Conversion Rate Optimisation
Website Experimentation That Drives Continuous Growth
Give your website’s conversions a serious lift with a website optimisation programme designed for your users’ needs and website’s problems – no blindly following best practices.
In-depth conversion research
Get 100+ test ideas based on extensive user research and website analysis, prioritised by ease and impact.
Make growth inevitable
Make permanent changes from science-based, data-backed, and expert-approved test results with real users, not hunches.
Built around you
From us doing a little to everything, your programme is adapted to your team’s priorities, capacity and skills.
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Introducing our 6-Step Conversion Research Framework
Did you know that most A/B testing programmes end up losing money, with teams quickly giving up? That’s because most CRO programmes don’t start with a robust conversion research process. We do.
From day one, we identify the real problems your users are experiencing across your website. From then on, all valuable insights and problems are logged and turned into potential test ideas or to fix/implement immediately if it’s a no-brainer.
Each test hypothesis is prioritised by impact, time to implement and whether tactics are delivered in-house, by a third party or by us and will continually develop as the process evolves. Recommendations can be anything from testing alternative landing page designs and using specific terminology to ways of fixing technical issues and developing the customer journey.
Technical Audit
Finding bugs is usually the easiest way to have an instant impact on conversions. Once we are confident that the data is accurate and we are measuring everything we could possibly need, we then look for what's missing and what's problematic.
The output is a list of items to fix, which can be anything from uncompressed images, separate JavaScript/CSS script files that should be combined and slow page speeds to fundamental issues with the website.
Web Analytics Health Check
Our analytics health check identifies leaks and drop-offs across the website, identifies key segments (such as actions that correlate with higher conversions), and understands what users are doing and not doing. This stage also helps with prioritising issues.
Visitor Tracking
Using heatmaps, scroll maps and user session replays, we find underperforming pages, usability and clarity issues, and points of friction and distractions.
Qualitative Surveys
We help you set up customer surveys, web traffic polls and user interviews to understand buyer groups, what problems they are trying to solve, how they're deciding, what’s holding them back, what else they want to know and any sources of friction. We also pay attention to the language they use to describe their problems, challenges and solutions.
Group-based Expert Walkthroughs
This is a structured way to evaluate pages (segmented by device category, as mobile and desktop are totally different contexts) where we assess key pages across popular journeys to identify areas of interest, such as:
• Relevancy - does it meet expectations? Does the message match the original ad?
• Clarity - is it easy to understand what is going on?
• Motivation - is it increasing motivation to take action?
• Sources of friction - what is being done to minimise friction and distractions on the page?
User Testing
Plan and run face-to-face and/or online user tests to identify usability and clarity issues and sources of friction. This instant feedback reveals what’s difficult to understand, difficult to do and what goes wrong.
Popular CRO Services
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We work with all types of organisations, from different sizes and sectors to various business models and objectives. Projects and campaigns are bespoke to each client’s needs and usually combine a number of CRO services:
User Testing
Scroll/Heat Maps
Qualitative Research
A/B Testing
Post-Test Analysis
Multivariate Testing
Website Walkthrough
Build a Test Hypothesis
User Video Replays
Landing Page Optimisation
Web Surveys/Polls
Testing Roadmap
Data Gathering
Browser/Device Testing
Technical Audit
Page Speed Optimisation
Analytics and Measurement
Content Analysis
Information Architecture
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User Testing
Gather insights directly from your target audience.
User testing is all about observing the behaviour of the right people. We’ll recruit people who match your ideal customer profile and invite them to participate in user testing either online or in-person if possible. Even if we can’t find people who represent your target audience, having some testers is better than no testing at all.
With the help of leading tools like Loop11 and UserTesting, we give people tasks to complete while commenting out loud. The idea is to observe what they do or don’t do, where there are points of friction or clarity issues and what’s working well. We don’t ask any questions - that’s what surveys are for - we just pay attention to what they do on the site.
We typically give people 5 tasks in a 15-minute timeframe, testing 50% on mobile and 50% on desktop. We usually find that after testing 10 users, the majority of problems will be identified, but it’s still worth doing on a regular basis.
