How to Increase Website Conversions: A Practical Guide
Learn how to increase website conversions: define and measure the goal, find where visitors drop off, fix forms, speed and messaging, and test changes properly.
How to Increase Website Conversions: A Practical Guide
To increase website conversions, start by defining one specific action you want visitors to take. Measure it consistently, find the step where people leave, and fix that step before anything else. Then test each change against the current page. Most gains come from clearer messaging, shorter forms, faster mobile pages and visible proof, not from a redesign built on hunches.
This guide walks through that process in order. It works for a law firm’s intake page, a municipal service portal, a B2B lead form or a checkout.
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TL;DR
Pick one conversion (a call, a form submission, a purchase) and calculate the rate the same way every time: conversions divided by visitors or visits.
Use funnel reports to find the exact step where people drop off, then fix the biggest leak first.
Cut form fields, speed up mobile pages, and replace vague buttons and headlines with specific ones.
Add proof near the action: case studies, testimonials, client logos, clear contact details.
Run A/B tests for at least one to two weeks, and judge winners by business outcomes, not clicks.
Table of Contents
Define what a conversion is and how you will count it
Find out why your website is not converting
Make your message clear in seconds
Put proof next to the decision
Remove friction from forms and checkout
Speed up mobile pages
Remove distractions from landing pages
Test changes properly
Perspective
Work with a team that builds for conversion
A 30-day plan to get started
FAQ
Sources
Define what a conversion is and how you will count it
A conversion is a visitor completing a desired action. Nielsen Norman Group defines conversion rate as the percentage of website visitors who take a specific desired action. Adobe’s guidance lists typical conversions as a purchase, a form submission or creating an account, and measures the rate by dividing conversions by total visitors or visits, as long as you keep the counting method consistent.
That last point matters more than it sounds. If you count sessions one month and unique users the next, your “improvement” may be arithmetic. Write the definition down and keep it.
Choose one primary goal per page
Every page should have one job. A homepage might aim for a consultation request. A service page might aim for a phone call. A municipal site might aim for a permit application started or a newsletter sign-up. When a page asks for three things, it usually gets none of them.
Secondary actions (reading a blog post, following on social) are useful, but they are micro conversions. Track them separately so they never hide a drop in the main number.
Pick a measurement window that makes sense
Nielsen Norman Group advises that measurement periods be long enough to smooth out random swings, such as weekday versus weekend traffic, yet short enough to connect results to the changes you made. In practice, compare full weeks, never a Tuesday against a Saturday.
Make sure the tracking is trustworthy
Before you optimize anything, confirm that your conversions are recorded correctly. Double-counted form thank-you pages and missing phone calls are common. If you run paid ads, our walkthrough on Google Ads conversion tracking covers how to set it up and check it. For businesses that win customers by phone, call tracking ties those calls back to the ad or page that produced them.
Find out why your website is not converting
Guessing is the most expensive way to fix conversions. A funnel view shows you where visitors fall away. Google Analytics funnel exploration visualizes the steps users take and how well they succeed or fail at each one, for example from prospect to shopper to buyer.
Build a funnel that matches your real path. For a law firm it might be: landing page, then contact page view, then form start, then form submit. For a city website: service page, then application page, then submission.
Read the drop-off points
Look for the largest percentage loss between two adjacent steps. That is your first project. Amplitude’s guide on funnel analysis lists the usual causes of drop-off: friction in forms such as too many required fields or unclear instructions, pricing surprises, slow site performance, and missing trust signals like security indicators.
Use that list as a diagnostic checklist:
Where the drop happens | Likely cause | First thing to check |
|---|---|---|
Landing page to next step | Unclear offer, weak headline, slow load | Does the headline say what you do and for whom? |
Form start to submit | Too many fields, confusing instructions | Which fields can you remove? |
Pricing or quote step | Surprise costs or no cost context | Is the process explained before the ask? |
Mobile only | Tiny buttons, slow pages, hard-to-tap links | Test on a real phone on a cellular connection |
Any step | No visible proof or contact details | Are reviews, case studies or a phone number nearby? |
Segment before you conclude
A blended conversion rate hides a lot. Split by device, traffic source and landing page. Paid search visitors, organic readers and people who typed your name arrive with different intent. A page that converts poorly for cold ad traffic may do well for returning visitors, and the fix is different in each case.
Make your message clear in seconds
Visitors decide quickly whether a page is for them. Your headline, subhead and first screen need to state what you offer, who it is for and what happens next.
Lead with the outcome and say it plainly
Write for the reader’s problem, not your company history. “Immigration attorneys: more qualified consultations from search” says more than “Welcome to our innovative solutions.” Plain language also tends to help. Unbounce’s analysis of 41,000 landing pages reported that pages written at a 5th to 7th grade reading level converted at 11.1%, which the company says is 56% higher than pages at an 8th to 9th grade level. That is one dataset, not a universal benchmark, but it supports a simple habit: cut jargon and long sentences.
