What is a Conversion Rate?
Conversion rate refers to the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a contact form, or subscribing to a newsletter. It is an important metric that can indicate how effective your website is at turning visitors into customers or leads. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the practice of improving your website to have higher conversion rates.
In this article you’ll learn why CRO is important, how to improve your site’s conversion rates and get access to the 50 top conversion rate tools available today.
Why are conversion rates important?
For small business websites, having a high conversion rate is essential for success. Here are some reasons why:
Maximizing ROI: By increasing the conversion rate, you can get more value from your website without having to spend more money on advertising or traffic generation. This can lead to higher ROI and profitability.
Improving User Experience: A high conversion rate typically means that your website is meeting the needs and expectations of your visitors. This can lead to a positive user experience and increased customer satisfaction.
Enhancing Customer Acquisition: A higher conversion rate means that you are acquiring more customers from your existing traffic. This can reduce your customer acquisition costs and help you grow your business more efficiently.
Competitive Advantage: A higher conversion rate can give your small business a competitive advantage over other businesses in your industry. By offering a better user experience and more effective marketing, you can stand out from the crowd and attract more customers.
In summary, a high conversion rate is essential for small business websites as it can help to maximize ROI, improve user experience, enhance customer acquisition, and provide a competitive advantage.
10 Statistically proven methods to improve your website's conversion rates:
Improving the conversion rate of a website can involve various factors, here are some tips you could consider for your website:
- Do some research
- Collect and analyze your visitors data. Here are some key data points to look at:
- Data on traffic and traffic sources
- Details of user behavior on your landing pages
- Bounce and abandonment rates for web pages and forms
- Click-through rates of adverts and marketing campaigns
- Information on return customers and average order values
- Net promoter scores (NPS) or other customer feedback
- After gathering measurable data, create a user persona that portrays your perfect customer. This should encompass all pertinent details about your target audience, such as their interests, preferences, objectives, and challenges. The purpose of this is to gain a deeper understanding of your ideal user.
- Perform an analysis of your competitors. To have a competitive edge over your rivals, you need to know what their strengths and weaknesses are. You can then use that information to highlight your strengths over your competitors’ weaknesses. Keep in mind that people research their options before making a purchase. They’re going to check out your competitors and how you measure up to them.
- Look at your current conversion funnel. It’s important to comprehend the typical user journey and conversion funnel on your website before attempting to fix any issues. This will enable you to identify where visitors may be hesitating or dropping off and determine the possible reasons for this.
- Identify what your value proposition is and what your goals are. It is important to set website goals that you want to measure conversions and optimize for. Your value proposition is a brief description of why a customer should choose to purchase or subscribe to your products/services instead of those offered by your competitors. For this reason, the initial step to encourage visitors to convert is to communicate clearly what distinguishes you from the rest and why it’s beneficial to buy from you.
- Collect and analyze your visitors data. Here are some key data points to look at:
Define Your Target Audience: Make sure that your website is designed to appeal to your target audience. Determine who your ideal customer is, what their needs are, and what motivates them to make a purchase.
Optimize Your Website’s Design: Ensure that your website’s design is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Use a clear and simple layout, make sure that your content is easy to read, and use high-quality images that are relevant to your brand.
Optimize for Mobile Devices: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and responsive to different screen sizes. Most website traffic today comes from mobile devices, and having a mobile-friendly website can increase your conversion rates.
Improve Website Speed: Slow loading websites can cause visitors to leave your website quickly, which can hurt your conversion rates. Ensure that your website is optimized for speed by using caching plugins, optimizing images, and choosing a reliable hosting provider.
Offer Clear Call-to-Actions (CTAs): Make sure that your website has clear and prominent call-to-actions. Use language that clearly communicates what the user can expect when they click on the button.
Improve Website Copy: Ensure that your website’s copy is engaging and informative, it should clearly communicate the benefits of your product or service to your target audience.
Use Testimonials and Social Proof: Use customer reviews and social proof to build trust with your website visitors. This can be done by including testimonials on your website and displaying your social media following.