✓ Gain direct insights into the behaviour of your target market
✓ Identify sources of friction and clarity issues
✓ Understand your users' experience better
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Scroll/Heat Maps
Track your visitor’s behaviours, attention and clicks.
To find out what users are actually doing and seeing, we use three kinds of maps: heat maps, scroll maps and click maps. It’s important to do this across different devices as users may not have the same experience.
Heat maps show you where a visitor’s attention and focus is centred. From this we can see if certain design elements are having a negative impact on your messaging. Scroll maps show how far down your visitors are scrolling, the exact drop off point and whether they’re seeing what you want them to see. If not, it might mean moving important information further up, or fixing design flaws like false bottoms - elements that look like the end of a page.
The third thing we look at is click maps and mouse tracking analysis using tools like HotJar or GTM tags in GA4. With this, we track mouse movements and clicks to identify what gets attention and what doesn’t. We’ll look at where they’re clicking - for example, are there elements that mistakenly look like buttons but aren’t (causing frustration) or vice versa, if no one is clicking on your CTAs, do they realise it’s a button?
✓ Gain direct insights into the behaviour of your visitors
✓ Identify sources of friction and distraction
✓ See how visitors actually interact with your pages
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Qualitative Research
Understand the why behind your users’ behaviour.
Qualitative research is all about understanding user behaviour from a human level. This typically involves us setting up online and exit surveys on key pages to figure out why people aren’t taking action on a case-by-case basis. We’ll also set up surveys to target your recent first-time buyers to find out the key question of why they buy.
We also run user testing both online and in-person with people who match your ideal customer profile to see what’s working and to discover any and all friction points on your current site.
For even more insights, we may conduct phone interviews with your actual customers, sales agents, and internal stakeholders and provide live chat transcript analysis.
✓ Discover why your customers buy or don’t buy
✓ Identify sources of friction
✓ Collect user data insights to make informed decisions
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A/B Testing
Identify what changes will make the most impact on your conversion rate.
A/B testing is one of the fundamentals of CRO, but everyone has their own process. Here at Good Signals, we perform proper controlled A/B/n testing with the help of leading tools like Google Optimise, Optimizely and VWO and follow the scientific method. We use strict stopping rules for tests to ensure trustworthy outcomes and to avoid imaginary lifts.
Before testing, we always derive tests from data-backed hypotheses that are then mapped out by priority. All tests run for a minimum of 2 business cycles (usually 2 to 4 weeks) and we make sure to never call them early.
We ideally want to test as many variations as the traffic allows as there’s never just one right solution to a problem. We come up with a bunch of ideas to tackle the problem, then based on our own experience, common sense, intelligence and what we know about the industry we pick some of the better ideas and create treatments.
Our main goals when testing are to make sure the tests we do are the most effective options, reduce the duration and cost of optimisation (without sacrificing effectiveness) and to improve the speed of experimentation - the process includes everything from turning data into a hypothesis, a hypothesis to designing a treatment, to coding it up, to launching the test - which can involve the sign off process, brand, compliance, the CEO, etc.
✓ Transform identified hypotheses into effective solutions
✓ Test multiple possible solutions to well-defined problems
✓ Avoid wasting resources on low-impact changes
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Post-Test Analysis
Understand how tests impact user behaviour based on results.
Once the test has gathered enough high-quality data, been active for a reasonable amount of time and reached an adequate sample size, it’s time to draw conclusions and evaluate the results. This is typically in Google Analytics or Google Data Studio.
There are three possible outcomes: winners, losers or no difference.
What do you do? You segment, whether you have winners, losers or no difference, somewhere there might be a segment (e.g. different devices, traffic sources or new vs returning) that is winning or losing quite a bit. Therefore, there may be a business case to personalise the website for that specific segment. We’ll typically kill a loser if it's badly losing after 7-14 days, reset the test data and test something else.
We always start by being skeptical of the winners too. What can look like a winner may change as sample size and test duration grow. Once we’re comfortable we can declare a test a winner, we’ll implement it permanently, boosting your conversions. That becomes our control for the next test.
