Best Conversion Rate Optimization Tools from Growth Experts
It’s hard to know what will finally convince your audience to talk to a salesperson or try your product. Is it the copy? Is it the button size and positioning? Is it personalization?
It takes a lot of time to conduct these experiments and figure out what is impacting conversions. So how can you A/B test and optimize at scale?
Over the past few months, we’ve tried to figure exactly that, interviewing website experts about their optimization strategy. As part of that series, we asked our guests what their favorite tools were for website optimization.
In this post, we’ll share ten of those tools, explaining what they are and how you can use them to improve your website and boost your conversions.
Conversion rate optimization tools mentioned by experts
It’s no surprise that some platforms kept popping up over and over in our interviews. Below, we review the tools that were mentioned most often and illustrate why they are so popular.
Unbounce
What it is: Unbounce is an AI-powered landing page builder to help you get more customers from social media, search ads, and email marketing.
Use Case: Creating landing pages
Nicholas Scalice founder and growth marketer at Earnworthy, is a master at creating landing pages that convert, and Unbounce is his “favorite way to build landing pages.”
He expands on this in his interview, explaining that Unbounce is easy to use (it’s drag and drop) which allows you to build a landing page from existing templates and has an efficient testing flow.
John Oz, cofounder and CMO of Datapad, echoes this sentiment.
“I love experimenting with different pages, and one way to do that is with Unbounce. It really helps me run and measure growth experiments.”
Figma
What it is: Figma is a collaborative interface design tool that enables teams to build marketing campaigns, products, and workflows faster.
Use Case: Designing landing pages
Landing pages were a recurring theme in our website trends interview series, and that’s because they are difficult to design and perfect.
Jason Oakley, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Klue, uses Figma to brainstorm new landing page ideas and run them by his team.
Just like Unbounce, Figma has prebuilt templates that anyone – even free trialers – can use.
“I use Figma for webpage mock-ups, and anyone can get a free plan with exposure to tons of landing page templates.”
Ahrefs
What it is: Ahrefs is an SEO platform that marketers use for site audits, keyword research, and rank monitoring.
Use Case: SEO optimization
SEO is always a big topic of discussion when it comes to website optimization. As many marketers know, SEO plays a huge role in whether or not your ICP sees your website.
And it’s not a one-and-done activity. Rankings are always changing, and tracking what’s happening in your space is key to getting and staying ahead.
Andrew Shotland, CEO of Local SEO Guide, says that Ahrefs gives him the most data to work with when it comes to SEO.
Alexandra Cote, a freelance growth consultant and content strategist, agrees, saying that Ahrefs helps her find the right keywords and monitor her rankings.
Ahrefs was another tool Jason Oakley recommended – not only as a resource but also as an example of a well-optimized site.
He highlights their ability to create a comparison page with social proof and unique features like the largest database of US research queries, traffic potential calculators, and backlink opportunities.
SEMRush
What it is: SEMRush is another SEO-related tool for ranking data, keyword research, and tracking KPIs like CPC and search volume.
Use Case: SEO optimization
Another option similar to Ahrefs is SEMrush but is more for experienced folks, especially for exploration and testing.
Andrew Shotland suggests SEMRush to his clients for ad hoc analysis.
“You can just log in there and quickly do research…we also use their API and some of our tools to pull data in from Google Search Console.”
Consolidating and analyzing SEO data from multiple sources can uncover new keywords or backlinks opportunities you may not have encountered otherwise.
Hotjar
What it is: Hotjar is an analytics platform that helps users visualize user behavior.
Use Case: Optimizing landing pages
Even if you create high-performing landing pages, it’s tough to tell what about those pages gets people to convert — the crucial information you need to recreate that level of success over and over.
Hotjar shows where people hover their mouse or click on your landing pages, revealing what might resonate with your audience most.
John Oz uses Hotjar to test various landing pages and see where people are spending the most time.
Ishaan Shakunt, Founder and Head of Marketing Strategy at Spear Growth, also uses Hotjar to assess audience behavior and reduce friction.
“If you’re in product marketing, look at how people are behaving. Look at where people are clicking. If you’re in performance marketing, look at the audience that you’re bringing. How are they performing versus a different audience?”
Ishaan encourages marketers to sit and watch what happens on landing pages live or watch recordings to better understand how users respond.
Navattic
What it is: Navattic is a customizable, easy-to-use interactive demo software. With it, you can build product tours for your website, blog posts, PPC ads, sales follow-up emails, and more.
Use Case: Optimizing landing pages
Product-led content is becoming more and more important. But how can you show off your product’s best features to customers before they even sign up for a free trial or talk to a sales rep.
With Navattic, you can walk prospects through your product’s strongest, most relevant features right from a website or blog post.
Jason Oakley mentioned using Navattic for new feature announcements in his interview, saying that he uses it in conjunction with Chili Piper.
Prompting someone to book a meeting right after they’ve run through an interactive demo can create a more streamlined, efficient sales experience.
Mutiny
What it is: Mutiny is a no-code AI software that helps marketers optimize their paid media, personalization, advertising, and ABM campaigns.
Use Case: Personalizing landing pages
Your ideal customers need to know that your product is suited to their needs and can solve their problems.
To do that, you need to know your customers well and personalize landing pages to specific personas. Alexandra Cote levels up her account-based marketing strategy with Mutiny’s AI-powered recommendations.
To replicate her process, she says you can “take either your home page or a specific landing page, even your pricing, and customize it to the ICP that you want to target.”
Visitors get excited when they feel like your website is speaking directly to them, prompting them to check out the rest of your site.
Clearbit
What it is: Clearbit is a marketing intelligence platform that gives users insight into the market and buyer intent.
Use Case: Personalizing landing pages
You want to know as much about your potential customers as possible. With Clearbit’s reliable company, contact, and web intent signal data, you can identify audiences that fit into your ICP and tailor your advertising and email campaigns accordingly.
For startups, Alexandra Cote recommends Clearbit’s free version.
“It gives you a weekly report of your visitors so that you can see the exact companies that have visited your website. Then, you can take this list of companies that interacted with your website and reach out to them or add them into your account-based marketing tactics.”
Jason Oakley uses Clearbit for data enrichment, paying close attention to intent signals. And John Oz uses Clearbit in conjunction with Hotjar to test our different landing page content for different personas.
Pendo
What it is: Pendo is a product experience and analytics platform that helps companies increase digital adoption.
Use Case: Optimizing onboarding experience
Onboarding is a make-or-break part of the user journey, and it starts before a free user actually becomes a customer.
John Oz uses Pendo to see where users are struggling so that he can make adjustments to the onboarding process.
Andrew Capland founder of Delivering Value, leverages Pendo to make incremental improvements to onboarding experiences.
“I love that they [use] pop-ups and interactive checklists. In my experience, having a checklist that people come back to when they get stuck is a really powerful tool for product adoption.”
Andrew also points out that Pendo is easy to use, another plus in his book.
Appcues
What it is: Appcues helps you build personalized product experiences to increase activation and adoption.
Use Case: Optimizing onboarding experience
Appcues is an alternative to Pendo but is unique in that you can build and iterate on in-app flows.
John Oz recommends Appcues in addition to Pendo to get an even more holistic view of where the onboarding experience is going well and where it might be breaking down.
Serving as a new customer’s personal guide helps them realize the value of your product faster, engage more, and make your product stickier.
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