How To Track and Optimize In-App Micro Conversion in SaaS?
When you think of micro-conversion, what comes to your mind?
As a SaaS marketer, you are probably thinking of the conversion of a visitor into a paying customer.
Paying and loyal customers are indeed the main goal for SaaS companies as it’s directly related to revenue. However, before a user becomes a paying customer, they must go through a series of small steps – such as visiting your pricing page, requesting a demo, completing a task in the checklist, discovering your features, etc.
These small steps are micro-conversions, and you need to pay attention to them. In this article, you will know what micro-conversions are, why they matter, and how to track them.
TL;DR
- An in-app micro-conversion is a set of actions that users complete before reaching a specific milestone.
- Macro-conversions are the primary goals or milestones – for example, checklist completion.
- Micro-conversions can provide an insight into how people engage with your app. Micro-conversions are divided into two types: process milestones and secondary actions.
- Process milestones are steps taken towards a macro-conversion.
- Secondary actions are not directly linked to the primary goal but indicate that the user is interested in your product or service.
- Tracking micro-conversions is important because it allows you to understand your user’s behavior, find friction points for conversion optimization, and identify the right conversion funnel.
- There are three ways to measure micro-conversions:
- Product analytics tools like Userpilot provide insights about your users’ in-app engagement. It also helps you identify friction and drop-off points.
- Behavior tracking tool like Hotjar provides useful information about how your users interact with your app. Although it involves a lot of manual work, it can help uncover relevant insights that a product analytics tool might miss.
- Google Analytics is one of the most powerful and cheapest tools to track micro-conversions.
- There are three ways to optimize the micro-conversion rate in SaaS:
- Use progress bars in the signup flow to show users what they’ve done and what’s left to do.
- Add a celebration modal after task completion to reassure users that they are on the right path and encourage them to move forward.
- Use in-app tooltips to drive feature discovery by making certain features visible to users that haven’t used them.
- You can track micro-conversions with Userpilot by setting engagement goals, segmenting users, and performing A/B tests.
What is a micro-conversion?
A micro-conversion is an activity or a set of activities that users do in their path toward completing a primary conversion goal.
What are micro-conversions in SaaS?
Micro-conversions in SaaS are specific actions or sets of actions that users take before reaching a macro-conversion.
Micro-conversions are divided into two types: process milestones and secondary actions.
Process milestones. These are steps taken directly towards a macro-conversion. For instance, a user might view your product pages and sign up for a free trial.
Secondary actions. These steps do not directly lead to the macro-conversion, but they indicate interest. For instance, a user requesting a demo might not immediately sign up, but the trust built during the demo will eventually lead to a sale.
These can include filling in a form without abounding it halfway, completing a task in the checklist, discovering new features, etc.
Why is tracking micro-conversions important?
Micro-conversions indicate how well your product works towards the macro goals. Measuring micro-conversions in your SaaS business allows you to:
Understand your users’ behavior
Not everyone on your app has the same intent.
Micro-conversions can provide valuable insights into your users’ behavior and activities. With the knowledge of your user behavior and activities on your site, you’d be able to identify common patterns to determine which path leads to retention and product stickiness
By measuring micro-conversions, you can picture the complete customer journey.
Find friction points for conversion optimization
Micro-conversion provides you with the opportunity to diagnose the essential areas for improvement.
For example, if you see that new users get stuck at a step in the primary onboarding and don’t move forward then it is a clear sign that your onboarding is messy and users get confused.
By collecting that data and analyzing it, you can make improvements in your onboarding flow and make it better.
Let’s discuss this example.
Kommunicate, a customer support automation platform, discovered that its feature adoption was low, and many users kept asking for features they already had.
Using in-app guides made with Userpilot, they increased adoption of the chatbot integration by 17%, helping users get more value from their service – and increasing Kommunicate’s revenue.
Identify the right conversion funnels
Tracking micro-conversion is a great way to identify different conversion funnels for your SaaS business. By analyzing where micro-conversions mostly come from, you can figure out your customer journey.
If most users take a certain path on your app and this behavior leads to a macro-conversion, then you should guide all new users with the same needs towards that same path.
Micro-conversions vs. macro-conversions
Micro-conversions, or micro-goals, are actions a user takes to indicate they are progressing towards a macro-conversion. For instance, for a user to become a paying customer (macro-goal), they will have to engage with features A, B, and C (micro-goals).
The small steps users take (micro-conversion) can be categorized as follows:
- Navigation-based conversions are when users do something you want them to. For example, a user completing a task and going to another task.
- Interaction-based conversions are when users interact with your feature or messaging. For instance, users engage with a certain feature on your app.
- Engagement-based conversions: This mostly has to do with the customer journey. How engaged are the user to your content? Do they engage with your in-app messages, or do they close them immediately? Engagement-based conversions are secondary actions and don’t directly lead to sales, but they are valuable data to analyze.
Macro-conversions, or macro-goal, is the primary goal or milestones. In SaaS, a macro-conversion can be submitting payment information and converting from a free trial to a paid customer.