✓ Identify ways to increase conversions
✓ Avoid wasting resources on losing tests
✓ Implement tried and tested solutions
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Multivariate Testing
Discover how individual elements interact with each other.
When we have two tests that overlap on a single page, it can be difficult to determine which has actually delivered the results. That’s where we use multivariate testing.
Multivariate tests measure the interaction effects between independent elements of your webpage to discover what combination works best.
You don’t want to run multiple tests on the same pages. Instead, you should combine these changes into the same test so that you can attribute them appropriately. If you have enough traffic you can use multivariate testing for this to see the interaction between those changes. This can show you where different page elements will have the most impact.
We can only do multivariate testing on websites with a lot of traffic or, at the very least, high conversion rates. That’s because your traffic will be divided by several tests.
Multivariate testing can be used as a great way to follow up on the winner of an A/B test once you’ve already narrowed down your results.
✓ Discover the relationship between your page elements
✓ Determine what changes will have the most impact
✓ Combine changes into a single test, instead of many
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Website Walkthrough
Identify areas where your website could be leaking profits.
As a starting point in the conversion research process, we’ll thoroughly walk through your website with our framework (known as heuristic analysis), taking each page and imagining the user is at the buying stage, whether that’s a first-time visitor or a loyal customer - whichever is more profitable and worth prioritising.
This gives us a structured way to evaluate pages based on four key areas. We look at relevancy (does it meet my expectations?), clarity (do I understand what is going on?), motivation (is there something to increase my motivation to take action?), friction (what is being done to minimise friction and distraction?) and distraction (is there anything that isn’t directly helping the end goal?).
We do this based on the device category since mobile and desktop are completely different in terms of this.
✓ Get independent, expert advice to make informed decisions
✓ Identify sources of friction and distraction
✓ Gain a full breakdown of your website’s current successes and issues
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Build a Test Hypothesis
Prioritise and map out an effective testing plan.
Before testing can begin, we need our test hypotheses. These are the assumptions we’ve made based on the research we’ve already done. Each needs to be testable and measurable and typically looks like: if [we do X], then [we expect this result], because [the rationale based on research insights].
Based on our data-informed insights, our team of ingenious analysts will identify and map out solutions to each of your site’s problems. We’ll come up with multiple hypotheses and treatments to address each of the identified issues, as even though we know what the problem is, we don’t necessarily know what the right solution is, hence the need for testing. We’ll test as many solutions as your traffic and resources allow.
Since we can’t test everything at once, we rank each hypothesis and create a test order using our prioritization framework. From here, we’re ready to start testing.
✓ Transform identified issues into actionable hypotheses
✓ Map out thoughtful solutions to each of your issues
✓ Prioritise high-impact, easy-to-implement tests
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User Video Replays
Watch how real visitors interact with your site.
One of the best ways to understand how your users interact with your website is simply to watch them. Tools like Hotjar and FullStory allow us to analyse session replays and answer the question of what is really happening on your site.
Don’t worry, the session replays aren’t recordings of the users' actual screen. The tools reproduce a user’s interactions and behaviours through logged user events like mouse movements, clicks, scrolling, tapping etc. In terms of privacy, the way these tools collect data isn’t fundamentally any different from normal analytics like Google Analytics.
While analysing the replays, we ask questions like: what is the customer trying to do? Is it working? Where are the areas of friction or frustration? How is their experience overall? This allows us to get a complete picture of a user’s experience.
✓ Identify areas of success or friction
✓ Understand your users' experience better
✓ Use real-life evidence for decision making
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Landing Page Optimisation
Identify your top landing pages to prioritise high-impact changes.
Every CRO project should start with identifying your top landing pages. These will be your biggest opportunities for improvement and make the most impact on your conversion rate.
We start by visualising your funnel and comparing with analytics to identify the specific pages where there are currently drop offs or bottlenecks. We will then map out any underperforming pages and see if there are any correlations/similarities and differences between the high performing and low performing pages. It’s also important to keep an eye on how the user landed on the page (e.g: PPC, organic or social advertising) as it can make a difference.
