Micro goals
Senior SEO-specialist
When a Web site is built, it is for a specific purpose. Visitors need to make purchases, send an e-mail, read a blog, subscribe or give their opinion. Those are macro goals. Micro goals are about the route visitors take on the Web site until they do what you want to entice them to do.
What are micro goals
Micro goals have everything to do with visitor behavior on the Web site. Often there is only one route toward the macro goals. Such as clicking on an ad, opening a menu option, or clicking through at the end of a piece of content.
All those actions are called micro goals. The actions that do not lead directly to the macro goals are called secondary actions. Based on the secondary actions, you can draw conclusions about visitor interest.
Examples of micro goals
A series of micro goals leads to the ultimate goal of your Web site: to purchase a product or service. Micro goals to be achieved for this are: click through to the web shop on the homepage, get to the product in the web shop through a few steps, put the product in the shopping cart, and complete the purchase process by paying for the product.
The importance of micro goals
By tracking how micro goals are met, i.e., whether each visitor ends up buying a product, the quality of the website can be figured out. If it appears that many visitors drop out prematurely, conclusions can be drawn about the effectiveness of the website.
Also, by studying the micro goals, it is possible to identify where on the site things go wrong, and where missed opportunities lie. If it turns out that many visitors focus on the secondary actions, you can consider building in an additional option there toward purchasing products.
The impact of micro goals
If analysis of the macro goals shows that your website is not performing so well, analysis of the micro goals is a way to find out what could be better. The brings missed opportunities into focus and you are able to adjust elements that distract visitors from the ultimate goal of the site.
My advice
Conduct regular analysis of micro goals to keep website effectiveness at the highest level.
