In order to guide what data you need to collect in Analytics and which features to set up, you’ll need a clear measurement strategy for your business. You’ll want to take some time to define your business objectives and how you expect to measure those outcomes.
There are key actions that users take on websites that fulfill your business objectives like making a purchase. We call these “macro” conversions, since they represent the broader goals of your business. But there can also be smaller goals that bring users closer to your main objectives such as signing up for an email coupon or a new product notification. We call these “micro” conversions, since they nudge users closer to your macro-conversions.
Different businesses will naturally have different macro- and micro-conversions:
- For an e-commerce site, the macro-conversion might be to purchase a product with a micro-conversion of subscribing to a newsletter.
- For a lead generation site, the macro-conversion might be filling out a contact form with a micro-conversion of following the site on social media.
- For a content publisher, the macro-conversion might be engaging with a particular amount of content with a micro-conversion of clicking into an article.
- For an online information and support site, the macro-conversion might be completing a guided support flow to successfully solve an issue with a micro-conversion of rating a support article.
Once you’ve defined your macro- and micro-conversions, you can start putting together a measurement plan. A measurement plan is a way for you to align your business objectives with your Google Analytics configuration settings. Your measurement plan should include an overall business objective, different strategies that support that objective, and tactics that will help you achieve your strategies. Each tactic will have key performance indicators (or KPIs) that help you measure your macro- or micro-conversions.
Macro conversions usually measure the tactics that support your various strategies. Micro conversions are metrics that help you better understand the user behavior that leads to macro conversions.
Once you’ve identified the macro- and micro-conversions, and created a measurement plan to measure your business, you can decide how to set up Google Analytics to collect these metrics.
Keep in mind that this is just one example of a very abbreviated measurement plan. Yours will likely be richer and more detailed, depending on the complexity and ambition of your business.
A measurement plan is a great way to document the data that is most important to your business. Use the interactive Google Merchandise Store measurement plan at the end of this lesson for an example.
