Is marketing complete without conversion rate optimization? It might be marketing, but are you truly maximizing its potential? Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is crucial for marketing success. So embrace the trend, and get ready to equip yourself with the necessary CRO tools to leverage its benefits effectively.
Karine Bengualid is a freelance content writer over at Brought To You By the Letter K with a teensy penchant for Sesame Street. She writes audience-specific stories to connect brands with their ideal customers. When she’s not saving the world from un-fun marketing or researching everything about the science of fun, she’s building her animal rescue, Maison Misha.
What is marketing without conversion rate optimization?
One could argue it’s still marketing—but are you really getting the most out of it? If you’ve caught up like the rest of us, you’d know that CRO (conversion rate optimization) is the next step for your marketing. And to use CRO to your benefit, you’re gonna need some CRO tools on your roster.
So to paraphrase Becca Kufrin, the former Bachelorette—and underrated conversion rate optimization expert—let’s do the damn thing.
But let’s take a step back for a second. To know CRO (and eventually some CRO tools that can help you out) you need to know some concepts that are pretty directly tied to it. Let’s get into some of ‘em below.
Why is CRO important?
Imagine, if you will, your conversions right now sit at 10%—for every 10 visitors to your website, one of them makes a purchase. And let’s say that every sale is an average of $50. That means, for every 100 visitors to your site, you make $500. (Cha-ching.)
What if you could make a small tweak that increased your conversions from 10% to 20%? Now, for every 100 visitors, 20 of them are buying, resulting in $1000 in sales. (Well done!) Wouldn’t it be worth it?
That’s what CRO does: improve your ROI (return on investment). And there isn’t a single brand in the world that doesn’t want that. No, seriously. Can you think of one? We’ll wait…
Which leads us to our point: there’s always room for improvement. No website or landing page is ever perfect, which means there’s something that can (and probably should) be tweaked to get you those clicks.
We live in a digital world which affords us marketers the luxury of being able to run tests and optimize for results while campaigns are still in progress. You can be testing Facebook and Google ads while they’re running, or test different elements on your product pages while conducting business as usual. Your sales don’t stop just because you’re optimizing—in fact, your sales continue and grow because you’re optimizing.
CRO also helps to target more of your ideal customers, while lowering your customer acquisition cost (CAC). Because if you’re spending too much on finding the wrong types of customers, you’re wasting valuable resources: time and money. Targeting and converting the best-fit customers means you can spend your resources on other parts of your work.
“Will a photo or video at the top of the page help or hinder my sales?”
“Are dog or cat memes more likely to get a click on my ads?”
These are just four out of billions of questions good CRO tools can help you answer. All CRO tools aim for one common goal: increasing conversions. Different tools provide the answers with different methods—with testing, analytics, surveys, and design.
These days, most of the CRO tools on the market can be integrated with the tech stack you already have—CMS, CRM, social media, and more—so they can provide you with a more seamless optimization experience.
Things to know (before jumping into CRO)
If you’re pretty new to this CRO thing, some phrases will come up pretty consistently that you need to know about. Here are some of the most important ones to keep in mind, glossary style.
Call to action (CTA)
This is the holy grail of CRO—the CTA button you want the audience to click because that click translates into a conversion. Regardless of what you call that button (“buy now”, “sign up”, “download”), this is the ultimate thing you want people to do.
Red pill or blue pill—which one do you choose? Buy now or add to cart? Photos or videos? There are countless elements on your landing pages that can make or break your conversions, and testing is really the best way to measure quantitatively which versions perform best.
Multivariate testing (MVT)
While A/B testing only tests one element at a time, multivariate testing has you evaluating various combinations of different elements simultaneously. In A/B testing, you might only test the CTA. In multivariate testing, you have several combinations to test to find the combination that wins. Instead of just testing two versions of a landing page, you can create three or more variants and split your traffic across them.
The advantage of multivariate testing is that it allows you to examine the impact of multiple options.
Split testing
Sometimes used interchangeably with A/B testing, split testing usually refers to the method—a more extensive form of testing where larger changes are compared. Instead of a single element, you might compare 2 completely different webpage designs or user experiences.
How to choose the right CRO tool
With so many different options on the market, it might be hard to evaluate CRO tools and decide which ones will best serve your goals. And since not every business is the same, it’s hard to give a black-and-white answer to this question. So here are just a few considerations when shopping around.
Remember, you can always start small and then build a case to add more tools to your tool stack once you start seeing results.
Here are some of the questions to consider when picking your CRO tools:
What are your goals?
What types of conversions do you want to optimize?
Does it integrate with your existing marketing stack? (CRM, CMS, EMS, automation software, social media, etc)
Is it simple to use, or do you need a specialist on your team?
