Increase conversion

Short answer: how do you increase your website's conversion rate?

Increasing conversion isn't a bag of tricks — it's systematically removing the reasons someone doesn't take the next step right now. Do it in this order: first measure where the leak actually is, then answer the visitor's question directly at the top of the page, then show visible proof that you can be trusted, and finally strip every unnecessary step out of the form or checkout.

A growing share of visitors now arrive by way of an AI-generated answer rather than a plain search. That visitor has already done their orientation, asks a more specific question, and expects immediate confirmation. A page that spends its first few screens warming up loses that visitor before the offer is even in view.

• Measure first: which pages get traffic but deliver nothing, and where does the form get abandoned?
• Put your core promise and the next step above the fold, in the visitor's own words
• Make it visible who you are: names, faces, case studies, reviews — visitors arriving from AI answers bounce off anonymous sites
• Remove friction: fewer fields, fewer steps, faster pages, clear expectations
• Offer something interactive (a calculator, a selector, a scan) so the visitor does something instead of just reading
• Test what you change and only draw conclusions once a result actually holds up

1. What's changing about conversion

Until recently, almost every visitor started with a short search and then clicked through three or four websites to compare. Increasingly, that comparison now happens before the visit: an AI system has already summarised the options, and the visitor clicks through to one or two providers just to confirm.

That changes the role of your page. You're less often the place where someone orients themselves, and more often the place where someone confirms or rules out a choice. Confirmation takes seconds, not minutes — and those seconds go on three questions: do you do exactly this, can I trust you, and what's the next step?

The practical consequence: the page someone lands on has to convince on its own. Not the homepage, not the menu, not a page three clicks further in.

• The search query is longer and more specific than it used to be — your landing page can be more specific too
• The visitor expects confirmation, not an introduction
• Independent proof (reviews, case studies, accreditations) weighs more heavily than your own copy
• Who's behind the company is no longer an "about us" detail but part of the decision

See how this connects to AI and data: how AI search engines use your content.

2. Start with the numbers, not an opinion

The biggest time-waster in conversion work is arguing about colours while nobody knows where visitors actually drop off. Before changing anything, get the numbers on three things: which pages get traffic without results, where people abandon the form, and which type of visitor actually converts.

You don't need an expensive package for that. Analytics with correctly configured goals, a session-recording tool for a few weeks, and a simple funnel breakdown usually point you in the right direction quickly. What matters is that the measurement itself is correct: double-counted events or forms that aren't tracked send you in the wrong direction for a long time.

Read more about measurement and turning data into decisions.

3. Answer the question directly, above the fold

Put what you do, for whom, and what the visitor can do right now in the first screen. Obvious in theory, but on most business websites that space is filled with a mood line that could apply to any company.

A good test: cover everything except the first screen and let someone unfamiliar with your business look at it for ten seconds. Can they then say, in their own words, what you offer and to whom? If not, that's your first — and usually biggest — improvement.

This matters doubly for visitors arriving from AI search: they came in on a specific question. If the page literally recognises that question in its headline, confirmation happens instantly. That's also exactly why separate landing pages per question outperform one general services page.

• Headline: the outcome for the customer, not the name of your service
• One line underneath: who it's for and what makes you concretely different
• One primary action, visible without scrolling — repeated further down the page
• No decision fatigue: two buttons with different promises is enough

Read more about copywriting that moves people to act.

4. Make trust visible

Signals such as experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness are usually discussed as a search-visibility topic, but they matter just as much for conversion. The same signals an AI system uses to judge whether you're a reliable source are what a visitor uses to decide whether to leave their details.

In practice that means: show who does the work. Names, faces, years of experience, real projects with real outcomes. A website where it's unclear who's behind it loses out — not just in search results, but with the visitor who was just handed three alternatives by a chatbot.

Place proof exactly where doubt arises: a review next to the form does more than a reviews page nobody visits.

• Real names and photos of the people doing the work
• Case studies with a starting point, an approach and an outcome — not a logo wall with no story
• Reviews from an independent platform, with a date and a name
• Concrete guarantees, terms and contact details: phone number, address, registration details
• Publication and update dates on informational pages

See our case studies for examples.

5. Remove friction from the funnel

Every step, every field and every second of load time costs you part of your audience. That's simple arithmetic, not theory: if four consecutive steps each lose 20% of visitors, you're left with well under half of where you started. Merging two steps into one often delivers more than any amount of copy tweaking.

Look critically at your form. Any field you ask for now but only need later can go, or move to a second step. Don't ask for information you can look up yourself. And explain what happens after submission — telling someone exactly when and from whom they'll hear back removes more doubt than a required-field asterisk ever will.

Speed belongs in this list too. On mobile, a slow page is the most common, most measurable, and easiest-to-fix conversion killer we come across.

• Cut every field you don't need to start the conversation
• Turn one long form into two short steps with visible progress
• Show a clear expectation: what happens, when, and by whom
• Offer an alternative channel (chat, phone, call-back request) for people who don't want to type
• Fix mobile load time before you start running A/B tests

Read more about responsive design and mobile-first UX.

6. Let visitors do something, not just read

A visitor who fills something in is already a step further along. A calculator, selector, scan or configurator gives immediate value, tells you something about intent, and makes the next step feel logical — you're not asking for a conversation, you're offering to go through the outcome together.

This is also one of the few things an AI-generated answer can't replicate. A model can summarise your text just fine; it can't run a calculation on this specific visitor's own numbers. Offering interactive tools gives visitors an actual reason to click through.

Keep it small. One tool that works perfectly and matches what you offer is worth more than three half-finished widgets.

• Immediate result on screen, without asking for an email address first
• A next step that matches the outcome, not one generic button
• An explanation of how the result is calculated, so it can be trusted
• A shareable or saveable result — that also tends to earn links and mentions

Try our free website scan with concrete improvement points.

7. Test, but only draw conclusions once results hold up

Once you make changes, you'll want to know whether they work. With enough traffic, use an A/B test; with less traffic, use a longer before-and-after comparison combined with common sense.

The most common mistake is stopping a test early because variant B is "ahead". With small numbers, that's almost always chance. Work out in advance how many visitors and conversions you need, and stick to it — even when it's tempting not to.

Document what you tried, including what didn't work. That record becomes more valuable over time than any best-practice list from the internet, because it's about your visitors specifically.

Check whether your result actually holds up with our A/B test significance calculator.

8. Conversion starts with being found by AI

There's a reason to talk about conversion and visibility in the same breath: the traffic you get determines how high your conversion rate can realistically go. If you show up in AI-generated answers as the option that solves this specific problem, the people who land on your site are already close to convinced.

What AI systems need in order to cite you overlaps heavily with what convinces visitors: a clear, factual answer up front, a logical structure with real headings, original data or experience that isn't published anywhere else, and technical context through structured data.

Build breadth on top of that: not just one page on a topic, but a set of pages that together show you understand the whole subject — and that link to each other.

• Answer the question in the first paragraph, in full sentences that can be quoted on their own
• Use clear headings that name a question or topic
• Add something a model can't invent: your own numbers, real examples, photos of actual work
• Add structured data to your pages: organisation, service, FAQ, article, reviews
• Group related pages around one theme and link between them consistently

Read the full picture in our guide to conversion optimisation.

9. What order should you tackle this in?

Most companies start at the end: buttons, colours and tests, while measurement isn't reliable yet and the first screen isn't clear. In our experience, this order gets results fastest — and you can stop after any step without the earlier work going to waste.

See how we approach projects.