Conversion rate optimization UX: How CRO and UX go hand in hand.

Updated June 11, 2026: Updated to reflect current UX and CRO best practices. We've expanded the content to include a more comprehensive best practices section, an updated look at how Quantum Metric supports CRO and UX teams, and a new FAQ section to answer common questions about these disciplines.

What is UX and CRO?

UX and CRO work together to improve digital experiences, reduce friction, and increase conversions. While UX (user experience) design focuses on usability and customer satisfaction, CRO (conversion rate optimization) focuses on optimizing journeys that drive measurable business outcomes.

Even though CRO and UX design are fundamentally different disciplines, they share a common goal: to help users get things done with the least amount of effort possible.

Why do UX and CRO work better together?

Customers encounter friction when they discover something they didn’t expect, such as a dead link or a graphic that looks like a button but isn’t. CRO teams help identify moments of friction, while UX designers develop strategies to improve the experience.

Problems, bugs, or glitches in the UX often lead to an increase in cart abandonment rate and decreases in micro conversion rates, or the percentage of users who are progressing towards a valuable conversion on your website or application.

Micro conversions include smaller customer actions, such as navigating from a landing page to a product page, signing up for emails, or viewing pricing information.

With this in mind, it’s best to prioritize UX issues that have the greatest impact on conversion rates, even if other design flaws appear more noticeable.

To address these issues, CRO and UX teams work together by employing techniques such as A/B tests, heatmaps, session replay, and visitor analytics, as well as user surveys, eye-tracking studies, and customer feedback.

In particular, both teams benefit from using form analytics, which is the process of monitoring how users interact with the website’s form fields.

Data-driven design methods help teams to align on priorities and ensure UX consistency across the business’s digital products.

By joining forces, CRO and UX teams create persuasive, ethical designs that also improve a business’s bottom line.

UX and CRO best practices for improving conversions.

Following UX and CRO best practices can help teams build more intuitive digital experiences that encourage customers to keep moving forward.

Study the customer journey.

Both CRO and UX teams should closely analyze customer journey paths and conversion funnels.

By monitoring micro conversion rates, teams can identify crucial exit points where users leave the website or application. From there, UX teams can redesign pages, simplify flows, or improve navigation to reduce friction.

UX teams that specialize in CRO often conduct deeper user behavior research, helping validate design decisions with real customer data instead of assumptions.

Declutter your landing pages.

When it comes to landing pages, less is more.

You don’t want customers clicking haphazardly, so each landing page should provide a logical progression with clear visual hierarchy and intentional spacing.

Your most important content and CTAs should appear right above or below the fold so users can immediately understand what action to take next. This part of the landing page can be seen without needing to scroll.

Avoid burying important CTAs beneath large blocks of text or placing them next to competing buttons that may confuse users. After all, there’s nothing worse for user experience than accidentally hitting the wrong buttons.

Slow website performance can also negatively impact conversion rates, as well as organic search traffic and search engine ranking. That said, it’s best to avoid cluttering your landing page with large images or unnecessarily long video clips. (Did you know that most users abandon sites that take over 3 seconds to load?)

Tip: Take advantage of animations and GIFs. Moving images allow your team to showcase multiple products, or multiple angles of a single product, without forcing users to navigate from one element to another. That way, people don’t need to unnecessarily click.

Improve readability and accessibility.

Nothing deters users from your website faster than difficult-to-read fonts, cluttered layouts, or confusing visual hierarchy.

To improve readability and accessibility:

• Use clean, easy-to-read fonts
• Keep paragraphs short and scannable
• Use clear headings and subheadings
• Make buttons self-explanatory
• Use contrast and color intentionally
• Ensure important CTAs stand out visually

Your font size should likely be larger than expected—aim for 18 points or larger where appropriate.

Some fonts are seen as authoritative, while others strike users as official, objective, or modern. Choose the one that best suits your brand’s voice. If you’re going for something serious, Comic Sans might not be the best choice for your font.

As you build your website’s visual hierarchy, attach the most important messages and CTAs to the most visually prominent elements on the page. Your buttons should be self-explanatory.

And don’t forget about your color choices! Dark colors tend to carry more weight, though bright colors like orange can help draw attention to important details.

Use familiar website patterns.

UX designers are tasked with creating a compelling user experience without compromising on conversion rates.

When users land on a website, they form impressions almost immediately. Most users prefer websites with low visual complexity and familiar navigation patterns. In other words, users tend to like websites that look like other websites, especially those that avoid cluttered designs and awkward user interfaces.

For instance, many e-commerce websites follow similar patterns established by Amazon and other retail giants because those experiences are already familiar to customers. Most companies stick to the patterns that work, rather than reinvent the wheel.

It’s also why United, American, Delta, and most other airlines allow travelers to start booking their flights from the get-go, directly on the homepage

While innovative, unconventional layouts may appeal to some users, clarity and ease-of-use usually lead to stronger conversion performance.

Simplify website copy and CTAs.

UX designers should also collaborate with UX writers and content strategists to improve a website’s copy and increase conversions.

Short, simple, benefit-oriented messaging tends to perform best.

Instead of overwhelming users with information, focus on answering:

• What problem does this solve?
• Why should the user care?
• What action should they take next?

Strong calls-to-action should be clear, direct, and action-oriented.

How Quantum Metric can help CRO and UX design teams optimize digital experiences and drive conversion rates.

Great digital experiences come from understanding where customers encounter friction and making improvements based on real user behavior. As customer expectations continue to rise, UX and CRO teams need clear visibility into what’s working, what isn’t, and where users are dropping off in the customer journey.

With Quantum Metric’s session replay, user analytics, and customer journey insights, teams can identify usability issues faster, reduce cart abandonment, and make more confident decisions that improve conversion rates. See how Quantum Metric helps UX and CRO teams improve customer journeys and drive better digital experiences. Request a live demo today.