22 Best Practices to Increase Conversion Rate – 2024 Guide

Here's a meta intro for you.

As I was doing my research for this article, I came across TONS of articles titled "X ways to increase conversion effectively."

And all those X ways were the same thing in the end.

But when I tried to come up with my draft of best practices, it ended up being very similar to all those other lists.

So, to be quite frank, what I'm about to tell you is not exactly different. After all, conversion rate optimization didn't do a 180 overnight.

But instead, I tried something else.

I tried to put all those best practices (plus some more) into 5 actionable stages:

👉 Mindset

👉 Research

👉 Website optimization

👉 Marketing

👉Mobile optimization

And before we start, you might want to check out our beginners' guide to conversion rate optimization if you are just starting out. 

Or if you don't have the time, here's our quick video ⬇️

If this is not your first rodeo, let's dive right in:

The Conversion Mindset

I personally am a firm believer that all business processes must have a defined mindset.

A mindset to define a project's ultimate goal and tasks and a list of priorities to save time and not be struck with decision paralysis is one of the best practices for any team handling different projects.

For conversion optimization, this is no different.

Here are best practices to enhance the mindset of your team and your CRO project:

1- Empathy, empathy, empathy

The number one rule of optimization is to emphasize with your potential customers.

Because let's be honest, they don't have to buy from you.

Unless your potential customer is a particularly tedious buyer, they will go to whoever offers a more optimized conversion funnel.

Don't believe me? Think of your own user experience.

Would you care to discover just how good the product and the features of a brand are if their website lacks empathy, fails to minimize friction, and offers an overall mediocre customer experience?

I don't think so.

You'd easily be drawn to the straight opposite of that experience, even though you can't quite be sure whether their features are better than the first option.

That's because innately, you'd be thinking, "how good their service/product can be if they cannot emphasize with my experience right now."

So, the first rule:

Know how to emphasize and make it an overarching motive for all other best practices on this list.

2- Expectations vs. Reality

Empathizing with your potential buyers will unlock another part of the buyers' psyche:

Their expectations.

And when we talk about expectations, there are two paths in front of you:

You can either reinforce their positive expectations or redefine their negative expectations.

For example, most website visitors will expect to see a visual depiction of your product or something similar on your website, which gives you the opportunity to reinforce more positive expectations by using high-value gifs or videos instead.

Quick reminder: adding videos or interactive modals to your landing page can increase conversions by up to 86%.

So you might wanna take it even further and use interactive elements as Document360 does:

Or, if you choose to redefine your visitors' negative expectations, you can opt to change elements of your website to focus more on value proposition than on promoting your product.

For example, changing copy, not pushing deals and offers right away and too aggressively, and an honest impression can get you started with bypassing negative expectations. 

What matters is that you show effort to align with the best expectations of visitors and turn over the worst expectations to become surprising good points for you.

3- What is value proposition & how to show it

Lastly, in defining your mindset to increase conversion rates, you need to revisit your value as a brand and what your product offers to make it visible throughout the optimization process.

3 questions define value proposition:

👉 Why should people buy anything?

👉 Why should they buy it now?

👉 Why should they buy it from you?

It's simple as that.

A value proposition is not really a slogan or a catchphrase but what makes your product the best solution to a potential customer's problem.

Once you define (or redefine) yours, all you need to do is make it visible throughout the optimization rate increase process.

If you want to know more about how to come up with the perfect value proposition, here's our guide 👈

If not, let's move on to the second stage:

Research to Convert

No conversion rate increase happens randomly unless, of course, you don't keep track of what's going on with your business.

Then stuff you actually do for conversion rate increase might appear as random.

But a good, informed increase in conversion rate happens through good research and planning.

Trust me; you don't want to compromise a glance at how your visitors behave and what makes them buy. And more importantly, what WILL make them buy YOUR product.

Here are some best practices for the research stage of your conversion optimization project:

4- Know your product

Before diving into that deep deep pool of user behavior, there is one thing that is essential you know to its core.

Your very own product.

As we discussed already in the mindset stage, value proposition rules the rest of the best practices, and it must be considered at each step.

Without knowing your product itself, you can't know the value proposition.

So to make sure your data on the visitor behavior will align with your product, ask yourself:

👉 What is it that I offer?

👉 How do people feel about my specific industry and product?

👉 Who are my competitors? Why would people choose them over me or me over them?

👉 How would my team and the rest of the company define my product? Do they all know our value proposition?

👉 What is my current conversion rate, and how can I benefit my own brand and product to increase it?

