 "Micro & Nano Conversions - The Hidden Drivers Of eCommerce Growth")
In my career, I’ve had conversations about heatmaps and scroll depths shut down by executive teams. For example, the nuances of a landing page or the intricate details of a customer journey are often dismissed in favour of broader business objectives like Gross Profit and Revenue and heavily influenced by marketing budgets and stock availability.
It makes sense that leaders focus on the bigger picture. They may not care about clicks on a specific link. They might also not worry if customers see a product promotion below the fold. These details may not be important in the boardroom.
But, within every business, there’s a team or sometimes just one individual who is obsessed with the metrics that define customer behaviour. Beyond completed purchases, lead form submissions, and high-impact actions lies an ecosystem of micro and nano conversions guiding users through the sales funnel. Understanding and optimising these smaller interactions can lead to significant improvements in conversion rates and revenue.
What are micro & nano conversions?
Micro conversions are measurable actions that indicate a user is progressing towards a macro conversion. They demonstrate engagement, intent, and trust in the brand; some examples could include:
Adding a product to the shopping cart
Signing up for a newsletter or email list
Creating a user account
Using on-site search functions
Engaging with product images or videos
Entering the checkout process but not completing it
Nano conversions, on the other hand, are even smaller; they are interactions that provide early signals of interest. These subtle user behaviours might not immediately lead to a sale but indicate that a user is potentially warming up to the idea of converting; some examples include:
Hovering over product images for extended periods
Partially completing a form but not submitting it
Watching product videos without clicking on additional pages
Engaging with live chat without starting a conversation
Tracking both micro and nano conversions allows us to refine strategies and develop roadmaps that improve user experience, leading more customers toward final purchase.
Segmenting micro conversions by stages of the customer journey.
Mapping micro conversions to different stages of the journey can help us understand user behaviour at each step of the sales funnel, whilst not an exhaustive list (Customer Journeys can be unique). I’ve added some examples below, these are based on interactions that I’ve measured for various journeys over the year:
1. Awareness.
Page views
Time spent on site
Engagement with blog content
Watching videos but not clicking further
2. Consideration stage.
Adding items to a wishlist
Reading product reviews
Signing up for price alerts or stock notifications
Using site filters to refine searches
3. Intent stage.
Adding a product to the shopping cart
Applying a discount code but not completing checkout
Clicking on promotional banners
Initiating chat or contact forms
4. Post-purchase stage.
Creating an account after a purchase
Leaving a product review
Engaging with referral programs
Sharing a purchase on social media
By segmenting micro conversions in this way, we can tailor our CRO strategies to address frictions at each stage.
How micro conversions influence personalisation.
Personalisation for many brands feels like a Unicorn, a utopia that allows them to speak to their customers on an individual level. Micro conversions help us to take steps towards personalised experiences by providing insight into user preferences and behaviours.
For example:
A user adds an item to their wishlist, and they later receive an email notification when it’s on sale.
A visitor browses a specific product category, and they see related recommendations on their next visit.
A customer reads multiple product reviews, and they receive a targeted blog post about that product category.
By understanding micro-conversion data, we can create dynamic and personalised growth, marketing, optimisation, or other strategies that increase engagement and encourage purchases.
Micro conversions & paid advertising.
Micro conversions provide strong data points that can improve paid advertising and remarketing campaigns:
Retargeting users who engaged with category pages but didn’t add an item to their cart can be retargeted with personalised ads.
Building ‘Lookalike Audiences’ across Facebook and Google Ads can create audiences based on users who completed specific micro conversions, improving ad targeting with heightened intent users.
Budgeting and bid adjustments for those users who abandoned carts or engaged deeper with content could receive higher bid adjustments for retargeting campaigns.
Using micro conversion data in paid ad strategies can help us significantly increase return on ad spend (ROAS).
Final thoughts…
Micro and nano conversions provide insight into strong eCommerce performance; they act as stepping stones towards those KPIs we report on daily, weekly, monthly, etc. By tracking, analysing, and optimising these seemingly small yet significant interactions, we can:
Improve experiences for our users through more tailored journeys,
Improve acquisition and retention strategies through better audience understanding and
Resolve frictions and bottlenecks that lead to improved conversions and achieve higher overall revenue.
If you’re reading this and feel excited about the prospect of improving micro and nano conversions, I’d love to talk with you, so get in touch today.