Replace vague buttons and links
“Learn More” tells nobody what happens next. Nielsen Norman Group’s Anna Kaley advises against vague link labels like that, noting that they fail accessibility needs and give no context, and recommends specific, actionable text. Compare:
Weak: Submit, Learn More, Click Here
Stronger: Request a free case review, See permit fees, Get my quote
Test button wording on its own. It is one of the cheapest experiments you can run.
Write for choosers as well as users in B2B
If you sell to organizations, the person using your service is often not the person who approves it. Nielsen Norman Group’s B2B research says conversion strategies must serve both “users” and “choosers” with product information, clear specifications and proof of business benefits such as case studies. For a municipality, that could mean showing accessibility, procurement-friendly detail and examples of similar towns. For a law firm, it could mean practice-area clarity and outcomes-oriented stories, within your bar’s advertising rules.
Put proof next to the decision
People hesitate when a step feels risky. Reduce that perceived risk where the decision happens, not on a separate “testimonials” page nobody visits.
Place testimonials or client logos beside the form or button. Unbounce’s 2025 recommendations include placing testimonials or client logos near conversion points.
Show real contact details: a phone number, an address, hours.
Describe the process. “You will hear from us within one business day, then we schedule a 20-minute call” removes the unknown.
Link to case studies. For example, our immigration law campaign that drove 63 leads shows how a practice-specific page and campaign were put together, and our civic website modernization for the Borough of Englewood Cliffs shows the same thinking applied to local government.
Keep trust intact
Tricks that push micro conversions can cost you later. Nielsen Norman Group researchers warn that “confirmshaming” links, such as a decline button that insults the visitor, can damage brand credibility and user trust over the long run. Persuade with clarity, never with guilt.
Remove friction from forms and checkout
Forms are where intent turns into a lead, and where many leads die. Nielsen Norman Group’s EAS framework (Eliminate, Automate, Simplify) offers a clean order of operations, as described by Huei-Hsin Wang:
Eliminate every nonessential field. If you do not use the answer in your first reply, do not ask for it.
Automate what you can: autofill, address lookup, detecting location.
Simplify what remains with helpful defaults and smart formatting.
The same guidance recommends allowing guest checkout and postponing password creation until after purchase.
A quick form audit
Count your fields. Could a first-contact form work with name, email or phone, and a short message?
Check labels and error messages. Do they say exactly what to fix?
Make phone and email fields use the right mobile keyboard.
Confirm that the thank-you page tells people what happens next and fires your conversion tag once.
Submit the form yourself on a phone, then check that the lead arrived where it should.
On a law firm intake form, for instance, ask about case type and urgency, which help you route the inquiry, and leave detailed case history for the first call.
Speed up mobile pages
A slow or awkward mobile experience quietly drains conversions. Google Ads Help states that nearly half of mobile visitors may leave if a page does not load within 3 seconds. It also recommends simplifying navigation, keeping content readable without zooming, minimizing form or transaction steps, and making phone numbers and action buttons clickable.
Speed pays off in revenue terms, too. Google’s web.dev published a case study in which Swappie increased mobile revenue by 42% after focusing on Core Web Vitals to close performance gaps between its mobile and desktop sites. Treat it as an example of what a focused performance effort can do, not a promise for any particular site.
Mobile checklist
Compress images and serve them at the size the screen needs.
Make tap targets large and spaced out.
Use a click-to-call button on every service page.
Keep the primary button visible without long scrolling.
Remove pop-ups that cover the content on small screens.
Check contrast and text size. Accessible design and mobile design overlap heavily, and both widen the group of people who can finish your form.
For municipalities, accessibility is more than a conversion lever. Residents rely on these sites for services, and a site that works with assistive technology serves all of them.
Remove distractions from landing pages
When you send paid traffic to a page, keep that page focused. Unbounce recommends removing navigation or other links that compete with the primary action and testing form length and call-to-action wording.
A focused landing page usually has:
One headline that matches the ad or link that brought the visitor.
One short supporting paragraph or a few bullets.
One form or one button, repeated at sensible points.
Proof close to the action.
No menu that leads away from the goal.
Matching the message from ad to page is half the battle. If your ad promises a free consultation for tenants and the page opens with a generic company intro, expect a leak. Our guide to a Meta ads strategy for leads shows how to keep offer, audience and landing page aligned.
Test changes properly
Optimization means systematic, data-driven changes rather than redesigning from intuition. Nielsen Norman Group’s A/B testing guidance gives a sound structure, outlined in A/B Testing 101:
Set a primary conversion metric and guardrail metrics (for example, lead quality or bounce rate) before launch.
