Oh great, another acronym to remember? Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of enhancing your website to increase the rate of visitors (traffic) to conversions (aka leads, calls, customers). Good SEO gets visitors to your site, good CRO gets them to stay and convert. Since engagement signals are a known ranking factor, a good CRO strategy is an important piece of making SEO even more effective.

For example, say you have a landing page that has 300 views and 7 conversions in the month of August. Now let’s say in September, that same page has 200 views and 6 conversions. If your first instinct is that lower traffic + lower conversions = bad, that’s where CRO analysis comes in. Your conversion rate in August was 2%, but in September it was 3%, that’s a significant increase! So what happened? Part of CRO analysis is providing context to data. Did you change the design, copy, or any other elements of the page? Did you implement SEO and now you’re getting more of the right traffic? There are tons of variables, but if you don’t pay attention to CRO you might never know.

You might be wondering what a “good” conversion rate is. The answer is… it depends. Here are current conversion rate averages across several industries (Ruler Analytics, 2026):

Automotive: 7.9%
Beauty & Cosmetic: 3.5%
Construction & Engineering: 4.9%
Education: 6.3%
Finance: 6.3%
Health & Social Care: 2.3%
Legal: 7.9%
Marketing & Advertising: 6.2%
Professional Services: 6.1%
Real Estate: 2.8%
Retail & eCommerce: 2.4%
Software: 7.6%
Travel: 1.9%

So what are the most common mistakes when it comes to CRO? They range from larger sitewide issues to on-page elements, or it could be as simple as not analyzing your data. Here are the top 10 issues I see that spending some time on CRO can really improve.

Awful mobile optimization

I feel like everyone knows this by 2026, but I’m gonna say it anyway because it’s important. The mobile experience is more important than desktop. You’re most likely creating and editing your website on desktop so it can be easy to forget. Most platforms have built-in tools that allow you to review and edit your mobile site, and you should also be testing it on as many actual, physical mobile devices as you can get your hands on.

While overall web traffic now skews more to mobile, some industries, especially in B2B, still have a higher percentage of visitors accessing their site on desktop. If that’s you, you may be questioning if you should care about your site’s mobile performance. Search engines prioritize mobile versions of all sites and have been doing so for years. So even if your website gets 99% desktop traffic, if your mobile site sucks you are likely losing ranking and organic search presence because of it.

Slow load times

Similar to the mobile experience, if your site load speed is atrocious nothing else on this list matters as much. PageSpeed Insights is a free tool you can use to get a breakdown of your site’s speed performance metrics by page on mobile vs desktop, plus insight and diagnostics. Things like compressing and lazy loading images, limiting the number of fonts to 2 or 3, and cutting down on unnecessary code/external scripts go a long way in increasing page speed.

Navigation without intention

Site navigation and overall website structure are sometimes treated as an afterthought, and pages end up getting added with no strategy behind it. Before you know it the pages there are outdated or don’t match the user behavior patterns you want.

The main navigation, your footer, and any sub-navigation (like eyebrow menus, sidebars, etc.) tell users and search engines which pages are most important. They should be treated intentionally!

Above-the-fold is a mess

Check out what your website is showing above-the-fold - meaning what is seen on a given page before any scrolling. Do you have 3 competing call to action (CTA) buttons and multiple popups? Visitors want to know that your value proposition is for them, and what to do next. If that’s unclear or too confusing, they will likely do nothing and bounce. All the good SEO in the world can’t fix that. Decide what the most important next action is and make that the focus. Every other element in that above-the-fold space should support it. Review your home page or your most important sales page and get it updated today.

Key pages missing info

Every website should have an about page, or at least an about section. Personally, when I see this is missing I am immediately wondering what they are hiding. People want to know who they are dealing with, especially in service-based businesses. Visitors should know if they’re in the right spot when they land here. Explain a little about yourself/your company and why you started, include a headshot and/or team photo, and easy to find contact info.

Which brings me to your contact page/form. At the very least you should include a simple form, and a bit about what to expect - estimated response time, what happens next etc. If you have a physical location customers will visit, embed a map, add your address, hours, and an image of your storefront. Also this should go without saying but make sure your contact info/next steps are easy to find!

Lastly, I will always argue for including pricing info. Even if every quote is completely custom, even if you’re reworking your offer, at least give an estimate or starting price. Visitors in the consideration stage are evaluating you vs your competitors and gathering cost info. If you have nothing it’s more likely they will go with someone that has transparent pricing rather than reach out for a quote.

Generic or competing calls-to-action (CTAs)

Please stop using Read More, Learn More or Contact for your for call-to-action (CTA) buttons! Make them specific. You are trying to lead visitors down a customer journey, let them know what they’re getting when they click.

Forms have too much friction

One of the biggest offenders of friction I see on too many websites is forms that are either way too long, don’t work on mobile devices and/or the value doesn’t match the info being asked. Take the time to think through the info you really need, and remember this is going to look different for each asset type you have.

No social proof

All websites should have elements of social proof. Have reviews or testimonials? Put them on your home page. Put together a sick portfolio? Make it pretty and easy to find. Got great results? Brag about ‘em in key places like contact forms, landing pages and service pages.

404 pages look like a mistake

People are going to land on your 404 page. It’s not an inherently bad thing and while there are things you can do to prevent it, you want to make sure that when it does happen, your audience is staying engaged on your website. If they land on a page that looks like a system error, has zero branding, or doesn’t at least have a link back to your home page, that person is bouncing. Go to yoursite.com/404 to look at yours and honestly ask what you would do if you encountered this on a site you were visiting for the first time.

Not-so-fun-fact: A client I worked with earlier this year had 7k 404 page views in 2025, because they didn’t redirect old URLs that were getting valuable traffic to their new equivalents during a redesign. My post on SEO and User Experience (UX) goes into more details on 404s and redirects.

Lack of testing and analysis

If you are someone that creates content willy nilly and hopes for the best, I say this with love. Start analyzing your data this month! Use tools like Google Analytics or your website platform for free. Start by listing questions you want to answer. Here are just a few to start with:

Where is traffic coming from - organic search, paid search, social media, email, referrals? What is the engagement per channel?
What content gets the most engagement vs the highest bounce rate on the website? Is there a pattern?
(For clients that do paid advertising) How are my paid campaigns performing? What is my return on ad spend (ROAS) for each platform, each campaign?

Tracking statistics monthly answers these questions. Those answers start telling a story about what is working well, what needs improvement, and where to invest your time/money/resources vs what’s no longer worth the effort.

To go even deeper with data analytics, there’s always something you can test. Heatmapping tools show you where users are clicking, scrolling, and how they’re navigating your site. I like LuckyOrange and Zoho PageSense. A/B and multivariate testing allows you to test variables: could be a subject line, page title, image, video, basically any element of a website page, email, or ad. Test a single variable at a time, create the variations, and let it run until you have enough statistical significance to declare a winner. The platforms I’ve really liked are Zoho PageSense and Hubspot, but there are a ton to choose from.

Everything I mentioned here is based on my experience working on SEO and website strategy for the past 15 years, and will apply to a majority of businesses. But, there are ALWAYS exceptions. This is why testing is so important. If you’re having a hard time deciding on how to design your home page above the fold, or what to put on your about and contact pages, or you’re not sure which form fields to use, those are all reasons to run tests and let the data speak for itself.

CRO Strategy Support

Need help with understanding how this all applies to you? I’d love to chat! Whether you just need some guidance or you just don’t have the time to implement CRO or SEO yourself, contact me for your free consultation! Let’s create a strategy that will work for you long-term.

Book A Call

Top Ten Conversion Rate Optimization Mistakes and What To Do Next