The Micro Conversion Mindset

How to design landing pages that don’t sell, but guide

Let’s be realistic, most people don’t land on your site and immediately make a purchase. Even if sometimes it feels like you do that exact thing, far too often… While there are definitely things you can do to increase the number of immediate purchasers, not everyone is as much of an impulse buyer as I am.

With ads getting more expensive by the day, it’s time to focus more on micro conversions. They help you identify who to re-target (if your audience is large enough) and start building a relationship. They’re also a valuable signal of your traffic quality.

One challenge? A lot of CRO specialists hate on micro conversions because they don’t always perform well as A/B testing metrics. But give them a chance.

Micro conversions are quality signals that your audience is interested and taking the time to consider you. For example:

• Taking a quiz
• Opening tabs on your landing page to get more information
• Watching a video

These are the small signals that say, “Hey, I might be interested in you” —think of them as the business equivalent to sliding into someone’s DMs.

Here’s your guide to micro conversions and how to use them.

Why do micro conversions get a bad rep?

Micro conversions tend to get a bad reputation because they’ve often been used unsuccessfully in A/B tests. You run an experiment that increases add-to-carts, but no one actually buys. Loads of people complete your quiz… but they don’t convert.

So why does this happen?

1. Micro conversions don’t guarantee macro conversions. Not every micro action will lead to a purchase. We need to be critical about which micro conversions correlate with the end goal by conducting a proper correlation analysis.
2. There are also vanity micro conversions. For me, these are usually metrics like scroll depth, session duration, or pages per session. Increasing those doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve added value—more often, it means you’ve hidden information really well. (I’d say blogs are an exception, where the goal is for the user to actually read.)
3. If you’re optimizing for micro conversions alone, you’re focusing on the wrong goal. You should never optimize for micro conversions. You are still optimizing for the same end goal, but using micro conversions as signals of intent.

When you keep that in mind, you start to understand the role micro conversions play, rather than treating them as the final outcome.

How to identify micro conversions

Start by tracking all potential micro conversions to get a sense of user behavior, preferences, and the path to conversion.

This can feel overwhelming, so ask yourself:

• What are the most common actions, and why?
• What are people focusing on?
• What are they actually doing on your website?

Session recordings and heatmaps are especially helpful here. They’ll bring the most common actions to life and highlight where users are engaging.

From there, tracking these behaviors in an analytics tool like GA4 allows you to dive deeper.

Ryan Levander explores how to do this and set up different types of consideration goals in his recent article, “What ‘Sale’ Are You Optimizing For?” He also goes into more detail on how to set up these micro conversions in GA4 using Google Tag Manager, so definitely worth checking out.

You can also segment users into purchasers vs. non-purchasers and identify which actions are more common among those who convert. Where do those actions happen in the journey?

It’s important to distinguish between correlation and causation. For example, you might notice that many purchasers read a blog post—but when you break down the timeline, you realize it usually happens after the purchase. That’s interesting for your post-purchase email flow, but it won’t help you increase conversions upfront.

How to use micro conversions

Once you identify which micro conversions relate to sales, you can use them to add value and build a relationship. For example, you might increase the number of users who opt into email or SMS, which provides you with more opportunities to nurture them.

Micro conversions are also useful for testing on low-traffic websites. When you don’t have enough macro conversions to work with, micro conversions can offer early signals. Even on high-traffic sites, they’re valuable alongside your primary KPI to help you understand what’s happening.

Recently, for a pre-launch brand, we analyzed heatmaps and analytics for FAQ engagement on the landing page. It was fascinating to see which questions stood out and which ingredients had caught people’s attention. We also included a drop-down for ingredients and were surprised by which ones received the most attention.

Think beyond the standard micro conversions

There are a few common micro conversions, including quizzes, videos, and tabs with additional information. But there are many creative ways to start the conversation. For example:

• Dynamic social proof. Think Instagram-style scrolling social proof or integrating your social media feed into your website. We all spend enough time on social media to recognize these!
• Interactive product demonstrations. These are more commonly used in SaaS, but if you have a complex physical product, why not bring it to life and guide people through it?
• Augmented reality. Amazon now offers an increasing number of products that let you view them in your own home. It’s a great tool for mobile shoppers to better understand product size and appearance. If only I had this when I ordered what I thought was a great deal on a mop and bucket… but it turned out to be a toy mop for children. Oops.
• Video Q&A. Tools like Videowise enable you to answer questions through video, allowing users to continue watching based on their follow-up questions. You can even measure the number of additional videos watched.

All of this starts with understanding how your customers prefer to consume information and tailoring the format to the use case. Visualizing a gift or a piece of furniture is really helpful. For a complex product, video can simplify the message.

In some cases, a simple tab or pop-up might be enough—and that’s okay too.

When I was working with Whole Supp, the most common question we got was, “What is the nutritional information?” I was so frustrated. It was featured in the product carousel, with a separate page dedicated to it, and when they scrolled down, another button appeared. What more did users want?! In the end, we added the info to the product description block. Conversions didn’t necessarily increase, but the number of questions decreased.

So be critical about where micro conversions are helping rather than hindering the journey, and use them to drive a more engaged audience—one that can convert over time.