CRO tools

Looking to increase conversions on your website or app? You shouldn’t have to guess what your users want. 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) involves gathering data, observing user behavior, and making design changes to meet their needs.

When selecting CRO tools to add to your workflow, look for these important features:

• User testing: Conducting user testing, such as A/B testing, first click testing, and preference testing, can provide valuable insights into the needs of your users. 

• Analytics: The best CRO tools help you interpret data to enhance user interaction and engagement.

• Targeting and user segmentation: By targeting specific user groups and behaviors, user segmentation can help you better meet the needs of your users and boost conversions. 

In this article, we round up the best CRO tools and their unique features, and explore how you can use them to increase conversions. Let’s get started!

TL;DR: A quick glance at the top CRO tools

1. Lyssna 

Lyssna is a useful tool for testing how well your website or app works for your users. Running preference tests, first click tests, five second tests, and prototype tests can help you to understand what users like and don't like about your product, and what problems they may be facing. 

Lyssna's unmoderated usability tests and built-in research panel make it easy to collect feedback from users and make decisions based on data. By testing with real users, you can find ways to improve experiences and increase conversions. 

Key CRO features

• Unmoderated studies: Lyssna offers a variety of methods to gather valuable insights for enhancing CRO. You can analyze the results with advanced filtering and tagging, statistical confidence calculation, heatmaps, and click maps.

• Preference testing: In Lyssna, preference testing puts a new spin on A/B testing by allowing you to present users with various design options and determine which one they prefer. The results are readily accessible, and you can use tags to identify common themes and trends in the responses.

• High-quality test participants: If you need to recruit responses, Lyssna has you covered with its panel of 530,000+ research participants spanning 100+ countries and 35+ demographics.

Pricing

• Free: Includes up to three collaborators and unlimited self-recruited responses for tests and surveys up to 2 minutes long.

• Basic: Get up to 10 collaborators, unlimited viewers, unlimited responses, unlimited active tests, and CSV exports. Pricing starts at $75/month.

• Pro: Get everything in the Basic plan, plus up to 15 collaborators, custom branding, test logic, and team permissions. Pricing starts at $175/month.

• Enterprise: Get everything in the Pro plan, along with unlimited collaborators, security audits, single sign-on (SSO), and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). Contact for custom pricing.

• Panel responses are priced separately for all plans. You can pay to recruit from the panel as you go or purchase bulk panel credits at a discount to use as you need.

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2. Hotjar

To increase conversions, it’s important to understand how your visitors behave. Hotjar facilitates this process with tools such as heatmaps, screen recordings, and analytics. These features give you detailed insights into the behaviors of visitors on your site.

Key CRO features

• Heatmaps: Hotjar's heatmapping tool shows which areas are popular and how engaged people are. It also helps identify areas where people are reacting emotionally, like rage clicking. This is important for improving CRO.

• Screen recordings: Another stand-out feature is Hotjar’s screen recording capabilities. Along with capturing how people proceed, click, and interact, Hotjar makes it possible to filter screen recordings based on user attributes, as well as add your own notes and annotations so that you can mark significant moments.

Pricing

• Hotjar Observe Basic: On this free plan, you’ll get unlimited heatmaps, dashboards, page view filters, core integrations, and highlights.

• Hotjar Observe Plus: For those working in small teams, the Plus plan offers up to everything in the Basic plan plus session information and technology filters, events API, and some advanced integrations. Pricing starts at $32/month. 

• Hotjar Observe Business: For those working in growing companies, the Business plan offers everything in Plus and funnels, trends, console tracking, all integrations, and more. Pricing starts at $56/month for 10k sessions. 

3. Mouseflow 

If your website or app isn’t converting, there could be multiple issues. Maybe there’s a point in the checkout process where people are abandoning the cart, or SEO isn’t attracting quality traffic. To address the issue, you need to find out the root cause. Mouseflow offers a suite of CRO tools that analyze user behavior, enabling you to identify problems and use this data to improve your digital products.

