Conversion & Performance

What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the practice of improving pages, through measurement and testing, so that a larger share of visitors take the action that matters to you. Rather than buying more traffic, it aims to get more out of the traffic you already have.

What counts as a conversion depends on the business. For an industrial firm it is a qualified quote request, for an online shop a completed order, for a clinic a booked appointment. Smaller conversions such as brochure downloads or newsletter sign-ups are tracked too, because they signal the bigger decision.

Conversion rate is the number of visits that complete the target action divided by total visits. A single blended rate can mislead, since visitors from ads and from organic search behave very differently. Breaking the rate down by channel, device and page is what shows where the problem is.

What are Core Web Vitals? LCP, INP and CLS

Core Web Vitals are three metrics Google uses to measure how fast and smoothly a page works for real users: LCP for loading, INP for responsiveness and CLS for visual stability. INP replaced the older FID metric in 2024.

Google's “good” thresholds are below. They are assessed at the 75th percentile of real visits, separately for mobile and desktop, so a fast result on a powerful laptop is not enough.

Lab measurements from tools such as PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse help diagnose problems. What Google actually looks at is field data collected from Chrome users, which appears in the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.

Good scores alone do not guarantee a top position; Google still puts the most relevant content for the query first. Among pages of similar quality, though, page experience can tip the balance, and a slow page loses visitors whatever its ranking.

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how long the largest piece of content takes to appear; good is 2.5 seconds or less
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how long the screen takes to respond to a click or tap; good is 200 milliseconds or less
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): unexpected movement of elements while the page loads; good is 0.1 or less

How do you speed up a website?

Most slow sites are slow for the same few reasons, and most of those come from the page itself rather than the server. So improvement usually starts by looking at what the page loads, before anyone changes the infrastructure.

Third-party tags deserve special attention. Live chat widgets, ad pixels and analytics scripts each look small, but together they can load ahead of the main content and slow the page noticeably. Reviewing which ones are actually used is often a quick win.

Once the page itself is in order, attention turns to the server. If the server's first response is slow, loading starts late however light the rest of the page is. Caching, static page generation and a CDN that serves from locations close to the visitor are common ways to cut that delay.

• Serving images at the size the screen needs, in modern formats such as WebP or AVIF
• Lazy-loading images below the fold, but never delaying the main hero image
• Removing unused JavaScript and CSS
• Reserving space for images, video and ad slots to prevent layout shift
• Self-hosting fonts and loading only the weights you need

What is a landing page, and how is it different from a home page?

A landing page is a page designed to move visitors from a specific campaign or ad towards a single action. A home page tries to tell everyone everything; a landing page says one thing, to one audience, with one offer.

The most common mistake is sending ad traffic to the home page. Visitors who cannot find the promise they saw in the ad usually leave rather than keep looking. That is why the ad copy and the page headline need to match.

Much of the ad traffic usually arrives on mobile, so the landing page is laid out for the phone first. The headline, benefit and call to action should be visible on the first screen, the form should work one-handed, and the page should open without delay after the ad click.

• A clear headline that repeats the ad's promise
• The concrete benefit of the offer and who it is for
• Trust signals: references, process, frequently asked questions
• A short form that asks only for what is needed
• Fewer distracting menus and outbound links

How does CRO work on a low-traffic site?

An A/B test splits visitors between two versions of a page to measure which works better. A reliable result needs enough visits and conversions, though; on a B2B site that gets only a few enquiries a month, a test can run for weeks and still be inconclusive.

In that case qualitative methods take the lead. Conversations with a few real users, objections collected by the sales team and field-level form abandonment data reveal the obvious obstacles before any statistical test. Changes are then tracked with before-and-after comparisons.

Whatever the method, the first step is setting up measurement correctly. If events such as form submissions, phone clicks and WhatsApp button taps are not tracked properly, the effect of any improvement stays invisible.