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Insights and analytics tools help businesses track, measure, and optimise their marketing funnel by providing deep data insights, user behaviour analysis, and A/B testing capabilities.
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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.
These three tools have been staples in my stack for years. When Optimizely shifted to enterprise pricing I replaced it with a more affordable platform that still delivers solid statistics. My go-to heat-mapping service has been with me since my earliest growth-hacking days and still reveals user friction in minutes. The final piece is an all-in-one automation suite that turns winning variants into integrated customer journeys without extra hand-offs.
VWO is a comprehensive A/B testing and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) platform that enables businesses to test, personalise, and improve website experiences for better engagement and conversions.
Hotjar is a powerful UX and behaviour analytics tool that helps businesses understand how users navigate their website through heatmaps, recordings, and feedback tools.
HubSpot Sales Hub is a CRM and sales automation platform with pipeline management, automated follow-ups, and AI-driven insights for B2B sales teams.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Numbers tell you where the drop-off sits; qualitative tools reveal why. Session replays show hesitations on form fields, dead clicks on non-interactive elements, and rage-scrolling when copy misaligns with intent. Heatmaps cluster thousands of visits into a single view so you spot scroll depth and ignored calls-to-action at a glance.
On-page polls capture the visitor’s voice at the precise moment confusion hits. One open-ended question beats a lengthy survey sent days later. Group the answers by page type and you quickly find patterns: pricing pages spark cost questions, comparison pages raise trust concerns.
When analysing recordings, set strict sampling rules—five sessions per funnel step or ten per persona—otherwise hours vanish down anecdotal rabbit holes. Tag themes as you watch: “unclear benefit”, “form friction”, “slow load”. The tags themselves become sortable data that direct design sprints.
Qualitative insight also guides test ideas. If users misinterpret jargon in a headline, the first variant should clarify the value proposition, not tweak button colour. Insight-led hypotheses save test cycles and reach significance sooner.
Finally, qualitative research strengthens stakeholder buy-in. Showing a live recording of a frustrated prospect struggling with an upsell modal is more persuasive than a heatmap alone. When leaders witness the struggle, budget for fixes appears without argument.
Hotjar is a powerful UX and behaviour analytics tool that helps businesses understand how users navigate their website through heatmaps, recordings, and feedback tools.
Once you know the problem, experimentation proves the fix. Controlled tests isolate a single change—copy, layout, pricing table—and measure its effect against a baseline. Without this control, uplift claims collapse under seasonality, campaign mix, or random chance.
Choose a platform that auto-calculates sample size and flags overlapping audiences. Running multiple tests on the same page without traffic splitting contaminates results and wastes precious visitors. Canny tools handle exclusion lists and deliver results you can trust.
Server-side testing matters when render-blocking scripts hurt performance or when you must alter back-end logic. Client-side is easier to launch but can flicker, harming user trust. Map which tests touch UX only and which need server calls; pick a platform that supports both if roadmap demands it.
A/B tests alone do not close the loop. You need post-test segmentation: did MQL quality improve, did retention rise, did revenue per customer grow? Connect test IDs to your CRM so long-tail impact shows up months later. This turns CRO from page tweaks into strategic growth work.
Documentation is the last pillar. Record hypothesis, metrics, and outcomes in a central log so the team avoids rerunning failed ideas. A well-kept archive becomes a playbook new hires scan to understand past experiments and propose sharper ones.
Webflow is a no-code website builder that gives designers full control over layout, animations, and responsiveness.
VWO is a comprehensive A/B testing and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) platform that enables businesses to test, personalise, and improve website experiences for better engagement and conversions.
Quantitative behaviour analytics zooms out from individual clicks to aggregate patterns across the entire journey. Funnel charts highlight step-by-step drop-off; path analysis uncovers unexpected navigation loops; retention curves reveal whether new sign-ups form usage habits or fade after the trial ends.
Define events that mirror real business milestones—account created, feature activated, payment submitted—rather than generic page views. Meaningful events translate directly to value and guide both marketing and product decisions.
Cohort analysis allows you to track improvements over time. If a redesign claims to lift activation, compare post-launch cohorts against previous months, controlling for acquisition source. Significant gains in day-seven retention beat minor bumps in click-through every time.
Behaviour analytics also feeds propensity models. By correlating early-session data with eventual conversion, you can prioritise high-value leads for personal outreach or trigger in-app prompts right before churn risk spikes. These interventions compound growth without extra ad spend.
Finally, safeguard against data sprawl. Too many events dilute focus and slow query performance. Review the schema quarterly, retire unused events, and keep names consistent across environments. Clean data shortens analysis time, keeps dashboards readable, and ensures insights land in strategy decks, not forgotten tabs.
HubSpot Sales Hub is a CRM and sales automation platform with pipeline management, automated follow-ups, and AI-driven insights for B2B sales teams.
Amplitude is a powerful product analytics tool that helps businesses understand user behavior, track key metrics, and optimise digital experiences.
Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is a free, cloud-based business intelligence tool that allows users to create interactive reports and dashboards with real-time data connections.
OmniConvert is a conversion rate optimisation platform offering A/B testing, surveys, and personalisation tools to help businesses improve customer experiences and increase revenue.
Microsoft Clarity is a free website analytics tool that provides heatmaps, session recordings, and user behavior insights to help businesses improve UX and conversions.
Metorik is an advanced eCommerce analytics and reporting tool designed for WooCommerce and Shopify, offering real-time insights, segmentation, and automation for better business decisions.
VWO is a comprehensive A/B testing and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) platform that enables businesses to test, personalise, and improve website experiences for better engagement and conversions.
Create interactive forms and surveys with Typeform, boosting engagement and collecting actionable insights.
Hotjar is a powerful UX and behaviour analytics tool that helps businesses understand how users navigate their website through heatmaps, recordings, and feedback tools.
Google Analytics is a free web analytics platform that provides insights into website traffic, user behavior, and marketing performance to help businesses make data-driven decisions.
Simplify data tracking and make decisions faster with Databox, offering real-time dashboards for key metrics.
Website and landing page tools help businesses create high-converting web pages without needing extensive development resources. These platforms ensure your site is optimised for lead generation and performance.
Read tool guideReporting and dashboard tools centralise marketing and sales data, offering real-time insights and visual analytics to improve decision-making, track performance, and align teams around key metrics.
Read tool guide
Optimise CTR to improve engagement and drive actionable user responses.
Optimise every touchpoint for better conversions across your sales funnel.
Map and refine each touchpoint to create seamless, engaging customer experiences.
Use heatmaps to track user behaviour and optimise your site experience.
Increase the value of each customer relationship through targeted strategies.
Set clear, inspiring goals and track them with hard numbers using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
Research focused on understanding user behaviours, motivations, and needs.
Boost customer loyalty and reduce churn with effective retention strategies.
Track campaign performance with clear and precise UTM tagging.
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I’ve helped B2B service companies scale — not with random tactics, but with clear systems that align marketing and sales into one predictable growth engine. Built on 15 years of hands-on experience — helping teams move from random tactics to repeatable, scalable results.
15 years experience
1,500 marketers trained since 2015
Exited 6 companies
Transpack Packaging
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Easy Ergonomics
The Talent Institute
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Booomtag
Stone & Tile Company
Founders
Springlab
Nestmanager
Cortazu
Strategiefabriek
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Kees de Boekhouder
Mooie Boules
Klup
Bridgefund
Ligo
SOPHIA MAE
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Yaya
Snappcar
Amberscript
Decathlon
Friesland Campina
NU
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
