Your website might be getting traffic. But traffic without conversions is just noise.
The average website conversion rate sits between 2–4%, meaning for every 100 visitors, 96–98 of them leave without doing anything — no form fill, no purchase, no call booked. That’s money walking out the door.
The good news? You don’t have to guess why. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools give you the data to find out exactly where visitors are dropping off and what changes actually move the needle.
Here are 9 tools worth having in your stack — including some that are completely free.
1. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Best for: Understanding the full user journey from first click to conversion
If you don’t have GA4 installed on your website, start here — before anything else. It’s free and gives you a bird’s-eye view of where your traffic comes from, which pages visitors land on, how long they stay, and where they exit.
The Funnel Exploration report in GA4 is particularly powerful for CRO. You can build a custom funnel (e.g., Homepage → Service Page → Contact Page → Thank You) and immediately see which step loses the most visitors. If 80% of people drop off between your service page and your contact form, that’s your first place to optimize.
GA4 also lets you set up conversion events — whether that’s a form submission, a phone call click, or a purchase — so you can track what’s actually working over time.
Pricing: Free
2. Microsoft Clarity
Best for: Free heatmaps and session recordings without the price tag
Microsoft Clarity is arguably the most underrated free tool in web analytics. It records real user sessions on your site — you can literally watch a video of someone clicking around, getting confused, and leaving — and generates heatmaps that show where people click, scroll, and rage-click.
Rage clicks (where a user furiously clicks on something that isn’t responding) are a goldmine for finding broken elements and misleading design. Clarity flags these automatically so you don’t have to dig through hours of footage.
The tool also integrates natively with GA4, so you can segment recordings by traffic source, device type, or conversion outcome.
Pricing: Free (unlimited sessions, unlimited recordings)
3. Hotjar
Best for: Combining behavioral analytics with direct user feedback
Hotjar pioneered the heatmap-plus-survey approach to CRO, and it’s still one of the best all-in-one behavior analytics platforms for small businesses. Where Clarity is purely observational, Hotjar adds a qualitative layer: exit-intent surveys, on-page polls, and user feedback widgets that ask visitors why they’re leaving.
The combination is powerful. Hotjar might show you that visitors aren’t scrolling past the fold on your pricing page — but a quick exit survey reveals it’s because they can’t find the pricing at all. That’s an insight you can act on immediately.
Hotjar’s conversion funnel feature also pinpoints the exact step in your checkout or lead flow where most visitors abandon.
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $32/month
4. Crazy Egg
Best for: A/B testing paired with visual behavior reports
Crazy Egg combines heatmaps and scroll maps with a built-in A/B testing tool, making it one of the most practical CRO platforms for small business owners who want to test changes without hiring a developer.
The Snapshot report shows you a visual overlay of your page with click data, scroll depth, and even traffic-source breakdowns — so you can see if visitors from Google behave differently than visitors from Facebook.
The A/B testing editor is drag-and-drop, letting you change headlines, button colors, or entire page sections and measure which version drives more conversions. Crazy Egg claims their users see an average 30% increase in conversions after using the platform, though results vary based on what you test.
Pricing: Plans start at $49/month (30-day free trial available)
5. VWO (Visual Website Optimizer)
Best for: Serious A/B testing with statistical rigor
VWO is a full-featured experimentation platform used by businesses that are ready to invest in systematic A/B testing. It handles split tests, multivariate tests, and split URL tests — and it won’t declare a winner until the results are statistically significant, which saves you from acting on noise.
VWO also includes heatmaps, session recordings, and on-site surveys, so it covers most of the same ground as Hotjar plus testing in one platform. The SmartStats feature continuously adjusts for statistical validity, reducing the time needed to reach reliable conclusions.
For ecommerce stores or businesses with high traffic, VWO’s ROI calculator lets you project the revenue impact of improving conversion rate by even half a percent.