Once the answers start to shape up, it is time you move on to the bigger picture with the next step:

5- Analyze visitor behavior

The unchanged best practice of increasing conversion rate is, of course, analyzing visitor and potential buyer behavior.

This is only natural since your target audience is the most important variable in the formula of conversion rate increase.

Unless your audience is willing to buy, there is no need to talk about conversion rate.

And that's exactly why we look into how they behave on a website.

Do they leave if the load time is long, how quick are they to look for customer reviews, do product images and key buttons affect user engagement, and more areas of shopper behavior can be used to reveal a lot.

The trick is to know how to analyze it.

For example, user behavior and testing tools like Hotjar can reveal specific points of attraction on a website:

While checking how they go to a specific landing page and what pages they visit during a session can be revealed in a powerful tool like Google Analytics or any other analytics tool.

Of course, surveying visitors is also an option, but considering a conscious answer from someone who just might not visit your website again can do more damage than good.

Whatever research method(s) you choose, make sure to dive deep; this is the data you will work on for the rest of your conversion boost project.

6- Use the right metrics for you

The average eCommerce conversion rate is 1.84% and the average B2B conversion rate is around 2.23%.

That's 2 out of 100 visitors on a good day.

Now, what brought you to start worrying about increasing your conversion rate is probably that you've seen the average conversion rate for your industry and what your competitors are supposedly converting.

But that doesn't necessarily mean they are optimal. And to make sure you successfully increase your conversion rate, there are other metrics to consider.

In increasing the metric, other metrics and KPIs like:

👉 Bounce rate,

👉 Cost per acquisition,

👉 Time-to-value,

👉 Session duration and average page views per session,

👉 Top traffic source, and

👉 User feedback and customer reviews,

Can be extremely useful and defining of your entire CRO strategy.

Still, don't forget to check if the specific metrics above are relevant to your product.

If your marketing was designed to lead visitors to a different page bounce rate might be a no-effect metric or top traffic sources might be overlooked if you are doing exclusive email campaigns.

7- Redefine your conversion funnel

We are all slightly or fully aware of how the classic conversion funnel works:

There is:

💡 Awareness - where visitors become aware of your website, brand or product,

🧑‍💻 Interest - where visitors show interest in your product or service by checking additional product details, specific product pages, and features,

😍 Desire - where they show a desire to possess the product or use services, sign up to your trial or freemium, or schedule a demo,

🏃 Action - where they will make the final call and purchase or subscribe to become a customer

If you weren't aware of your funnel, try to locate your own conversion processes on it.

But you might also opt to add extra steps to it.

For example, there might be different steps before there checkout process for you, or the path to your conversion goal might include a preference or consideration step.

What matters is that you define your own conversion funnel to match your own needs.

Because at the end of the day, your specific product and needs overrule any prescribed ready-made template. 

8- Plan it out

Planning your CRO strategy might sound like a no-brainer, but the thing is:

68% of businesses and especially smaller businesses don’t have a structured and properly planned CRO strategy.

But when the competition is so strong and there are many actionable tips and tricks to elevate your conversion rate, you just cannot turn a blind eye to planning ahead for your strategy.

Essentially, planning your conversion strategy relies on 3 simple steps:

✅ Discovering what draws people to your website and enhancing it,

✅ Finding friction and pain points and getting rid of them,

✅ Locating website elements that push visitors to make a purchase/convert

And those 3 steps happen to be the entire idea behind the rest of this list.

So, let's take a look at our third stage:

A Converting Website Experience

In any customer journey, the website experience is already one of the most important components.

But when it comes to conversion rate and increasing it, the website experience becomes everything.

And to make the most out of it, here are some of the most crucial best practices to try:

9- Design to convert

From the very start of your website design, converting your target audience should always be your number one priority.

In doing so, an optimal visual design for a website must:

👉 Pay attention to visual hierarchy

A poorly designed website in terms of visual hierarchy doesn't only hinder you from increasing your conversion rate but also decreases it.

Keep in mind: your visitors' attention is fleeting by the millisecond.

So, it is crucial that you design with visual hierarchy in mind and make use of the little time you have.

Here's how Monday.com does it:

👉 Place CTAs close to the top

As a part of visual hierarchy best practices, your conversion CTA should ALWAYS be close to the top, where visitors can see:

1. Your value proposition,

2. A semi-glance or a full-view of a complementary visual,

3. A CTA, immediately 

Now, making the CTA so available doesn't necessarily promise conversion, but it ensures that they never have to look for it which creates friction. 

