Conversion & user insights

I have run conversion-rate optimisation since 2012 and watched dozens of platforms rise, pivot, or vanish. What never changes is the need to understand why visitors behave as they do and to prove, with hard numbers, that a tweak actually lifts revenue. This guide distils those lessons into three focus areas: qualitative research, controlled experiments, and behaviour analytics.

Setup speed and code weight

A tag that drops in five minutes beats a powerful library that stalls while you wait for dev resources. Check how long a script takes to load and whether it blocks rendering; performance hits kill conversions before testing even starts.

Sample-size guidance and statistics

Small B2B sites rarely push thousands of daily sessions. Pick a platform that warns when you lack traffic for a valid test and offers sequential or Bayesian methods to reach significance sooner.

Privacy and consent handling

Heatmaps capture input fields; session recordings handle personal data. Ensure the tool masks sensitive content, honours consent banners, and stores data in regions that satisfy GDPR or similar regulations.

Integration with the rest of the stack

Watching clicks is pointless if you cannot tie them to revenue. Confirm the tool pipes events to your analytics platform or CRM so uplift translates into pipeline impact rather than vanity metrics.

Cost that scales sanely

CRO is iterative. A platform that looks cheap today can spike when you add more environments, domains, or tests. Model a six-month roadmap and price the forecasted volume before committing.

What are user insights?

User insights are the concrete observations that explain why visitors behave as they do. They can be a screen recording that shows hesitation on a pricing toggle, a heat-map highlighting ignored calls-to-action, or a survey response that spells out an objection in plain language. Insights turn raw numbers into a clear next step: rewrite copy, shorten a form, or move a button.

How do I collect user insights?

Start with low-effort tools: heat-maps for scroll depth, session replays for friction points, and a single on-page poll that asks, “What stopped you from signing up today?” Tag five recordings per funnel step, skim the poll answers weekly, and patterns surface fast. Pair these findings with built-in analytics to see whether fixes lift conversion or merely shift the blockage downstream.

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research digs into the why: comments, interviews, and open-ended polls. Quantitative research measures the how much: click rates, bounce rates, funnel drop-offs. A spike in exit rate is quantitative—“thirty per cent leave on the form step.” Watching a replay where users rage-click the same field is qualitative—“they cannot find the submit button.” Use numbers to spot the problem and narratives to understand it.

What is A/B testing?

A/B testing shows half your traffic version A and the other half version B, then measures which wins. It is the safest way to prove an idea works before rolling it out to everyone. For a deeper dive, see our separate page What is conversion optimisation?

How does multivariate testing differ?

Multivariate tests change several elements at once—headline, image, and button colour, for example—and evaluate every combination. This uncovers interactions you might miss with a straight A/B test but needs far more traffic to reach reliable results. In B2B, where session counts are lower, stick to A/B unless a page pulls thousands of visits a day.

Where do usability tests fit in?

Remote usability sessions add context numbers cannot reveal. Ask a prospect to share their screen, give them a goal—“Find pricing”—and watch silently. Note confusion points and missed cues. Ten sessions often uncover eighty per cent of issues, and the recordings become proof when you lobby for design changes.

How do I choose what to test first?

Rank insights by impact and ease using prioritsation frameworks. Fix the friction that blocks revenue directly—broken forms, vague headlines—before chasing minor aesthetic tweaks. One high-impact win beats a dozen tidier buttons.

When qualitative findings guide quantitative tests, and every result feeds back into the next round of insight gathering, conversion optimisation shifts from guesswork to an iterative, compounding process.