If there aren’t any obvious correlations, it’s time to take a deep dive into each of the top landing pages. You could be looking for issues like lack of value proposition, bad design, cheesy stock photos that don’t add value, lack of credibility or testimonials, irrelevance or a confusing user journey. There are plenty of things to identify and potentially flag for testing.
✓ Prioritise high-impact changes or fixes
✓ Identify sources of friction
✓ Determine any patterns or correlations between pages
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Web Surveys/Polls
Increase conversions with on-site surveys and polls.
As experts, we can hypothesise and test to find out what’s wrong with your website, but on-page surveys unlock insights for conversion optimisation directly from the user. The goal is to identify sources of friction.
We start by defining your business objectives. Specific goals are necessary to determine not only the best questions to ask but also the best place to ask them and what segment of customers you target. It’s also important to decide what data you’re looking to collect and what you’ll use it for. Without a clear focus, the surveys are less likely to be valuable, especially if you have no plans to act on any of the answers you receive.
We set up exit surveys to pop up when certain actions are taken on key pages in your sales funnel (e.g: time spent on site, number of pages viewed etc.), particularly on underperforming pages with high exit rates that could benefit from more in-depth insights. These are designed to figure out why people didn’t take action and what pain points they experienced.
✓ Identify sources of friction
✓ Collect user data insights to make informed decisions
✓ Discover what users do and do not care about
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Testing Roadmap
Build a testing roadmap based on impact, confidence and effort.
Based on our data-informed insights, we identify and map out solutions to each of your site’s problems. We’ll come up with multiple hypotheses and treatments to address each of the identified issues.
Since we can’t test everything at once, we need to create a strategy. We start by ranking each hypothesis and creating a test order using our prioritisation framework. We rank based on three factors: impact (page(s) and traffic size), confidence (based on how the issue was identified) and effort (how easy is it to implement). Effort also takes into account the resources you have available and how much disruption it could cause.
As an example, if a test requires low effort but will have a large impact, that would be prioritised on the roadmap, being one of the first tests to conduct. Having this clear plan means testing is as efficient as it could be.
✓ Map out thoughtful solutions to each of your issues
✓ Prioritise high-impact, easy-to-implement tests
✓ Avoid wasting resources on the wrong tests
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Data Gathering
Gather data that tells the story of your users’ journey.
Every investigation starts with gathering data and setting your website up to gather as much additional data as possible. Only through data can we get a full picture of what the problems are, where and why.
If we’re not measuring, we can’t improve. That’s why we start by checking we have data recorded for everything we need to track and explore. Is it accurate and good quality? Can we trust it? Is there anything missing?
We’ll then set up heatmaps, session replays and scroll maps to watch what visitors are doing on your website, add polls to underperforming pages to find out what the issues are and, ideally, we’ll recruit testers from your target audience for feedback. To track post-purchase feedback, we’ll survey customers to understand any friction points, either by email or on the thank you/confirmation page.
✓ Collect and track the data to make informed decisions
✓ Identify sources of friction
✓ Gain a full picture of your website’s current successes and issues
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Browser/Device Testing
Discover how user experiences vary across browsers and devices.
Not everyone uses the same device or even browser, so it’s important for us to understand the differences in user experiences.
We want to see if there are any underperforming browsers/devices. Google Analytics can help identify this by comparing bounce rate and conversion rates across browsers and devices. We also look at what share of traffic mobile gets compared to desktop.
We use tools like BrowserStack to test on devices and browsers that we may not have access to normally, allowing us to cover a wider range. Of course, testing on the actual devices and browsers is best.
For cross-browser testing, we use the more popular devices (as a control) and go through the website looking for any data insights since we don’t know what the answer is at this stage. Finding bugs is the easiest way to have an instant impact as it simply requires a fix.
✓ Prioritise high-impact, easy-to-implement changes or fixes
✓ Identify issues across devices and browsers
✓ Understand the user journey for all users
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Technical Audit
Fixing bugs is the easiest way to have an instant impact.
You can have the most persuasive website in the world, but if it does not work in the specific browser and/or the device I’m on then it doesn’t really matter. We ned to find out what is missing and where are the problems?