👉 Use convincing images

Lastly, complementing your visual hierarchy and CTA with a convincing image is essential.

When I say convincing, it doesn't necessarily mean a product picture with value bursting through.

It can also be psychological. 

It is a proven fact that human faces and especially faces showing emotions have a big impact on conversion.

And GetResponse seems to know that:

And so does Drift, with this picture showing people working on a computer (probably using Drift) and looking jolly:

And these are some cool practices, but how you practice them on your own website can differ a lot.

And that difference can get different amounts of conversion.

It all boils down to one thing: 

10- Test it - then test it again

Testing, and especially A/B testing can make a change of a 1-100% conversion rate difference in your website.

Here's an interesting stat, though:

52% of companies use A/B testing for their landing pages to increase conversion rates.

This basically means that almost half of all companies feel the need to test while the other half don't.

Can you guess which half gets more conversions?

The truth is, even a tiny little change in your website can end up driving more conversion than you could ever imagine.

For example, Freshsales reveals that Arenaturist.com saw a 52% conversion rate increase upon changing their website from this:

To this:

They only moved the form fields and the action button to a more attractive area of the page.

And they couldn't have realized the difference without A/B testing.

Take my word for it, you don't wanna be in the no A/B testing half of that stat 😬

11- Write good copy - no business lingo!

Now, we just covered half of the website design, the visual part.

The other half is copy.

And there is no way you can underestimate the power of a good conversion copy.

Essentially, there is not much change to it, but you have to be careful about three things:

👉 Your copy must focus on value, not features

Here at UserGuiding, we make sure that the first element of the visual hierarchy is our strong, value-oriented copy:

👉 Your copy has to be the center of attention

 Canva's copy is virtually the very center of attention, even though there are many visuals on the site.

This is thanks to a good positioning of the copy as well as a good font:

👉 Your copy has to be short and concise

A piece of copy that is too long might have a negative impact on conversion as it will give the impression that is not worth reading, even when it is good copy:

12- Strong CTA buttons are your best friend

As we discussed above a couple of times already, CTAs (and microcopy!) have the power to make a big difference in your conversion.

And that your visitors see it immediately is vital.

47% of websites have a clear call-to-action button that takes users 3 seconds or less to see.

Here's a good example from Zoom:

"Sign up, it's free" is one powerful copy, but if there is another thing that is almost equally as powerful, it is a CTA being an attention point.

Ahrefs excels at exactly that:

13- Friction is your worst enemy

After getting your website design, copy, CTAs, and everything else right - and testing - there might still be some friction going on on your website.

And the solution is, of course, (back to number 10) more testing!

But without discovering what the friction might be stemming from, it just might be hard to conduct A/B testing.

So, here are some elements friction might be originating from:

👉 Too many breadcrumbs - Users needing to travel through too many pages to access the purchase page

👉 Loading time too long -  As we'll discuss in a minute, a website taking too long can get visitors uninterested

👉 Language barrier - Not offering different languages, especially if your specific target audience speaks a specific language

👉 Glitches & bugs - Any problem that might be caused by a technical error

Keep in mind that as much as a tiny element can improve conversion, the tiniest friction can hinder it too.

Take necessary measures 🫡

14- Details make all the difference

From an interactive element to a really well-written microcopy, tiny details matter.

A good example is Jotform's little banner for their 50% discount:

Because visitors are too familiar with banners and pop-up modals, this little detail would get their attention more easily and contribute to conversion a lot more.

Another cool example is this piece of microcopy on ClickUp's website:

It helps ClickUp's branding as a SaaS solution but also encourages visitors to give it a spin thanks to the "no credit card" part.

15- The faster, the better

How to avoid friction?

First, increase your website speed.

Study shows that a 1-second delay in page load time causes page view numbers to decrease by 11%.

And the average load time on desktop is 2.5 seconds.

That means you'll be losing around 30 visitors out of 100 if you're content with an average loading time - and more if you're okay with worse.

Some best practices to decrease loading time are:

✅ Using a reliable website hosting platform,

✅ Reducing image sizes,

✅ Minifying Javascript, HTML, and CSS.

✅ Maintain servers regularly,

And more.

Check out our cloud hosting providers for best website speed article here 👈

Now that we've got mindset, research, and website experience covered, let's move on to stage 4:

Marketing to Convert

A good website design is often enough to convert most of your visitors, but it doesn't hurt to go the extra mile with on-website marketing and a little bit more.

