You post a ’90s-inspired digital ad reminiscent of Lisa Frank and suddenly, your ecommerce website is teeming with stationery-loving visitors. But as soon as they arrive, they leave because your landing page isn’t easy to navigate. Just because you attract visitors to your website doesn’t mean they’ll take the desired action.
With the help of conversion rate optimization tools, you can increase the percentage of visitors who add items to their cart, make purchases, or fill out forms.
Here are the benefits of conversion optimization tools and key considerations for integrating them into your workflow.
What is CRO?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) involves trying to increase the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action on your website, like making a purchase or filling out a form. A good conversion rate indicates effective marketing and user experience strategies.
What are CRO tools?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools reveal user behavior—like customer interactions, clicks, and navigation patterns—on your website. This software helps identify friction points and empowers data-driven decisions to increase conversions—from heat maps showing the most engaging parts of your site to A/B testing platforms helping you to find optimized variations.
How to choose the best CRO tools
- Consider your budget
- Identify your business goals
- Test customer support capabilities
- Assess your team’s expertise
The best conversion rate optimization software aligns with your business needs and goals. Here’s what to consider when choosing a tool to maximize conversions:
1. Consider your budget
CRO tools cater to small businesses and enterprises alike, meaning they offer various plans for different budgets. If you have limited funds, free tools are available, albeit with limited features.
2. Identify your business goals
Not all CRO tools offer the same functionalities. For example, if your primary goal is to understand customer behavior on product pages, a heat map tool can help assess the effectiveness of your calls to action (CTAs). Or if your primary goal is to increase form completions, you might opt for a tool that offers A/B testing to compare different form designs and identify the most effective version.
Identify your specific goals and choose a tool that caters to your unique needs—whether it’s improving form completion rates, reducing shopping cart abandonment, or customizing landing pages.
3. Test customer support capabilities
A responsive and helpful support team can be invaluable when troubleshooting or navigating complex features. Take advantage of free trials to assess if the customer support for your prospective software is up to par.
4. Assess your team’s expertise
Some CRO tools offer user-friendly interfaces with drag-and-drop interfaces, while others require more technical know-how. Choose a tool your team is comfortable with to make use of all of the features.
Best CRO tools for every use case
- A/B testing
- Exit-intent monitoring
- Form analytics
- Personalization tools
- Session recording
- Survey and feedback tools
- Website analytics and heat maps
- All-in-one CRO platforms
Whether you’re analyzing how users navigate your web pages or collecting visitors’ emails, there’s a tool to enhance your conversion optimization. Here are the various CRO tool categories to consider:
A/B testing
A/B testing, or split testing, lets you experiment with different website variations to determine which ones drive more conversions. With Optimizely, you can test all or parts of your website, like headlines, layouts, and CTAs. Its templates and low-code solutions make it easy for even non-coders to conduct A/B tests. Optimizely also enables collaboration across your business, allowing team members to contribute test ideas via intake forms.
A/B testing is available as part of Optimizely’s Web Experimentation plan; reach out for pricing.
Exit-intent monitoring
Target abandoning site visitors with personalized messages, like a 15%-off coupon code or a newsletter sign-up pop-up, to boost conversions and reduce cart abandonment.
OptinMonster tracks user behavior to detect when visitors are about to leave your website without completing a desired action. It offers various pop-up templates and can send a chat support message to departing shoppers.
Subscriptions range from $9.97 per month for the Basic tier to $49.97 per month for the Growth plan, billed annually.
Form analytics
Discover how users interact with your website forms. Formstack lets you create forms from scratch with a drag-and-drop builder or pre-designed templates. Its detailed form submission analytics help you optimize forms for more conversions and reduced abandonment rates, starting at $50 a month, billed annually.
Typeform offers personalized, user-friendly forms. It integrates with web analytics tools for in-depth data analysis. Typeform has a free version; paid plans start at $25 per month, billed annually.
Personalization tools
Tailor your site’s user experience to individual needs to foster higher engagement. Optimizely’s personalization feature generates unique, personalized website content and product recommendations in real time based on customer behavior and preferences. Reach out to learn about pricing.
Adobe Target also delivers a personalized experience, with recommendations and offers that resonate with each customer. By gathering customer journey data, like when they last visited and what they purchased, Adobe Target creates a profile for each visitor, refining it for greater precision with every visit. To learn about pricing, reach out to Adobe Target.
Session recording
Observing how users navigate your website during a session can help you identify potential roadblocks like confusing layouts, unclear calls to action, or slow-loading pages. Crazy Egg provides session recordings with heat maps to help you visualize user clicks and navigation patterns. Plans start at $99 a month, paid annually.
Survey and feedback tools
Gathering customer feedback to understand their needs and pain points can help you build a better product or experience. SurveyMonkey simplifies this process with customer satisfaction templates. You can ask questions like, “How satisfied are you with our product?” or “What features would you like to see in future updates?” SurveyMonkey has individual, team, and enterprise plans.
Website analytics and heat maps
Website analytics and heat maps provide a bird’s-eye view of customer behavior on your website.
Google Analytics is a free and popular web analytics tool that provides data on website traffic, user demographics, and bounce rates.
Hotjar offers free tools and paid plans with advanced heat mapping tools to help you understand customer behavior in detail. Compatible with every device, it reveals what frustrates or captures customers’ attention. You can track 35 daily sessions with its free plan. The paid tiers start at $39 per month (or $32 per month if you pay annually).
All-in-one CRO platforms
All-in-one CRO tools offer a range of features within a single interface. Unbounce, for example, offers landing page templates, AI-powered copywriting, and A/B testing to capture leads. VWO, on the other hand, focuses on heat maps and session recordings, tracking real user actions like clicks and scrolling.
Both platforms require paid subscriptions. Unbounce’s month-to-month prices range from $99 for its Build plan to $649 for its Concierge service. VWO offers a free starter plan, with paid models costing between $392 and $1,581 a month, billed annually.
CRO tools FAQ
What are CRO tools?
CRO tools like heat maps and A/B testing provide insights into how website visitors interact with your site, helping you identify areas for improvement. With CRO tools, you can make qualitative data-based decisions to optimize your website and convert leads.
Why do companies use CRO?
Companies use CRO strategies to encourage visitors to take a desired action like making a purchase or filling out a form. By optimizing elements like website layout and calls to action, businesses aim to convert more site visitors into paying customers or leads.
What does CRO stand for?
CRO stands for conversion rate optimization, or optimizing your website or app to increase the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a file.