Most companies don’t walk in the footsteps of their users and just assume their developers must have got it right. Often, they’re wrong. It’s rarely down to the browser but a bug or user experience issue. Identifying and fixing bugs is the easiest way to impact conversions instantly.
Long waiting times can also cost businesses serious money, especially at specific points of the journey where users’ motivation levels are relatively low. We identify whether slow speeds are an issue and the causes. It’s usually uncompressed images, multiple javascript/CSS files that can be combined, or the CMS configurations haven’t been optimised. When it comes to page speed and CRO, we’re interested in the actual user experience, not just scores.
Lastly, if we aren’t measuring, we can’t improve. So, it’s essential to ensure we have all of the data we need and that it is accurate and trusted. Our rule of thumb is that we should be measuring everything we can.
✓ Fix those bugs holding your website back
✓ Get the data you need to make informed decisions
✓ Provide a better, faster user experience
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Page Speed Optimisation
Optimise for better, faster experiences.
Long waiting times can cost businesses serious money, especially at specific points of the journey where users’ motivation levels are relatively low.
Small technical changes can often produce big results. We’ll be able to identify what’s slowing your website down and ways to make it faster and more mobile-friendly, from compressing images or serving them in next-gen formats like WebP to reducing server response times by using a faster host and a CDN (content delivery network). A popular CMS (content management system) like WordPress can be reconfigured and cleaned up to reduce load times of files, themes and plugins.
When it comes to page speed and CRO, we’re interested in the actual user experience, not just scores. And with site speed, it isn’t a case of thinking that when a website has been optimised, it’s been optimised for good as the web and technology are always evolving. So, once we’ve optimised the website, we’ll continue to monitor the performance where ideally ongoing optimisation will be the new norm.
✓ Provide a better, faster experience for users
✓ Reduce sources of friction
✓ Fix those bugs holding your website back
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Analytics and Measurement
Improve product, marketing, and strategy decisions in no time.
Without the right data – and the ability to understand it – you don’t see the whole picture or know what is and what isn’t working. Using an analytics platform properly, like Google Analytics, enables you to measure 100% of your online marketing activities, and use this data to continuously develop your strategy and allocate resources wisely.
Firstly, we’ll look at whether your data is accurate and if you are tracking everything that matters. If you are not measuring things correctly, it is harder to focus on improving them and answer those important business questions.
Whether it’s just help with basic Google Analytics set up, auditing your account, delivering on-site training, ad-hoc support, or even acting as an extension of your team, we can help enhance your marketing strategy with data-driven insights so you can make better, profit-generating, marketing decisions.
Need to move from Universal to GA4? Check out our guide on moving to Google Analytics 4.
✓ Get independent, expert advice to make informed decisions
✓ Understand what is and what isn’t working across your website
✓ Avoid repeating past mistakes and wasting resources
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Content Analysis
The discovery of what matters is most important.
Which pages and which content blocks of those pages matter most to users?
We assess your pages for relevancy (does it meet expectations? For example, do the key messages on the landing pages match the original ad copy or organic results?), clarity (do I understand what is going on?) and motivation (is the page doing anything to increase my motivation to take action?).
We typically find half of the words on a page don’t make a difference at all and if they are moved conversions don't change or go up because it was just a distraction. Then it's a case of weighing up the impact of that content on your website's SEO and rankings and whether to present it differently or remove it altogether.
✓ Discover what users care about the most and what doesn’t matter at all
✓ Reduce unnecessary distractions
✓ Improve the clarity and relevancy of your pages
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Information Architecture
Develop an effective physical website structure.
Building a website is like building anything else: architecture is key. This is the hierarchy of your website, how your pages are organised and which ones link to each other.
From a human point of view, information architecture is important so that users can easily find what they are looking for. If they can’t, they’ll go elsewhere.
After auditing your existing structure and content, we’ll map out an effective website structure that is streamlined and well-organised to satisfy both the needs of new and returning users.
✓ Provide a better, faster user experience
✓ Improve clarity and motivation
✓ Reduce sources of friction or distractions
Stop! Don’t face conversion and migration nightmares alone.