A/B Testing: Consider running A/B tests on your website to identify which changes lead to the highest conversion rates. Test different layouts, designs, and messaging to determine what works best for your audience.
Use Google Analytics: Use Google Analytics to monitor your website’s performance, track user behavior, and identify areas for improvement.
By implementing these strategies, you can improve the conversion rate of your website and drive more sales for your business.
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50+ Conversion Rate Optimization tools
There is a wide variety of software available for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), ranging from basic A/B testing tools to all-in-one CRO machines. With new products frequently being introduced to the market, the question on many people’s minds is, “Which CRO tool is best suited for my needs?”
While the ultimate decision will rest with you and your team, we can help you to narrow down your search.
Some tools are costly, but the majority also have free plans (marked with an *) and all of them are valuable. Here are the top 50 CRO tools organized by type:
Split Testing or A/B Testing
A/B Tasty
A/B Tasty is a France-based testing tool that provides A/B testing, Multivariate testing, as well as content personalization.
Adobe Target
Adobe Target is an enterprise testing tool that allows you to perform A/B tests and automate website personalization.
ChangeAgain.me*
ChangeAgain.me provides a visual editor for A/B Testing that integrates with Google Analytics.
*free trial available
Convert Experiment*
Convert Experiment is similar to VWO and Optimizely, but more suited for enterprise and agencies.
*free trial available
Optimizely
Optimizely is by far the most popular A/B test tool, and it’s one that we’ve used successfully.
SiteSpect
SiteSpect is a great testing tool with A/B testing, MVT, web personalization, mobile optimization, and site speed improvement capabilities.
Visual Website Optimizer*
VWO is one of the leading, and easiest-to-use, A/B testing tools.
*FREE starter plan and free trial for paid plans
Analytics and Heat Map Tools
Adobe Analytics
Adobe Analytics is Adobe’s answer to Google Analytics and is part of Adobe’s Marketing Suite.
Contentsquare
Contentsquare is a consumer insights tool that provides session replays, heatmaps, and conversion funnels for CRO.
Clicky
Clicky is a full-featured alternative to Google Analytics with a heat-mapping tool.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is on the shortlist of favorite CRO tools of many marketers. Crazy Egg offers heat maps, click maps, scroll maps, and other features to better visualize how users interact with your site.
Decibel Insight
Decibel Insight is an enterprise ready CX analytics tool with powerful features such as session replay, dynamic heatmaps, form analytics, behavioral alerts, and error reporting.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the most commonly used analytics tool and it’s completely free.
Heap Analytics
Heap automatically captures every user action in your web or iOS app and lets you measure it all after the fact – including clicks, taps, swipes, form submissions, and page views.
Hotjar
Hotjar is one of our favorite CRO tools and it includes nearly all of the features that a marketer could need, including triggered polls, funnel tracking, session cams, heat maps, and more.
Inspectlet
Inspectlet provides rich insights behind the analytics of your website. Features include form analytics, session recording, and heat maps.
KISSMetrics
KISSmetrics is one of the most popular CRO tools that allows you to track users through the buyer journey, segment your optimization, and much more.
Marketizator
Marketizator is a newer tool that offers triggered surveys, A/B testing, web personalization, and segmentation.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a popular tool for funnel analysis and user behavior analysis for applications and websites.
Mouseflow
Mouseflow lets you see visitors’ behavior and fix pain points with recordings, heatmaps, funnels, and form analytics.
Piwik
Piwik is the open source alternative to Google Analytics that offers 100% data ownership and user privacy protection.
SessionCam
SessionCam is a leading usability tool that offers session playback, analytics, heat maps, conversion funnels, and mouse tracking.
Woopra
Woopra is a real-time digital analytics tool that allows you to track your website, apps, emails, and more to truly understand your customers.
Website and Usability Testing
Browserling
Browserling offers live interaction, web-based browser testing from real browsers on real computers.
