By Kyle Steffish  – A feature piece from our Fall 2024 issue of the Lancaster Thriving Publication!

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of improving a website or landing page to increase the number of visitors who take a desired action, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. It involves analyzing how users interact with the site and making changes to boost the chances of conversions. 

Finding The Right CRO Tools 

Many CRO tools are available, but they can often be expensive, complex, and difficult to implement. The following platforms are either free or offer relatively low cost plans, making them excellent options for businesses of any size to start optimizing their website. 

1. Microsoft Clarity – Completely Free 

Microsoft Clarity is a free analytics platform that provides insights into how visitors interact with your website.  

How To Use Clarity  

It offers standard CRO tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and scroll depth charts to help you understand user behavior and identify areas for improvement. 

With unlimited data storage and no cost, Clarity is an excellent choice for businesses looking to optimize their website and enhance user experience without breaking the bank. 

Plans & Pricing 

Microsoft offers Clarity completely free of charge, with no additional premium plans. All of the platform’s tools and reports are available for immediate use.  

2. Lucky Orange – Free & Low Cost Plans 

Lucky Orange is an all-in-one conversion rate optimization tool that offers features like heatmaps, session recordings, and real-time analytics to help you understand how visitors interact with your website. 

How To Use Lucky Orange 

A notable feature is its form analytics tool, which provides detailed insights into how users engage with your forms, including where they drop off, which fields cause friction, and completion rates.  

This is particularly useful for lead generation businesses that rely on form fills to feed their sales funnel. Optimizing your forms to balance your sales needs  

Plans & Pricing  

Lucky Orange offers users a free plan. This plan will only capture data for up to 100 monthly sessions. This is a great option for gathering initial insights without having to commit to a paid plan. They also offer a low cost “Build” plan, which tracks up to 5,000 sessions a month. 

3. Heap – Free Plan With Limited Functionality 

Heap is a digital analytics platform that automatically captures every user interaction on your website or app, providing valuable insights to optimize the user experience and increase conversions. 

How To Use Heap 

Heap offers many standard CRO tools, but its Journey Map is especially beneficial for eCommerce websites, as it visually maps out the entire customer journey, highlighting key touchpoints and identifying friction points that lead to drop-offs. 

Plans & Pricing 

Heap offers a free trial with limited access to tools and features; however, the free plan does allow users to create journey maps – which are easier to understand and more customizable than most other platforms. 

4. Google Search Console – Completely Free  

While not strictly a CRO tool, Google Search Console provides numerous insights helpful for improving your site’s experience.  

How To Use Google Search Console For CRO 

Google Search Console helps you see how users find and interact with your website through search results, providing insights on keyword performance and click-through rates (CTR). By using this data, you can optimize your site’s content to improve rankings and increase conversions. 

You can also use its Core Web Vitals report for insights into your website’s loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability — factors that impact user experience. By improving these metrics, you can create a smoother, more responsive website, which can reduce bounce rates and increase the likelihood of visitors converting. 

Plans & Pricing 

Offer free of charge, Search Console does not lock any features behind paid plans. 

5. Google Analytics – Completely Free  

Like Search Console, Google Analytics is another standard platform most business owners and marketers are familiar with.  

How To Use Google Analytics For CRO 

Google Analytics can be used as a CRO tool by providing detailed insights into user behavior, helping you identify which areas of your website are performing well and which need improvement. 

By analyzing metrics such as bounce rate, session duration, and conversion rates, you can make data-driven decisions to optimize your site for better user experiences and higher conversions. Specifically, the Funnel and Path exploration reports allow you to visualize the steps users take before converting, helping you pinpoint where drop-offs occur and optimize those touchpoints to improve the overall conversion rate.  

Plans & Pricing 

Like Search Console, Google Analytics is free for all websites and users; however, Google does offer Analytics 360. This more advanced version of Analytics offers longer data retention, unsampled data for higher accuracy, and deeper reporting customizations. Pricing varies based on several factors, and most businesses will not need the level of data provided by GA360.  

Deciding When To Upgrade 

As the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” While some of these platforms are truly free, it may be worth spending to unlock more paid features. Before spending more on a CRO platform, keep these things in mind: 

• How many sessions does your website receive on a monthly basis? How much of this do you want to capture? 

• How far back do you want to retain captured data? Is your business highly seasonal? Do you want to compare season-over-season data? 

• How valuable are advanced analytics? Are there reports or data that you’d like to export or share?   

• Will multiple people want to access this platform? How many users will you need? 

• Do you need additional features like A/B testing?  

WTM Digital Bio 

WTM Digital is a full-service digital marketing agency located in Lancaster, PA and staff throughout North America. Offering Web Design and SEO, CRO, and PPC marketing services, WTM partners with companies of all sizes and industries – within Pennsylvania and across the country.  

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