Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is a digital marketing strategy which involves optimising the user experience (UX) for your website visitors to increase the probability of them completing a desired action.
This said it’s important to remember that not all conversions necessarily mean a sale. There are plenty of conversion metrics you can track and improve, such as:
- Purchasing products or services
- Clicking on an advertisement
- Downloading a file
- Signing up for an email list or a newsletter
- Booking a call or meeting
Small businesses that want to enhance their UX and increase their conversion rate should adopt CRO strategies to improve website speed and performance, use personalised landing pages and popups, and enhance mobile responsiveness.
However, around 68% of small businesses do not follow a CRO strategy, despite the benefits a robust strategy reaps, including:
- Increasing revenue and profits: By optimising your site, you save money on paid advertising and digital marketing campaigns, meaning you spend less money per user and gain more revenue from each user.
- Lower customer acquisition costs: Attracting new customers is five times more expensive than maintaining an existing customer. CRO strategies like feedback ensure you can give your current customers what they want.
- Increasing website traffic: When you optimise your site, you give Google and other search engines a clear idea of what content is most relevant to your audience. This determines what content search engines show when users search for something related to your business. As a result, your site gets more traffic.
- Decreasing bounce rate: An average website has a bounce rate of 37%. CRO strategies like optimising page load speed improve a user's experience and increase conversion rates.
- Improving search engine rankings: When you optimise your web page content and keywords, search engines like Google find your site more relevant and reward you by ranking your site higher in search results.
These benefits alone tell us that fostering a strong CRO strategy is a no-brainer. The question is, where do you start?
Below, we've reviewed a few of the best CRO aids on the market that aim to enhance and improve your conversion rate in 2024.
Assessing the best CRO tools for small businesses
The CRO software market is set to grow to $5.07B by 2025. To increase conversion rates, small businesses must leverage tools that help capture leads, gather analytics and customer feedback, and perform tests.
Here are seven different types of tools to leverage in your next CRO campaign:
HubSpot
A landing page is an optionally created web page that a user lands on as a result of clicking a link to your website from an email, advertisement, or other digital location. Businesses see a 55% increase in leads when they increase the number of landing pages to 10 to 15.
HubSpot offers a free landing page builder so you can easily create professional and personalised landing pages that attract and convert visitors into qualified leads. The contact information you gather on the landing page forms is synced with your contacts database.
© Hubspot
In addition, your dashboard can identify top-performing landing pages and give you a detailed view of which marketing efforts are converting and which aren't.
Hello Bar
A lead capture form is a specially designed website popup to capture information about leads, such as name, email, and phone number. Website popups with only one signup field had the highest conversion rate of 4.3%.
Hello Bar is a lead capture tool used to create website popup forms to gather lead information, promote social media pages, showcase a sale or promotion, and more. The types of popup forms they offer include:
- Bars
- Modals
- Sliders
- Page takeovers
- Alerts
© Hello Bar
For small businesses on a budget, a free plan allows you to create one modal that pops up to every 10th website visitor. However, the premium plans offer more advanced call-to-action (CTA) options, with personalised CTAs increasing conversion rates by 202%.
Google Analytics
Web analytics tools are the most widely used (69%) to increase conversions.
Google Analytics is a free tool that can help small businesses track their website's traffic, performance, and ability to drive conversions.
The data tells you visitor numbers, how long it takes visitors to bounce from your web pages, if visitors complete desired actions from a specific path, and which sources bring people to your website.
In addition, Google Analytics allows you to see which keywords people use to find your page and the devices they're searching on - both of which help tailor future CRO content.
© Google Analytics
UserTesting
Martin van Kranenburg, a CRO specialist, said: "Collecting feedback ensures that you get to the core of customer behaviour. These insights are extremely important when you start working with CRO. After all, this is exactly what you need to know in order to optimise the conversion. What are the obstacles visitors face online? Why does someone drop out just before the order is completed?"
UserTesting is a great feedback tool for small businesses. With customer feedback templates, remote video interviews, and usability testing, you can better understand customer attitudes and behaviours to develop customer-driven CRO strategies that get results.
Test capabilities include:
- Live interviews
- Usability testing
- Brand and messaging testing
- Card sorting
- Tree testing
- Clickstream tracking
The tool supports end-to-end audience management to free employees from admin work, which is ideal for businesses with smaller teams.
© UserTesting
Hotjar
When customers take a feedback survey, the drop-off rate of 17% sharply increases when it has over 12 questions or takes longer than five minutes to complete.
So, use Hotjar's feedback feature to embed short feedback widgets anywhere on your site. This tool allows you to hear insights from users at every step of their journey and use the relevant feedback and recordings to improve.
In addition, users can highlight parts of the page they like or don't like to help small businesses spot areas for improvement and make more informed content and design decisions.
© Hotjar
VWO
More marketers than ever before are leveraging user experience testing (64%) and content testing (57%) in their CRO strategies.
A/B testing (or split testing) can compare two versions of your website against each other to determine which one performs better. Through A/B testing and experiments, you can gain valuable insights into customer journeys and preferences to make data-driven decisions about which version of your website to use.
VWO's Split URL Testing feature allows you to distribute traffic between two different URLs of the same landing page to see which one converts better for the goal you are optimising for. Small business owners can use this information and data to refine CRO strategies.
© VWO
A free plan is available, which is excellent for small businesses with lower CRO budgets. However, paid plans starting at $49 per month are also available.
The Five-Second Test
The average human attention span is eight seconds, and only 28% of words on an average web page are read. Consider reducing the amount of text on a web page and using attention-grabbing designs instead.
With attention spans in mind, The Five-Second Test tool was designed on the lines that five seconds is enough time for users to decide to engage or 'bounce'.
The tool helps you measure a user's first impression of your website design and brand and their actions. Once your test responses are in, you can view the results and use the insights to iterate on your design.
© Five Second Test
There is a free plan, a $89/month basic plan, and a $199/month pro plan.
Wrapping Up
Your conversion rate is an essential metric to track and optimise when it comes to building your business online.
As we head into an era of intense competition for online business, employing just one of the tools in this list could see your brand drive more sales.
From enhanced UX testing to mapping SEO analytics, the key to success is to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to creating product and service campaigns. Getting closer to your audience and navigating Google’s ever-evolving search algorithm is the ticket to seeing your conversions begin to soar.