Can different teams use it for their own purposes? (Marketers, researchers, designers, developers, etc)
Can it be customized and scaled to serve your business and industry better?
Can the data collected be organized to suit your business?
What type of training and post-purchase support is provided?
Types of CRO tools
All CRO tools have a similar purpose in that they help you optimize, but they can all help in different ways by providing different insights. There are eight categories listed below, so you can choose to focus on one, some, or even all.
A/B testing tools
When it comes to CRO, experimentation is the name of the game—you want to try, test, and iterate when it comes to increasing conversions. And A/B testing is the best way to do that. A/B testing can help you unlock your marketing potential by helping you learn what your audience responds to, creating better user experiences, and allowing you to experiment confidently.
Note: More often than not, “A/B testing” is a catchall used to refer to both types of testing—A/B and multivariate testing. The main difference between the two is in the name: A/B pits two variations of the same page against each other. At the same time, multivariate means several elements are being tested on many pages. And the testing is to see which part(s) helps increase conversions.
Analytics tools
In addition to behavioral and product analytics solutions, which CRO teams use to ideate and evaluate the impact of their work, we also love tools that help CRO leaders leverage audience segments and KPIs stored in data platforms. CRO and getting value back from AI are easier and more impactful when it’s combined with data and analytics.
Looking under the (metaphorical) hood of your website and campaigns is important because it helps you understand trends. Qualitative data provides a full picture of the interactions visitors are having and these can help you make hypotheses based on those insights. From there, you can start testing your theories.
Landing page tools help you build landing pages that serve your different purposes. If you’re in the market to find the right landing page builder for you, we’ve got just what you need.
Want to know more about what a landing page is? Click here.
Lead capture tools
Collecting your visitors’ info is a critical step in building out your funnel—and it’s the first step. Once you have your customer’s info, it’s simpler to understand their journey and provide them with the right content at the right stage of that journey. You can capture leads in so many different ways—think popups, quizzes, lightboxes, intent detection, and more. Lead capture tools help you create those lead captures.
SEO tools
You can further optimize your website using keywords, and SEO tools can show you how your competitors rank compared to you. Understanding what keywords—both short- and long-tail—competitors are using in search engines can help you rank better, or better yet, be one of the top results of search engines in the long run. SEO tools provide insights into your website’s performance through search engine results page (SERP) rankings, backlinks, keyword comparisons, and more.
Survey tools
When in doubt, ask. And who can provide better feedback than your actual customers or audience? Customer feedback and survey tools are important tools to ask for suggestions, find issues, build new features, and more. These tools can even provide invaluable key messaging and voice of customer data for your copywriters (and we really, really care about copywriters. Ahem.).
User behavior tools
User behavior is closely related to analytics in that it shows you how someone is behaving on your site, but more visually. Think heat maps. It’s a much more granular form of analytics. It is more about hypothesizing why someone is abandoning their cart (vs just the number of abandoned carts) if visitors are finding what they’re looking for and why visitors are leaving your landing page without converting. Think of it as the Why to the analytics tools’ What.
User testing tools
While user testing might at first sound like user behavior testing, it’s a different beast. User testing is all about actually getting users to try things out—beta testing new products, pre-launching new features, UI and/or UX design and messaging, etc. These can be conducted live by video or by remote testing.
Top CRO tools vouched for by marketing agencies and experts
Now that we know more about conversion rate optimization and what it’s all about, let’s get to introducing these CRO tools.
Best A/B testing tools for conversion rate optimization
1. Kameleoon
Kameleoon is an AI-powered personalization tool that lets teams test everything from web pages to product features. What’s more, they’re HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA compliant, which means your customers’ data is safe and secure. This CRO tool gives each team the testing method they need while letting them collaborate on one unified platform, leveraging AI.
2. Optimizely
This experimentation tool lets you test content, web pages, and features to generate insights that can help you in your experiments. It’s also a great tool for personalized ecommerce experiences. Optimizely is a CRO tool made for developers, leaders, and content creators. This all-in-one optimization platform can power your entire marketing lifecycle.
3. Optimonk
If you have an ecommerce website (bonus points for a Shopify-powered site), then OptiMonk has the power to monetize your traffic through popups, personalization, and A/B testing. OptiMonk AI uses—you guessed it— artificial intelligence to test better headlines, better product descriptions and even provide personalized popups for your visitors. And there’s even a Shopify app you can use.
4. A/B Tasty
If you’re looking to improve your website, products, software, apps, and even the experiences your customers have with your brand, A/B Tasty can help. By driving growth from end-to-end experiences, your customers (and visitors) will have a more seamless experience across all touchpoints.