Pricing: Plans start at $314/month; free plan available for small sites
6. Lucky Orange
Best for: Live chat, heatmaps, and recordings in one affordable package
Lucky Orange is one of the best-value CRO platforms for small businesses because it bundles heatmaps, session recordings, live chat, and conversion funnels under one subscription that won’t break the bank.
The live chat component is worth highlighting: if you see a visitor going in circles on your pricing page, you can proactively reach out in real time and answer the question that’s stopping them from converting. Lucky Orange reports that businesses using live chat see conversion rates up to 3–5x higher compared to sites without it.
The dashboard is clean and easy to navigate, making it one of the more approachable options for business owners who aren’t deep into analytics.
Pricing: Plans start at $32/month (7-day free trial)
7. Optimizely
Best for: Enterprise-level experimentation and feature flagging
Optimizely is the gold standard for large-scale experimentation. It powers the testing programs of brands like eBay, IBM, and The New York Times — but its core A/B testing and feature flagging tools are increasingly accessible to growing businesses.
What sets Optimizely apart is the ability to test not just visual changes but entire features, content variations, and user flows. Their Feature Experimentation product lets developers toggle features on or off for specific audience segments, making it possible to test backend changes without a full deployment.
If you’re scaling a SaaS product or a high-volume ecommerce store, Optimizely’s depth of segmentation and reporting is hard to beat.
Pricing: Custom pricing; free plan available for basic web experimentation
8. Unbounce
Best for: Building and testing high-converting landing pages fast
Unbounce isn’t a traditional CRO analytics tool — it’s a landing page builder with CRO baked in. Its drag-and-drop builder lets you create dedicated landing pages for campaigns without touching your main website, and the built-in A/B testing lets you test multiple versions simultaneously.
The Smart Traffic feature uses AI to route visitors to whichever landing page variant is most likely to convert based on their device, location, and behavior. Unbounce reports that Smart Traffic improves conversions by an average of 30% compared to traditional 50/50 splits.
For businesses running paid ads (Google, Meta, LinkedIn), Unbounce’s ability to match landing page messaging to ad copy — a practice called message match — is one of the highest-ROI moves you can make.
Pricing: Plans start at $99/month (14-day free trial)
9. Typeform
Best for: Building forms and surveys that people actually complete
Most contact forms convert terribly because they feel like bureaucratic paperwork. Typeform takes a conversational approach — one question at a time, with a smooth progression that feels more like a chat than a form. Their research shows completion rates of up to 3× higher compared to traditional multi-field forms.
For CRO purposes, Typeform is ideal for lead capture forms, discovery call intake, quote request flows, and post-purchase surveys. The logic jump feature lets you show or hide questions based on previous answers, keeping forms short and relevant for each respondent.
Typeform also integrates with HubSpot, Mailchimp, Zapier, and most major CRMs, so leads flow directly into your pipeline without manual data entry.
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $25/month
How to Pick the Right Tool (Without Overcomplicating It)
You don’t need all nine. Here’s a simple starting framework:
- Just starting out? Install GA4 (free) and Microsoft Clarity (free) today. They give you 80% of the insight you need without spending a dollar.
- Getting consistent traffic? Add Hotjar or Lucky Orange for qualitative feedback and session recordings.
- Running paid ads? Prioritize Unbounce for landing page testing and Crazy Egg for A/B testing your existing pages.
- Scaling fast? Graduate to VWO or Optimizely for statistically rigorous experimentation.
The most common CRO mistake isn’t using the wrong tool — it’s not using any. If you’re sending traffic to a website you’ve never analyzed, you’re flying blind.
Ready to Stop Losing Visitors?
At Your Web Team, we build websites designed to convert from day one — and we wire up the analytics to prove it. Whether you need a new site, a landing page overhaul, or help interpreting what your data is telling you, we’re here to help.
Richard Kastl
Founder & Lead EngineerRichard Kastl has spent 14 years engineering websites that generate revenue. He combines expertise in web development, SEO, digital marketing, and conversion optimization to build sites that make the phone ring. His work has helped generate over $30M in pipeline for clients ranging from industrial manufacturers to SaaS companies.