Here are some best practices of marketing for conversion rate increase:

16- Prove your social proof

One of the most important best practices for conversion rate increase is to utilize customer testimonials.

It is a well-known fact that customer experiences of others and product recommendations on your website inspire shoppers to convert easily.

And in fact, 92% of customers consider testimonials when making a purchase.

More interestingly, 63% of customers report being more willing to buy from sites that feature customer testimonials and reviews.

And how should it look?

Here's a look at our customer testimonials at UserGuiding:

Show your confidence, feature testimonials 💪

17- Start conversion email campaigns

Email marketing is one of the most established kinds of all marketing, and it would be a crying shame if we didn't get to use it for conversion rate optimization.

The truth is a big chunk of your website visitors won't purchase the items in their cart or remember about the free trial they started.

But you have a good bet at getting them back:

✅ One, get them to sign up to your platform for less friction or a promise of better user experience,

✅ Two, send the right emails

Of course, sending "the right emails" is an art of its own kind. When you think about it, an email can be a landing page of its own.

But don't worry. Here are some tips:

👉 Fill the subject line with value

If you've seen any of my recent articles, you might have noticed that I've been obsessed with ClickUp's email announcements.

Here's how it looks:

Now, this example not only has a well-written subject copy that just might be interesting to an uninterested person going through their email but also features how emails can be dedicated and well-designed with cool gifs and format.

👉 Have a cool design

Much like the ClickUp example, I also like how Canva designs its emails:

Using lots of visuals and big buttons is how you keep them interested.

But also:

👉 Get a good CTA going on

When it comes to CTA buttons, Appsumo is at the top of the game.

With funny or just straight up encouraging custom buttons for each tool they feature on their emails, they know how to convert:

But no one is as ambitious about getting you back on the app as Asana is:

👉 Get them back on your territory - no matter what!

Asana sends trial users a bunch of emails weekly to get them to continue their trial or look into different options if the trial is finished.

Here's a look at some of the subjects and you can tell just by that how much they care about you getting back on the app:

They offer insight into what you've done during your trial, what else you can utilize, some of their own content that might interest you, and more.

And even though it might get spammy, I personally enjoy how dedicated they are to convert.

Kudos to that!

These best practices, and especially the last one, is essential since once you get your audience back in the product, you can:

18- Do in-app marketing right

When done in the right place and at the right time, in-app marketing has the most potential to get your users to purchase.

For example, first-time visitors might feel too overwhelmed with an immediate "buy this now" or any other similar CTA.

Instead, you should know how to contextually or non-intrusively prompt in-app messages like:

Appcues prompts a banner that promotes its new user onboarding 101 course that is free.

Now, looking at the psychology behind it, we can see that they are going for two things:

👉 Getting visitors who are making a purchase to try out a course where Appcues and its features can potentially be promoted more,

👉 Users who think its too pricey who will still try out a free course and share their email addresses for it

Even if Appcues can't make a conversion, this banner helps them contribute to future conversions!

But let me remind you, Appcues is not the only tool you can create cool banners with:

Promote to convert: in-app marketing 📈

You didn't hear this from me but in-app marketing is not always annoying when you are visiting a website for the first time.

I was checking out Genially last year, and I was immediately prompted with a Black Friday deals banner on their main page that looked like this:

I loved how they designed the modal and the copy.

And what I found out later shocked me: it was a modal made using UserGuiding.

I simply didn't know all our customers back then and I didn't know the potential for our modals so I learned my lesson never to underestimate UserGuiding or Genially that day.

UserGuiding is a no-code user onboarding and digital adoption tool that can be used for onboarding new users and employees, promoting marketing material, and surveying.

Among its most important features are:

✅ Interactive guides, walkthroughs, product tours,

✅ User onboarding checklists,

✅ Tooltips, in-app messages, hotspots,

✅ Resource centers,

✅ NPS surveys,

And more, all powered with powerful analytics, high customization, and user segmentation and targeting.

Wanna optimize your conversion rate with better onboarding and in-app marketing?

👉Give UserGuiding a try, for FREE👈

Talking about in-app, there is one more agent of yours inside the product that can help you convert:

19- Use chatbots to your advantage

Chatbots have been a common practice for many online marketers who sell products on ecommerce sites.

But nowadays, they have become even more common among B2B and B2C SaaS businesses thanks to customer service and chat tools like Intercom.

And right now, a chatbot can be easily programmed to contribute to conversion.

Here's an example from Intercom's own website:

The chatbot prompts visitors who click on view demo with a pop quiz that asks visitors what "customer engagement" is associated with for them.