BrowserStack
BrowserStack is a live, web-based browser testing tool for mobile and desktop browsers.
The Five-Second Test
The Five-Second Test tool has been developed with the concept that a mere five seconds are sufficient for visitors or customers to engage with a website’s design and comprehend its key message. These brief moments can provide valuable user insights, such as their initial impressions of the brand and their actions.
Google Pagespeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights analyzes your website’s loading time and user experience, providing suggestions to improve the issues they find.
Pingdom Website Speed Test
Pingdom Website Speed Test is a more advanced form of Google Pagespeed Insights.
Open Hallway
Open Hallway is a usability testing tool that allows you to create scenarios, record users remotely or locally, and watch recordings from their web-based app.
TryMyUI
TryMyUI is a usability testing tool with features such as remote testing, concept mapping, wireframe testing, impression testing, demographic curation, and much more.
UserTesting
UserTesting.com is a giant marketplace to find testers for your website or application.
WebPageTest
WebPageTest can run free site speed tests from a variety of locations using real web browsers.
Forms and Surveys
Formisimo
Formisimo allows you to track behavior and conduct CRO in the forms on your website.
Google Forms
Google Forms provide a free and easy tool for creating surveys and other types of forms.
Kampyle
Kampyle offers a variety of on-page polling tools including a form builder, user segmentation and profiling, and more.
Survey Gizmo
SurveyGizmo allows you to quickly and easily create online surveys to collect any kind of data you need.
Survey Monkey
Survey Monkey is one of the leading tools for creating and distributing surveys.
TypeForm
TypeForm surveys allows you to easily create highly attractive and user-friendly surveys and other forms.
Qualaroo
Qualaroo is a leading on-page survey tool that integrates with all of the other most popular marketing tools.
Qualtrics
Qualtrics is an enterprise survey tool that allows you to manage the entire customer experience from surveys, to insights, to action.
CRO and Growth Hacking
Projects by GrowthHackers
Projects by GrowthHackers takes you through the entire process of growth hacking, which includes CRO.
Conductrics
Conductrics is an advanced CRO tool that provides various methods for automating optimization of your website, mobile application, and online campaigns.
CRO Books
Cheesy chorus at this point, but CRO isn’t about the tools, it’s about the people and their know-how. Give an amateur Conductrics and an Adobe Analytics setup, and it won’t amount to much. But a master optimizer could make do with freemium tools and still kick back and ROI.
I like courses, but I really like books. Here are some of my favorites to get you started:
- Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing
- Statistical Methods in Online A/B Testing: Statistics for data-driven business decisions and risk management in e-commerce
- The Innovator’s Hypothesis: How Cheap Experiments Are Worth More than Good Ideas (MIT Press)
Google Content Experiments
Google Content Experiments is Google’s CRO tool that integrates with Google Analytics.
Lucky Orange
Lucky Orange is an all-in-one CRO suite that includes analytics, web recordings, heat maps, live chat, conversion funnels, form analytics, and polls.
Proof
Proof is a Software as a Service (SaaS) product that enables the implementation of persuasive triggers and tactics on your website. Their extensive range of products includes user-friendly social proof notifications, as well as advanced personalization features like adaptive calls-to-action (CTAs) and website content.
Project Management and CRM
Effective Experiments
Effective Experiments is a comprehensive project management and workflow platform to help CRO teams collaborate and keep everyone up to date.
Honeybook
HubSpot
HubSpot offers marketing automation software that allows you to build a complete inbound marketing funnel on your website, as well as perform A/B tests and deploy personalized content for enhanced CRO.
Marketing Tools
Ethnio
Ethnio helps you find the right participants for your in-person and remote UX research, online exercises, and surveys.
Maxymiser
Maxymiser is a powerful enterprise tool that allows marketers to tap into first, second, and third-party data for testing and optimizing initiatives.
WebEngage
Webengage allows you to create highly relevant and personalised marketing campaigns across your website, email, push notifications, text messages, and more.
