• Occam's Razor, Thursday, April 3, 2008 1:31 PM

The ultimate conversion (be it a sale or a lead generated) should be the metric that Web site owners focus on, but Avinash Kaushik notes that forgetting about smaller, non-sales conversions is sort of like leaving money on the table--and a definite way to get a skewed view of a site's overall performance. "Focus on measuring your macro (overall) conversions," Kaushik says, "But for optimal awesomeness identify and measure your micro conversions as well."

Not every person who visits a Web site is actually looking to buy a product or initiate a sales call--many unique visitors are researching for offline purchases, or just seeing what the market has to offer. But Webmasters can still calculate the value of these non-buyers by tracking their micro conversions--which can be actions like reading the newest blog post, watching a product demo, checking out the careers section, or even searching for customer service info.

Kaushik lists some examples of which micro conversions to track and how to track them for ecommerce sites, blogs and other social media sites, and even a tech support Web site.

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