After answering the quiz, the bot quickly pitches its solution and later goes on to collect data like company name and more, which eventually ends with a "wanna schedule a demo?"

Now, what is cooler than AI convincing your visitors to give you a chance the Wolf of Wallstreet style?

But of course, you don't have to use AI tech to do the pitch for you.

You can use it to:

👉 Offer help to visitors facing friction,

👉 Answer individual product-related questions,

👉 Collect user feedback,

👉 Promote social platforms you are available on,

👉 Display campaigns and deals,

And so much more.

Wanna know more? Take a look at our chatbot marketing article here 👈

20- Use your unique voice against competitors

One way to convert is to display your strengths and weaknesses clearly and openly.

Compared to your competitors.

As soon as possible, in case they do it before you do.

You can use blog posts, social media posts, or a page dedicated to competitor comparisons on your website.

The point is to have your own unique voice as a brand that is fair and honest. So don't lie and do your research right.

Some industries are smaller than others - you don't want the competition to turn into a petty fight.

21- Expand on other platforms

Lastly, as a part of marketing for conversion, it is important to expand on different platforms, especially social platforms to market your product the way you market it through email campaigns.

What matters at this step is to know which platform(s) are compatible to your brand image and what your target audience's favorite platform is.

For example, LinkedIn and Twitter are pretty much everyone's territory, but you might want to take your eCommerce business to Facebook.

Or similarly, if your business is an indie one, platforms like Instagram and even TikTok are among options.

A brand present o social media gives you:

✅ The opportunity to create brand awareness,

✅ Get customer reviews and testimonials more easily,

✅ Be available on different channels for customer support and customer service,

And more.

In the end, it boils down to how much effort you can put into it, but don't forget, there is no way you can ignore social media.

Now, let's move on to our very last stage for conversion rate optimization:

Conversion Optimized Mobile Experiences

Our last stage for CRO is not necessarily a contemporary one, yet it is not always considered as important as the rest.

This might be a severely bad practice since in 2021, 72% of eCommerce sales was performed on mobile.

So, it leaves us but one choice, and it is to:

22- Acknowledge mobile experiences & optimize

Mobile experiences are something we can no longer fight against since even B2B businesses are joining the mobile app market.

So first, we must acknowledge mobile experiences as a legitimate form of any possible customer journey: On average, people spend 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone every day while also checking it 58 times during the day.

This gives us all the reason to start dominating the dominant device of choice.

And to optimize the mobile conversion rate is even simpler; it's the exact same recipe for regular CRO, just followed equally as tediously as desktop CRO!

Here are a few tips for mobile user conversion:

👉 Make it load even faster - We are used to desktops taking a long time to load, but if your mobile website cannot load fast, it can have an even worse conversion rate. the bright side is, you can get the upper part to load early while the below parts take their time.

👉 Resize fonts and visual - Big fonts and images might create irreversible friction in a mobile user's customer journey, make sure to make the mobile site look good.

👉 Go easy on buttons and CTAs - The page is already small, and the last thing you want to do is overpopulate it with an element that could be annoying to website visitors.

👉 Ease the checkout process - Shorten the path, enable autofill, give access to mobile payment options; make sure all parts of the user experience is mobile-compatible.

Feel like it's not necessary to optimize for mobile?

Google has decided to make it harder to rank websites that aren't optimized for mobile.

Good luck with that 🫡

And if you are already optimized for mobile, there is always space to grow in; go back and make sure it's perfect!

To Wrap Up

Increasing conversion rates can turn into a seriously big task that different teams in your company have to handle if you don't make it an everyday task.

I tried to minimize the process from start to finish, and fitted it into 5 stages; let's take a final look:

🧠 Mindset - This is where you decide on your aim and priorities for the CRO strategy and project,

🔍 Research - The data from this stage rules over the rest of the stages and becomes critical during important decisions,

🧑‍💻 Website Experience - The most exposed part of a CRO strategy, the website experience has many best practices from load time to visual design and copy,

📢 Marketing - Done right, marketing efforts like email marketing, in-app marketing, and social media marketing can help conversion rates greatly,

📱Mobile Experience - Mobile is simply too big and widespread to turn a blind eye on, and even Google won't rank you unless you are optimized for mobile experiences.

As I always say, the success of your CRO strategy will eventually depend on whether your choices are aligned with your specific product and audience or not.

Try to take into consideration what you are working with and who you are working for.

The rest will work out on its own.

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