Depending on your business model and site goals, Macro-conversions can be categorized in three different ways:
- Revenue-based conversion: This is when monetary objectives are the focus. For example, converting a free trial account to a paid account.
- Lead/member acquisition conversion: This type of conversion goal concerns dataset or application from customers. For example, application form completion.
- Inquiry conversion: This type of conversion focuses on contact and service queries.
What are some examples of micro-conversion?
Here are some examples of a micro-conversion. Let’s assume a user:
- Lands on the product homepage.
- Visits the product or solutions page to see if the company offers what’s needed.
- Clicks on the “Get a demo” button, adds details such as the name, company name, and email.
- Creates a free trial account.
- Verifies the account by email.
- Completes a task in the onboarding checklist.
- Engages with a core product feature and discovers other features that are highly relevant for his/her use case.
- After 14 days of the free trial, upgrades and becomes a paying customer.
Steps 1-8 are micro-conversions (process milestones), and step 9 is the macro-conversion (primary conversion). You might skip some of the steps to get to the main goal or take more steps, but your path to the macro-goal would still make up a series of micro-conversions.
3 easy ways to measure micro-conversions
You can track micro-conversions using a product analytics tool like Userpilot, a behavior tracking tool like Hotjar, or a web analytics platform like Google Analytics. Let’s go into detail and see what each tool has to offer.
Product analytics tools
A product analytics tool provides you with insights into the in-app engagement of your users. It helps you collect data and analyze how users interact with your product’s various features. Additionally, it allows you to identify friction and drop-off points in your application.
You can use Userpilot to track how customers are using your features. Just create feature tags with UI elements and see data on how often users engage with them
Behavior tracking tools
Behavior tracking tools show you where your users click and how they scroll between pages. The main goal behind using a behavior tracking tool is to measure user experience, identify friction, find opportunities for UX improvements, and as a result, increase macro-conversions.
A behavior tracking tool like Hotjar provides a unique insight into how your users interact with your app.
Although using a behavior tracking tool to track micro-conversions involves a lot of manual work, it can help uncover relevant insights that a product analytics tool might miss.
Google analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful and cheapest tools to track micro-conversions. Sign in to your Google Analytics account, and you can start tracking micro-conversions.
Google Analytics allows users to set up 20 goals that they can track through their dashboard. GA also provides pre-set goals that include the most common micro-conversions, like new account signups, video plays, and many more.
With 20 goals available to track, you’d be able to track micro-conversions for every stage of your customer journey.
3 ways to optimize the micro-conversion rate in SaaS
Tracking and optimizing the micro-conversion rate is important as it has a big impact on your end goal – macro-conversions. Here are three ways to optimize the micro-conversion rate in SaaS.
Use progress bars in the signup flow
Since you know that every in-app micro-conversion opportunity contributes toward a macro-conversion, why not guide your user through each one?
You can use progress bars in the signup flow to show users what they’ve done and what’s left to do. Progress bars also engage and keep users motivated as they know they are progressing.
This method will help you improve your micro-conversion rate as users see that they are close to the finish.
Add a celebration modal when a task is completed
It takes a certain amount of effort for a user to move from one step to another. Why not reward them for their efforts?
You can optimize your micro-conversion rate by celebrating every user’s progress, even the smallest one. This will reassure them that they are on the right path and encourage them to move forward and complete the whole checklist.
Use tooltips to drive feature discovery
Most of your users don’t know about all your features. This will leave your users thinking you don’t have certain features, and they’ll go to your competitors.
In-app tooltips are perfect for subtly nudging users towards any micro-conversions that will aid the main goal. You can use tooltips to make certain features visible to users.
How to track in-app micro-conversions with Userpilot?
We’ve talked about how to optimize micro-conversion rates for your SaaS business. Now let’s learn how to track micro-conversions with Userpilot.
Set specific feature engagement goals and custom events
You can track micro-conversions with Userpilot‘s feature tagging feature by setting custom events and engagement goals.
For instance, your micro-goals are “User should engage with feature A or B.” When the user completes that goal, you will be able to track it.
Segment users by behavior triggers
It’s also important to understand why a specific user might make a micro-conversion and never fully move forward to a full macro-conversion.
By segmenting users, you can see where each user is in the customer journey and their likelihood of ultimately making a macro-conversion.
Do A/B testing to measure the goal conversions
After you have created different segments, you can play around with them and compare them.
With our A/B testing, you can measure different goal conversions, compare them with each other and collect useful insights to make data-driven decisions.
Conclusion
Micro-conversions are important, and they should play a vital role in your SaaS strategy.
Keep in mind that every user journey is different. Tracking in-app micro-conversions will give you valuable insights to understand each user journey and open up opportunities to reach your primary goals.
If you want to have better insights into how your users behave inside the app, collect feedback in a contextual way, and reach out to your customers to improve engagement and boost customer success, then get a Userpilot Demo and get started right away.