Write a hypothesis: “Cutting the form from seven fields to four will increase submissions because less effort is required.”
Record the baseline and the smallest improvement worth detecting.
Use a significance threshold, usually 95%.
Randomly split live traffic between control and variant, ideally changing one element.
Run the test for at least one to two weeks and until you reach the needed sample size.
Ship the winner only if it improves the business outcome, not merely clicks.
A note for low-traffic sites
Many law firms and local governments do not have the traffic for rapid-fire tests. In that case, prioritize bigger, evidence-backed fixes (shorter forms, a faster page, a clearer headline), compare full weeks before and after, and keep a change log so you know what moved the numbers. Reserve formal A/B tests for your highest-traffic pages.
A simple prioritization order
Priority | Change | Why first |
|---|---|---|
1 | Fix broken tracking and forms | You cannot improve what you cannot measure |
2 | Clarify headline and call to action | Cheap, fast, high visibility |
3 | Cut form fields | Directly reduces effort at the decision point |
4 | Speed up mobile pages | Affects every visitor |
5 | Add proof near the action | Reduces perceived risk |
6 | Test layouts and offers | Needs traffic and patience |
Perspective
We see the same pattern across law firms, municipalities and local businesses: the ad or search result does its job, and the website loses the visitor. Our approach is built around the click after the click. Our team has managed over $3.2 million in ad spend and has achieved a 10x return on ad spend for clients, and what we take from that work is that traffic and page design cannot be treated as separate projects.
That is why we pair paid media with conversion-focused website development. A campaign aimed at a clear offer, landing on a page with a single purpose and visible proof, with analytics tracking every step, gives you something you can improve month after month. Transparent reporting matters just as much: when you can see which page, which ad and which form field made the difference, decisions stop being opinions.
For municipalities, we add digital accessibility and community engagement to the mix, because a resident who finds a service quickly is a conversion too. Our strategies are tailored to each client rather than copied from a template, and we keep optimizing after launch.
the author
Work with a team that builds for conversion
If you would rather not run this process alone, we can take it on. Media Click AI designs and builds conversion-focused websites, runs Google and Meta ads, and sets up the analytics and reporting that show what is working. We work with municipalities, law firms and businesses that need qualified leads and clear online visibility.
Look at our web design, brand design and paid media services to see how a project can fit your goals, or read how design that converts shapes our work. Pricing is set per project scope and deliverables, so the next step is a conversation about your pages and your goals.
A 30-day plan to get started
Week 1: Define your primary conversion, verify tracking, and record your baseline for the last four to eight full weeks.
Week 2: Build a funnel report, segment by device and source, and list your three biggest drop-off points. If you run Meta campaigns, set up reporting that drives decisions so ad data and site data tell one story.
Week 3: Ship the quick fixes: rewrite the headline and button text, cut form fields, add a click-to-call button, compress heavy images.
Week 4: Add proof near the action, then launch your first A/B test on your highest-traffic page. Review the results after at least one to two weeks, and write down what you learned.
Repeat the cycle. Conversion work compounds: each fixed leak raises the value of every visitor and every ad dollar you already pay for.
FAQ
What is a good website conversion rate?
It depends on your industry, traffic source, offer and what you count as a conversion, so there is no single number to chase. Benchmarks from vendor datasets, such as Unbounce’s study of 41,000 landing pages, describe their own samples rather than your market. The most useful comparison is your own baseline over full weeks, measured the same way each time.
Why is my website not converting even though traffic is up?
The usual suspects are a mismatch between the ad or search result and the page, slow mobile loading, long forms and missing proof. Build a funnel report to see the exact step where visitors leave, then check that step against the causes in the diagnostic table above. Segment by device and source, since a problem often hides in one segment.
How do I increase landing page conversion rate quickly?
Start with a headline that matches the ad, one clear call to action with specific wording, a shorter form and proof placed beside the button. Remove navigation that leads away from the goal. Then test one change at a time for at least one to two weeks so you know which change helped.
How long should an A/B test run?
Nielsen Norman Group recommends at least one to two weeks, to account for changes in behavior across days, and until you reach the sample size you planned for. Stopping early because one version looks ahead is a common way to ship a false winner.
Do I need a redesign to improve conversions?
Usually not as a first step. Fixing tracking, messaging, forms, speed and proof often delivers gains faster and with less risk. A redesign makes sense when the site’s structure, accessibility or mobile experience prevents those fixes, and then it should be driven by your funnel data.
Sources
Conversion Rate: What It Is, Optimization, and Formulas (Adobe for Business)
What’s a good conversion rate? Based on 41,000 landing pages (Unbounce)