spends specific amount of time on the page.
• Pages per session goal–when the customer views a specific number of pages on the site.
• Event goal–when the user triggers an event like clicking on a button etc.

Goals are used for setting up GA funnels, which are different steps that users take before a macro conversion. This is important if you’re tracking micro conversions because a direct connect is observed between the funnel stages and micro conversions.

GA has gone a step ahead to simplify your task, with goal templates that save you the trouble of creating goals from scratch.

Steps to track micro conversion metrics using goals.

• Go to Google analytics.
• Choose the web property and click ‘Admin’ on the left-hand menu.
• Go to the view column and click on ‘goals’.
• When a new page pops up, click ‘+New Goal’ at the top of the table, choose ‘custom’ and then click on ‘continue’.
• Give a descriptive name for the goal, click on the radio button next to ‘destination’ and then click on ‘continue’.
• You can enter the URL of your checkout page for the details of your goals.

  Turning on the funnel is not mandatory at this point but if turned on, it gives you the choice to add other steps in the sales process. Additional micro conversion metrics can be added here.

• >Click on ‘save’

There you go! Your tracking set up is complete to optimize conversion rate.

After the set up you can view your goals in the reporting section of GA, under the ‘conversions’ menu.

That is all you need for your conversion goal optimization, but since we assured you that we will be back with the complete details of the tracking process, we must let you know this too. Regardless of whether you use GTM or GA, did you know that google analytics is tracking your micro conversions anyways? So, how do you monitor that data?

Luckily, GA provides reports that enable you to view your events and/or goal analytics.

To view events, you must click on ‘Behaviour’-select ‘events’ from the drop- down menu and click on ‘overview’.

To view goals, click on ‘conversions’- select ‘goals’ and choose ‘overview’ from the drop-down menu that appears.

As you can infer by now that tracking micro conversions is not a trivial exercise but intrinsic to optimize conversion rate. It takes a serious amount of investment in terms of time & learning for iterating your conversion goals and the only way forward is to get this tracking process right.