Key CRO features

• Behavioral analytics: This involves using tools like screen recordings, heatmaps, form analytics, and user feedback to gain insights into users’ thought processes and website experiences. 

• Friction scores: Mouseflow uses machine learning to track and score visitor problems. You can filter these scores to see the most serious issues. Friction scores provide both general information about underperforming pages and specific insights on which elements or features are causing trouble for users.

Pricing

• Free: Mouseflow’s free plan gives you 500 recordings per month for one website, plus a month of storage and unlimited page views.

• Starter: The Starter plan offers 5,000 recordings per month for one website, with three months of storage and unlimited page views. Pricing starts at $31/month.

• Growth: The Growth plan offers 15,000 recordings per month for three websites, plus 6 months of storage and unlimited page views. Pricing starts at $109/month.

• Business: The Business plan offers 50,000 recordings per month for five websites, plus 12 months of storage and unlimited page views. Pricing starts at $219/month.

• Pro: The Pro plan offers 150,000 recordings per month for 10 websites, plus 12 months of storage and unlimited page views. Pricing starts at $399/month.

• Enterprise: The enterprise plan offers 20,000 recordings per month for 10+ websites, with 12 months of storage and unlimited page views. Contact for pricing.

4. Heap

Heap provides a variety of CRO tools that allow for thorough tracking of user journeys. These tools generate behavioral analytics and identify areas of friction, while also providing user segmentation. This makes it simple to target your audience and assess the outcomes. Additionally, with its visually-based interface, even those without expertise in data science can quickly begin tracking data and analyzing results.

Key CRO features

• Data autocapture: Through one code snippet, Heap makes it possible to track every movement, behavior, and action that visitors take on your website or app.

• Session replays: Heap automatically isolates points where drop-offs or other issues are happening in the conversion process, and then gives you the power to loop through these moments to see exactly what’s occurring. Data visualizations also help you figure out what’s going on and come up with CRO strategies to address any issues.

Pricing

• Free: Heap’s starter plan lets you use data from outside sources, with access to analytics charts and guide integrations.

• Growth: Along with everything you get at the free tier, the Growth plan sets you up with unlimited users and associated reports, chart customization, and CSV export capabilities.

• Pro: Get everything on the Growth plan, plus account analytics, engagement matrics, and report alerts.

• Premier: This plan is for teams in large organizations.

Contact Heap for pricing.                      

5. Mixpanel

One of the most notable features of Mixpanel is its visually-oriented CRO tools that simplify the process of establishing and monitoring user activities. The data is displayed in the form of dashboards, funnels, and reports, making it easy to understand and make informed decisions about CRO.

Key CRO features

• Metrics: Dashboards are the essence of Mixpanel’s functionality. With an easy-to-navigate UI, you get the power to track even complex interactions and analyze the data without getting bogged down by the process.

• Analysis: Mixpanel also offers a query builder, which makes it possible to specify which metrics you want to track and generate data visualizations. With built-in algorithms and filters, it’s easy to fine-tune the data you want to focus on. 

Pricing

• Starter: Mixpanel’s free plan gives you access to 20M events/month, core report types for user journey analysis, templates, and unlimited integrations and collaborators.

• Growth: Mixpanel’s Growth plan offers more advanced CRO tools like no-code data transformations, data pipelines, and analytics add-ons, as well as no limits on saved reports or audience cohorts. Pricing starts at $20/month.

• Enterprise: Encompassing all of the features of the Starter and Growth plans, the Enterprise level offers sophisticated controls for governing data, collaborative tools for sharing data views, and premium support. Pricing starts at $833/month.

6. Mutiny

What if you could provide a tailored user experience based on a visitor's profile? Mutiny provides an AI-powered solution for creating websites targeted towards everyone who visits your website or app, ultimately increasing conversion rates. With Mutiny, you can define target audiences, offer personalized experiences, and track their effectiveness.