Best analytics tools for conversion rate optimization
5. Heap
Acquired by Contentsquare, Heap is a product analytics tool that enables users to see key quantitative behavioral insights. You can get a better understanding of how your visitors interact with your website and app while making user-driven decisions. Heap captures all the data you’re used to with Google Analytics—pageviews, clicks, form submissions, transactions, and you don’t even need to create those pesky “events” as you do with GA4.
6. Adobe Analytics
Targeting more of an enterprise crowd, Adobe Analytics (formerly Omniture) combines web, marketing, and predictive analytics data to improve conversions and support your CRO tests. It’s great for tracking KPIs and other business goals, capturing data across several channels to get a full 360-degree picture, as well as integrating customer data from your preferred CRM to create user segments.
7. Mixpanel
Mixpanel helps you see exactly what your audience is doing on your site and where they drop off in your funnel. You also get insights into segments of your audience that aren’t performing up to snuff, track customer journeys, and more. This tool provides a complete overview of the analytics you need to make informed decisions based less on your gut and more on hard data.
Landing page tools
8. Unbounce
Call us biased, but Unbounce is one of the best landing page builders on this side of the web. This AI-powered optimization platform helps you build landing pages faster, as well as provides an A/B testing solution that guarantees better results and conversions. Unbounce doesn’t just use any generic GPT-style AI either—it uses billions of data to inform itsrecommendations and ensure you get the best results for your campaigns. From its state-of-the-art landing page builder to AI-powered copywriting and optimization tools, Unbounce gives you everything you need for your CRO at your fingertips. Seriously, what more could you want?
9. Leadpages
Leadpages lets you build whole websites as well as landing pages, depending on your business needs. You can start with one of hundreds of templates, add your brand colors, and customize it to your needs. You’re also able to conduct A/B testing and build your whole funnel in one shot.
Wanna know why results-driven marketers choose Unbounce over Leadpages? Click here to find out.
10. Instapage
With hundreds of layouts explicitly designed with conversions in mind, Instapage lets you create, test, optimize, and collaborate all from your dashboard. It’s pretty sweet (and seamless.)
See why businesses and agencies choose Unbounce over Instapage? Click here to find out.
11. Carrd
Designed specifically for building single-page sites, Carrd describes itself as “simple, responsive, free.” (Though there is a paid tier as well.) There are dozens of templates to get you started, or if you’re feeling creative, you can start with a blank canvas and go from there.
Lead capture tools
12. OptinMonster
Not all monsters are scary, it seems. Ever wonder how to capture more leads? Well, there are loads of ways, and OptinMonster has them teed up and ready for you to use (as well as hundreds of templates). So whether your goals are to reduce cart abandonment or grow your email list, there’s a lead capture built for that.
13. ConvertBox
So we know that pop-ups can help move visitors with more ease, but not all lead captures are built the same. ConvertBox helps with providing segmentation surveys, customized messaging (you can add your customer’s name and a personalized video to pop-ups), and offers built just for them.
14. HelloBar
For each of HelloBar’s lead-capture options, you can customize them with pre-built themes and make them on-brand with this tool’s visual editor. Oh, and the design assistant automatically detects your branding and matches it for you (but then you can further tweak it if necessary).
Best SEO tools for conversion optimization
15. Ahrefs
Everything you need for SEO optimization can be found in Ahrefs—including finding the best keywords for your business (from a list of 475M ranked keywords), tracking your competitors’ top keywords and backlinks, and auditing your website for any possible SEO issues. This is what SEO dreams are made of.
16. SEMRush
Another great SEO tool, SEMRush, has six keyword research tools to help you boost your traffic. Use seed keywords to thousands of combinations, find keyword gaps so you can create new campaigns, and start building keyword clusters. You can also conduct competitor analysis, on-page SEO reviews, focus on local SEO, and much, much more.
17. Moz
Creator of MozCon, Moz offers many free tools to boost your SEO game, as well as paid tiers to go even further. But even with just the free tools, you can find out domain authority (DA) scores, discover the best keywords to drive traffic to your site, review your organic search competition (and crush ‘em), and there’s even a Chrome extension you can add so you can automatically get the sneaky deets on any website you visit.
Best survey tools for conversion rate optimization
18. Typeform
If you’ve ever encountered a Typeform in the wild, you’ll know it feels effortless and seamless. Use it to build a survey where you can answer one question at a time and integrate it with your favorite apps like Zapier, Google Sheets, Slack, Hubspot, and more. You can also create quizzes, polls, and forms.
19. Survey Monkey
We’re pretty sure Survey Monkey is one of the best-known survey tools out there, and its editor is easy and intuitive to use. Their free plan allows you to do almost everything a marketer might need. The premium plans allow you to go further with features like skip logic, 50,000 responses per year (and up), filter and analyze results based on your team’s needs, and more.
