Conversion Rate Optimization Tools

What are CRO tools?

A deep understanding of your website buyer behavior is the foundation of a successful conversion rate optimization program: knowing where the site is working to meet your goals, and also where you need improvements–so you can focus and prioritize your CRO efforts on the right areas.

Conversion rate optimization tools are an integral part of this process. CRO tools provide key website and visitor data analysis about how people are using your site and identify areas that need work.

CRO tools serve three important functions:

• Discover why visitors aren’t converting to a lead or a buyer

• Determine changes you should make to increase website conversions

• Test improvements to optimize for the highest conversion rate

There are many CRO tools that measure conversion rates, but a combination of quantitative and qualitative data analysis will result in the most meaningful and actionable insights. Quantitative will give you the what of the data, but qualitative data will reveal the why a visitor took an action. The most modern and effective approach integrates the best of both CRO tools with digital experience intelligence.

CRO tools fall into three broad categories:

• Quantitative: measures key performance data across the website and mobile app

• Qualitative user behavior/interactive: shows you areas that need improvement

• Testing tools: enables experiments with your CRO changes

What to look for in a conversion rate optimization tool

With so many choices and functionality on the market, it’s tough to choose which CRO tool or tools are right for your CRO goals and business.

Below are some guidelines to select a conversion rate optimization tool:

GDPR compliance

It should meet GDPR compliance standards since you're engaging and collecting data at every stage of a website user’s interaction. Though this applies to Europe, any global company that employs or does business with EU citizens must comply with GDPR regulations.

Maximum security

CRO tools must be safe and secure when running on your website to protect both your customer and organization data. This includes data masking, compliance with all privacy regulations and other security measures.

Supports integrations

Finding the right CRO tool for your business is the priority, but just as critical is that it integrates with other tools in your tech stack to prevent data silos and duplication. If it doesn’t, the platform should have open APIs to build custom integration.

Integrated dashboard

Your CRO can get you the data analysis you need, but a unified dashboard brings it all together in a single view. Look for solutions that offer a single interface for viewing platform integrations, performing tasks and allows cross-team collaboration.

Best conversion rate optimization tools to consider

Here are some popular and highly rated CRO tools to consider for your conversion rate optimization program.

Quantitative CRO tools

Quantitative tools, like web analytics, are a baseline solution to measure various data for your website traffic. Web analytics can tell you how people found your site, bounce rate, which pages visitors engage with, how many converted and with what action (e.g. newsletter sign up, video views, etc.) and more. These tools can also compare data over time to see patterns, measure CRO performance against benchmarks and provide other functionality.

Hubspot

For those who are new to CRO analytics or want a baseline CRO check, Hubspot offers a website grader. It provides a solid starting point for conversion rate optimization. The tool gives you a performance snapshot of your website for speed, page size, mobile responsiveness, SEO security and other variables.

Pricing: Free

Google Analytics

Probably the best-known of the web analytics tools, Google Analytics offers a comprehensive analytics suite that tracks across many website traffic and visitor activities–from pages per session to bounce rate to visitor location and demographics, along with page conversions, tracking goal conversion rates, and more.

Pricing: Free. Premium version, Google Analytics 360 available from $150,000 annually

Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics is more advanced than simple web analytics, tracking real-time omnichannel data across your website, email marketing, kiosks, apps and other digital touchpoints, and also includes predictive intelligence. It analyzes sales funnel flows, helps measure KPIs and reports on conversion rates and is known for its easy-to-understand versatile, visually attractive reports.

Pricing: $30,000 to $350,000+ annually depending on plan

Heap

Heap is a digital analytics platform that tracks in-depth retroactive and real-time data about visitor interactions on your website and apps, including page views, sessions, form analytics and more. It captures data automatically, but you can also customize options and filter data and offers a convenient dashboard for page performance at a glance.

Pricing: Free plan; Growth plan $3,600; Pro and Premier customized pricing on request

User behavior tools

Quantitative CRO tools will tell you the ”what” in your website data – as in number of visitors, conversions and other performance data – but user behavior, or interactive tools, will give you the “why” it happened and a more complete picture to pinpoint what the person did or didn’t do in that moment. For example, did they leave their shopping cart, navigate around endlessly or click a button multiple times? This data analysis provides real-time actionable insights for creating a better customer experience.

Glassbox

Glassbox goes beyond user behavior tools as a Digital Experience Intelligence platform. With a full suite of digital experience intelligence tools, it captures, visualizes and analyzes every digital journey in real-time across websites and apps and is accessible on a collaborative platform. Features include heatmaps, session replays, voice of customer (VoC) and other tools that focus on user pain points, help prioritize improvements and optimize customer journeys. Customized for industries, Glassbox also supports multiple integrations and offers unmatched privacy and security. Read Glassbox user reviews of its award-winning platform.

Pricing: Available on request

Smartlook

Smartlook captures qualitative and quantitative website and mobile analytics through session recordings with filters, heatmaps, event tracking, conversion funnels and other tools. It has mobile and web comparative features and integrates with popular analytics tools. Data is kept for 30 days and then deleted and has a 200MB cache storage capacity.

Pricing: Free plan; Start up $39/month; Business: $111/month; Enterprise on request.

UsabilityHub

UsabilityHub is a remote user testing platform for websites and mobile apps. Dubbing itself a “Swiss Army Knife,” it offers a comprehensive suite of feedback testing with first click tests, preference tests, design surveys, card sorting and other methods. There is also paid access to recruit research panels if participants are needed.

Pricing: Free plan; Basic/$89/month; Pro/$199/month; Enterprise on request

CRO testing tools

You’ve done the work to analyze website issues through a CRO tool. You’ve prioritized changes to be made to increase conversions and optimize the customer experience. Now comes time for CRO testing tools with your real website visitors to measure if the proposed changes achieve your CRO goal, have no effect or a negative impact. This can be done through A/B testing, surveys and other direct recipient feedback.

VWO Testing

VWO Testing is a real-time website visual editor and A/B testing tool to understand how website visitors react to UX changes. Geared for enterprises, it can create multiple web page versions and test conversion goals with advanced statistical analytics of the results. It also features a heatmap tool to track visitor clicks and other behavior. VWO also has personalization tools to segment and feature targeted offers.

Pricing: Available on request

Optimizely

Optimizely focuses on A/B testing and experimentation for high traffic sites and supports multi- page experiments. Advanced features include AI-powered personalization, segmentation, recommendations for content and products, a campaign builder and other tools. It can also be used to help optimize conversions on mobile, TV and messaging apps and other platforms.

Pricing: Available on request

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is website optimization software that also goes a step further than A/B testing with heatmaps, surveys and usability testing tools. Good for small businesses, testing setup is easy and no coding is required. You can test variations of website pages with a code snippet and automatically send more traffic to the optimal variant. It’s also known for good conversion and reporting tools.

Pricing: Basic: $24/month; Standard $49/month; Plus $99/month; Pro $249/month; enterprise pricing available on request