How important is Effective APM really, and how effective are these "effective" actions?

I've noticed when analyzing my games with aoe2insights.com that, despite being on a win streak, all my opponents have significantly higher EAPM than me through out almost every stage of the game. My micro isn't bad or anything, and I'm definitely more of a macro player - most of my wins have also been because I spread out, outboom the opponent, and then get positional advantages. Most of my mistakes, on the other hand, are not because of poor micro or slow reactions (although I do fail some quick walls), but instead poor decisions. Whether I'm the one at their base or the one on the defense, my APM is consistently lower in games that I win.

Yet, especially in the early game, I'm not sure where my apm are being lost. I don't spam click pretty much ever - 1 click per action. I use the shift-queue, select all, and multi queue a lot and I frequently just let units run around on wood lines instead of trying to micro them - I usually try to hit a few places at once.

My EAPM is usually around 30-40, sometimes even around 20, and in some games I decisively smack players whose EAPM spikes up to 70. I also notice that my opponents EAPM will fluctuate much more than mine, with peaks and valleys at different points of the game where my EAPM is relatively consistent.

If we look at some of the pro players, we also see a really wide variance in EAPM. Of course players like Lierry or Hera have high mean EAPM around 70-100(!!!), MBL around 60, but then a player like Daut usually has around 50. Surprisingly enough Villese has the lowest mean EAPM I've seen so far around 40. 40!

Villese is by no means slow, but somehow he only plays marginally faster than me, a player 1000 Elo below him. People joke about him being a robot probably mostly because his personality, but clearly he's making calculated, efficient decisions and using his actions sparingly. Many games he never breaks 50 EAPM!

So it begs the question, how effective are the effective actions per minute? What counts as an effective action (I'm aware aoe2insights gives a measure, explaining how moving the map to the scout selecting the scout and clicking move is only 1 action)? Presumably any action that causes an in game effect: moving a scout, queuing a knight, building barracks. But if I queue a scout to move to four points, is that one EAPM because it's counted as one action? If I 5 halbs at once with multiqueue, is that 1 action? Presumably rapidly clicking the scout or moving between each barrack and queuing halbs individually would count as many actions. Is moving between the town center an the scout an action when you're doing it just to see things? Is clicking on the mini map an action? Is split micro an action?

Of course effective decisions will always be more important than quick clicks, but how important are quick clicks and how important are they compared to efficient clicks?