20. Airtable
Airtable’s best-kept secret is its ability to create forms and collect the data. This tool is unlike the others for that reason—because it’s best known as a “cloud collaboration, spreadsheet-database hybrid” tool, not a survey tool. Yet this is what makes it unique because it has most of the same functionality, and you can integrate your survey/form results with your other data and work. Win-win. (If you’re curious how to do this, check out this article.)
Best user behavior tools for conversion rate optimization
21. Hotjar
Best known for their heatmaps, Hotjar is an industry leader in user behavior. But did you know there are different types of heatmaps (move, click, scroll, engagement zone, and rage click maps), each with their own ways of helping you improve your conversions? Cool! (Or hot?)
22. Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg does a lot: heatmaps, recordings, surveys, A/B testing, traffic analysis, you name it. It’s one thing to know a visitor bounced on your page, but it’s another thing entirely to see what they did that made them bounce. And while you’re at it, you can even measure customer experience with a simple pop-up survey.
23. FullStory
Web, mobile, and even product analytics help you give your users what they want while increasing conversions. FullStory’s auto-capture feature lets you see patterns, fix bugs, and gather insights. You can then transform this data into signals (what your users are telling you with their behavior), journeys (how your customers go from point A to point Z), and heatmaps (that show you instead of tell you).
24. Contentsquare
With Contentsquare, you can understand your customers better and optimize their user experience across all your platforms (web, mobile, and apps). It uses AI to show customer behaviors, feelings, and even intent throughout their customer journey. This all-in-one experience platform uses immersive analysis and AI-powered insights to increase engagement and conversions for customers.
25. Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics lets you drive revenue growth by tracking what humans are doing when they visit your site and improving engagement with your site. This tool makes it simple to track behavior, find bottlenecks, and reduce customer churn. You get to gain deep insights from all your customer data with one easy-to-use dashboard. Chef’s kiss.
26. VWO Insights
VWO is more than just behavior analytics, but this feature is quite robust. It provides analytics through session recordings, heatmaps, surveys, forms, funnels, and segments. In turn, it gives you a 360-degree qualitative analysis of your marketing to optimize every area of your digital footprint.
Best user testing tools for conversion rate optimization
27. UserTesting
Unlike the other tools in this list, UserTesting is a video-first platform, meaning you can see and hear real-life humans as they interact with your design, messaging, product, app, brand, and process. This tool has a network of contributors they tap into for testing, but you can also recruit your own testers. UserTesting provides solutions for digital, UX research, product, design, and marketing teams.
28. Five Second Test by Lyssna
This tool is based on one big idea: that first impressions matter. So what happens in those first five seconds when visitors experience your brand’s messaging and/or design? You can gather both qualitative and quantitative feedback from Five Second Test so you can ensure your message is clear and that your audience remembers you.
29. UserVoice
If you’re building products, you need to get feedback in order to improve and give your customers what they need. And what better way than to engage your customers and collect their feedback? UserVoice calls itself “the world’s best product feedback tool” and the ultimate tool for product discovery. Transform your product’s future through real user feedback, guiding you to uncover problems worth solving and solutions worth building. Join us and start your discovery journey today.
Bonus: Google optimization tools for conversion optimization
Google tools fall under two categories: love it or hate it. There is no in-between. So for that reason, let’s give them a category all on their own. And there are three specifically that can help you optimize your conversions.
30. GA4, formerly Google Analytics (for analytics):
Probably the best-known analytics platform but also the most…polarizing (again, depending on which camp you belong to). You can set up GA4 with any website for free to review your website and advertising traffic. The insights you get can be invaluable when optimizing your campaigns.
31. Google Forms (for surveys)
With Google Forms, you can create surveys, forms, and quizzes for free without special software (just the web). You’re also able to customize them to be on brand with your logo and colors, embed them on your site or emails, or share the link. Best of all, you can analyze your responses and export them into Google Sheets. How seamless.
32. Google Search Console (for SEO)
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As with most of Google’s services, Search Console is free to use and helps you figure out what’s what with your website within Google Search results. This is a cool tool because you can see what people are typing in Google to find your site so you can optimize for those keywords.
Go forth and optimize
With so many tools, it might feel overwhelming to get started with CRO. But it shouldn’t be. Consider this list of CRO tools your yellow brick road to better results. Because yes, there is a tiny little wizard behind every website trying to optimize for best results.
If you’re jazzed for your CRO journey, but don’t know where to start, Unbounce can give you a helping hand. With Unbounce’s all-in-one conversion rate optimization platform, you can build, experiment, and optimize all in one place while maximizing your results.