If your website is suffering from a drop in conversion rates after a site redesign or migration, we’ve helped many in-house teams get their leads and sales back on track by identifying the problems and then either fixing those issues or testing potential solutions. Alternatively, check out our website migration guide.
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CRO Resources
Website migration guided walkthrough
Guide to Google Analytics 4
About Us
East London CRO Agency
Nestled in the vibrant heart of East London, our office is a repurposed shipping container, mere minutes away from Cambridge Heath station and just a short walk from Hackney’s London Fields and Broadway Market.
Why does that matter? Well, building a business here was no accident. We’re at the centre of a thriving creative tech community and surrounded by ambitious independent businesses who inspire us every day.
We always encourage our clients to visit us when they can. Not only do we have excellent indoor and outdoor meeting spaces, BBQs, and tasty coffee, we have neighbours who imports wine and makes crisps, so you can join our team for drinks and food after a fun day at work.
Not in the UK? No worries. We have clients as far away as Australia. Our days can often start as early as 5 a.m to catch those Down Under before they finish for the day. We’re always up and ready to work with clients across different timezones, and we’ve found it doesn’t take long to find a rhythm that works, wherever you are in the world.
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Browse Through Our Answers To Recent Questions
What is CRO?
CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimisation. In digital marketing, we typically spend a lot of time and resources on attracting visitors to your website. However, an effective CRO programme can lead to business growth by consistently converting more of the visitors you already have.
This scientific approach to marketing places your customers and their needs centre stage, and through a process of rigorous testing, learning and adapting you’ll continuously improve the efficiency of your website and increase revenue.
But it’s more than just maximising conversion rate. It’s about improving the customer journey from start to finish and optimising your business. When developing test ideas, we are looking to increase revenue, as well as:
• Improve relevancy
• Simplify the process
• Reduce friction
• Increase motivation
• Dilute distractions
• Reduce hesitancy
• Provide clarity
• Give more emphasis to commercial pages
Where should I test first?
Where we have the most traffic? No.
We test where we have the highest dropoff and plug that leak. It's best to start with the biggest problems to solve.
Can we run multiple tests at the same time on the same website?
It depends. The two things you need to account for are a) if you are testing different KPIs (conversion rate of email sign-up vs conversion rate of purchases) or b) if the traffic is not overlapping (testing the landing page for Google Ads traffic and also testing the checkout page).
When you have two tests that overlap, both tests get the credit, and things get murky. You don’t want to run multiple tests on the same pages (instead, you should combine these changes into the same test so that you can attribute them appropriately). If you have enough traffic, you can do multi-variant testing to see the interaction between those changes.
There are cases where you can run multiple tests simultaneously if you are testing completely different pages/sections. You'll need to think about how much interaction will there be between the tests? For example, the interaction between testing the navigation and product image sizes is minimal.
When testing, should I split devices or not?
If mobile and desktop have enough traffic to run separate tests, then do it as it can be a totally different experience. You can also segment the results but it’s easier to treat them as different tests.
How many variations should I test?
Even if we know what the right problem is, we never know what the right solution is, which is why we test. The more variations we can test, the better. However, this is also based on how much traffic we have.
Should we run A/A tests?
You never want to run an A/A test over an A/B test. This advice usually comes from bloggers who never actually do testing. Instead of just an A/A test, you can run an A/A test at the same time as other tests. Or an A/A/B 25%/25%/50% test. Don’t sacrifice precious testing time on A/A testing.
What is Bandit Testing and when to use it?
An A/B test is a 50%/50% traffic split. Bandit testing changes traffic allocation algorithmically depending on what is winning. The point of bandit testing is that you are maximising the amount of money you are making but it takes longer to learn which variation is better.
We typically recommend you run Bandit Tests if you have a one-week sale/limited campaign (flash sales, Christmas, Black Friday), although we won't be able to reuse the learnings anywhere or reach a scientific conclusion, we'll be confident that during the campaign you'll make the most amount of money that you can.
Can I make changes during live tests?
Whenever you change something during the test, reset the test data.
