CRO (conversion rate optimization) is a vital component in the toolkit of any thriving online business. As a digital marketing agency, we're pros at crafting websites that aren't just visually appealing but are robust business-building machines. A significant part of this process involves CRO, especially for e-commerce or conversion-driven businesses. Our clients come to us with high expectations for their websites, and it's our job to ensure these digital platforms work hard for them.

You can learn more about our conversion rate optimization services here.

The CRO tools we use are the secret sauce to making your website not just good, but great. We're not just following trends here; we're using tools that have proven their worth. We lean on industry stalwarts like GA4, Hotjar, and Convert.com, largely because their effectiveness is time-tested and widely acknowledged. These tools are our go-to resources for turning casual browsers into loyal customers.

If you're not familiar with why CRO is vital for your business - it's simple. The CRO process is designed to transform your website into a smarter, more efficient conversion machine. If growth and increased conversion rates are what you're after, these tools are what will help us get you there. The CRO landscape has been evolving for over two decades, initially providing eCommerce stores and marketers an edge in managing online traffic. Today, the advancement in these tools means your websites can be continually optimized - everything from design and copy to offers and image creation can be fine-tuned.

But here's the catch: not all CRO tools are created equal. Each tool has its own set of features and benefits, making it unique. I've experimented with a variety of tools, and I've had to let go of a few that just didn't make the cut. The ones I use now stand out from the crowd, each bringing something special to the table. It's crucial to understand what each tool offers and how it can specifically aid your website's performance. Just like how you would test different web hosts, testing your CRO tools is equally important.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics needs to be your first stop when looking for CRO tools. The data provided has changed the marketing game, giving businesses more information than ever about the user experience and the choices those users make. They’ve continued those advancements with the latest version called GA4. You can get insight into incredibly niche details about your website and its visitors, helping you craft a user experience that turns traffic into the sales you’ve been waiting to get!

Benefits

- User Engagement and Data Tracking

GA4 can provide insight into a user’s session on your website - or your apps - down to the millisecond. How long a user spends between screens, when focus deviates away from your content, analytics on site and app crashing - GA4 provides it all. Not only that, it keeps track of that data to give you valuable information like average engagement time.

- Conversion and Goal Completion Metrics

Conversion rates are arguably the most important website metric. GA4 not only provides that number but can give you multiple rates to help you optimize your site. Session conversion will give you insight into what percentage of sessions result in the triggering of a conversion event, while the conversion rate itself will give you data on user actions.

You’re also able to set up your own goals for GA4 to measure, ensuring all user interactions are measured and that the final result lives up to the goal you’ve set.

- Custom Reports

Customized reporting is available with GA4, allowing you to build your own report or to create one from a generated template. You’ll get the exact data and metrics you’re looking for, without a ton of unnecessary details that’ll just waste your time.

Hotjar

If you don’t know your customers, you don’t know what decisions they’re going to make on your website. That’s where Hotjar comes in. Where GA4 will provide you with number-crunched hard data, Hotjar provides more experience-based information to help you understand your market and your customers. With it, you’re more easily able to put yourself in your customer’s shoes so you can literally experience your product, and your website, from their perspective.

Benefits

- User Interaction Heatmaps

Hotjar provides click, scroll, and move data and creates a heatmap for you to visualize it. For an athlete, a heatmap indicates where they’ve moved on the field. For a user, it dictates what part of the page they spent their time on, what they avoided, and where they clicked.

- Visitor Recordings for Behavioral Analysis

Want to see the decisions your visitors make in real-time? Hotjar has that too. They record user sessions to get more advanced data about a visitor’s behavior and their choices - and they do this without violating your user’s privacy rights.

- Conversion Funnels and Form Analysis

With a simple tracking code, Hotjar also tracks analytics on the various forms throughout your website. You’ll be able to track the interactions with those forms and eventually visualize them with funnels. It’ll show you the conversion steps and drop-off points taken by your users, demonstrating to you what works and what’s dead. 

A/B Testing with Convert.com

A/B testing is exactly what it says in the name - a way of trying method A and method B to find out which one works better. It’s a methodology that gives you invaluable insight into user choices, as it offers random users different options to see which leads to a better user experience. It can also be more advanced than just one or the other, with Convert.com’s testing you can create a set of variables to be weighed against each other.

Benefits

- Easy Set-up And Multiple Test Variants

The name may list two options, but Convert.com offers a wide plethora of variants for its A/B testing. Targeting tests that are designed to offer the right content to the right users; existence testing that measures the impact of a single detail or nuance on your sight. These are just a couple of the extremely niche or broad tests Convert.com offers to help you optimize and strategize your design choices.

- Integrated Analytics for Reporting

Whether you use Adobe Analytics, GA4, or another system Convert.com can seamlessly integrate into your reporting. When combined with GA4’s already ample analytics, it gives you even more highly specific data to improve user experience and conversion.

- Personalization and Segmentation

Convert has been using a Personalization feature for almost 10 years. Why would you need a team of engineers when you can just adjust your own settings? You can personalize segmented parts of your website with just a few clicks. You’ll be able to identify the most valuable segments on your website and personalize the rest of the content to optimize the buyer journey. Which campaigns worked and which didn’t, visitor type, what device was used to access your site - you’ll get information on it all.