Key CRO features

• Audience targeting: Deliver specialized landing pages, messaging, and calls to action based on criteria like personas, industry, traffic sources, and company scale. Mutiny also gives you the power to set up specialized audiences by utilizing more than 300 attributes derived from data gathered from various sources such as CRM, marketing, and sales tools.

• AI-guided web experiences and tools: Mutiny uses personalization to improve CRO by implementing strategies such as custom content, pop-ups, calls to action, and landing pages tailored for specific audiences. Additionally, it provides an AI tool that allows for suggested edits to be made directly on a design without the need to modify any code or access a CMS. 

Pricing

Contact for pricing.

7. Amplitude

Amplitude's CRO tools integrate analytics, audience segmentation, and product-led experimentation to enhance digital products. It encompasses all stages of the process, allowing you to test, collect, and analyze data, and make updates to gauge performance improvements on your website or app.

Key CRO features

• Integrated A/B testing: Amplitude’s integrated A/B testing tool is useful for making precise comparisons, such as testing new features and trying out different variations. When running a test, you can select the metrics, create variations, choose the target audience, and determine which version users will see.

• Data quality checks: Amplitude offers built-in data quality checks. You can segment different audiences based on their actions or behaviors, design experiments, and resolve issues quicky with real-time notifications.

Pricing

• Starter: Amplitude’s free plan is ideal if you’re a new company or you’re looking for an entry into user testing and data analysis. You’ll have access to templates, basic analytics, campaign reporting, unlimited feature flags, and unlimited sources and destinations.

• Plus: For those working at a growing startup or small team, the Pus plan gives you unlimited product analytics, custom dashboards, behavioral cohorts, advanced feature management, and custom audiences and syncs. Pricing starts at $49/month.

• Growth: The Growth plan gives you everything on Plus, along with advanced behavioral analysis, custom metrics for KPIs, unlimited behavioral cohorts, authentication with SSO, and onboarding support. Contact for pricing.

8. Optimizely

Optimizely is a powerful platform for running experiments and gathering insights so you can continuously optimize experiences on your website and applications. It has an easy-to-use editor that lets anyone create A/B tests and run multivariate experiments and personalized campaigns, even if you aren’t a tech expert. It also gives real-time data to help make quick decisions based on how experiments are doing. 

Key CRO features

• A/B testing: Optimizely's core strength lies in A/B testing. It enables you to generate different versions of a page and experiment with varying features such as headlines and UI elements to determine the most effective option for driving conversions. Additionally, Optimizely excels in its speed and effectiveness, providing data to your dashboard within just a few days of launching, rather than making you wait for extended periods.

• Advanced audience targeting: Centralize your audiences in one place and target them with experiments to tailor experiences depending on segments and profiles.

• Personalization: Optimizely facilitates personalized experiences by allowing you to tailor content and features based on user behavior, demographics, or other segmentation criteria.

Pricing

Contact for pricing.

9. Glassbox

Glassbox stands out as a CRO tool due to its advanced insights into user interactions. Its session replay and visualization features allow you to see how users navigate your websites and apps, identify issues, and improve overall user experiences. Glassbox captures interactions in real-time and provides powerful analytics, heatmaps, and conversion funnels for informed decision-making. 

Key CRO features

• Tagless data capture: Glassbox automatically records and measures all interactions. No matter what question you’re trying to address or which aspects of the conversion process you want to focus on, Glassbox collects and organizes every event and interaction.

• Augmented journey maps: Understanding analytics and their context can be difficult. Glassbox's augmented journey maps show different parts of a customer's journey, making it easier to see the results. AI helps to quickly reveal patterns and insights, and can also connect analytics to business revenue.

Pricing

Contact for pricing.

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Jeff Cardello is a freelance writer who loves all things tech and design. Outside of being a word nerd, he enjoys playing bass guitar, riding his bike long distances, and recently started learning about data science and how to code with Python.