Conversion improvements
Conversion work looks at the point where a visitor decides whether to get in touch, book or buy, and removes the things that make that decision harder than it needs to be.
Short answer
We record how many visitors currently enquire, book or buy, find the points where people drop out, make a short list of focused changes and compare the same figures afterwards. We do not promise a percentage increase, because the result depends on far more than the website.
What counts as a conversion
A conversion is whatever you want a visitor to do. For most of the businesses we work with, that is one of a few things: sending an enquiry, ringing the phone number, booking an appointment, requesting a quote or buying a product. Some sites have secondary goals too, such as signing up to a newsletter or downloading a price list.
The first step is agreeing which of these matter and how each one can be counted. Form submissions and online sales are easy to count. Phone calls from a website are harder, and we will talk through the options, from a tracked number to simply asking new customers how they found you.
Start with a baseline
Without a starting figure, there is no honest way to say whether a change helped. Before we change anything, we record the current numbers: visits to key pages, the share of those visits that end in an enquiry or sale, and where in the process people leave. If your site has no tracking, we set up privacy-respecting measurement first and wait long enough to gather a meaningful baseline. Our privacy and forms guide explains what New Zealand privacy law expects of tracking and forms.
We are open about the limits. Small sites have small numbers, and a few extra enquiries in a month may be chance. Seasonal businesses swing for reasons unrelated to their website. We say so in our reports.
Where people drop out
Common sticking points on small business sites include:
- A call to action that blends into the page, or several competing ones
- An enquiry form with ten fields when three would do
- No prices or price guidance, so visitors leave to find a competitor who shows some
- Key details, such as service areas or opening hours, buried on another page
- Error messages that wipe what the visitor typed
- Pages that look untrustworthy because they are out of date
Most of these are fixed with small, specific changes rather than a new design.
Honest persuasion only
Some conversion advice relies on pressure: countdown timers that reset, fake "only two left" notices, pre-ticked boxes or reviews that were never written by customers. We do not use these techniques.
There is a legal side as well as an ethical one. Under section 12A of the Fair Trading Act 1986, "A person must not, in trade, make an unsubstantiated representation"1. A claim counts as unsubstantiated if the person making it does not have reasonable grounds for it at the time it is made1. In August 2026 the Commerce Commission announced that The TV Shop would pay $1,104,000 for conduct that included staff writing customer reviews; the judge described the conduct as "deliberate and systematic"2. The Commission's statement said: "Kiwis should be able to trust online reviews are genuine and free of manipulation."2
So when we rewrite headlines, buttons and offers, every claim needs to be one you can back up. Our guide to website claims and the Fair Trading Act covers this in more depth. It is general information, not legal advice.
How we work
- Agree the goals and how each is counted.
- Record the baseline over a set period.
- Review the key pages and forms, and list the likely sticking points.
- Agree a short list of changes, ranked by expected impact and effort.
- Make the changes on staging, then live.
- Compare the same measures over a matching period, allowing for season where we can.
Where traffic is high enough, we can test two versions of a page against each other. On most small sites it is not, and we make one well-reasoned change at a time instead.
What you receive
- A written baseline with the figures and how they were measured
- A short report on where visitors drop out and why we think they do
- The agreed changes, made and tested
- A comparison report after a matching period, including what did not change
Conversion questions
How much will my enquiries go up?
We cannot say in advance, and we do not quote percentages. We can say what we will change, how we will measure it and when we will report back.
Do you need access to our analytics?
It helps a great deal. If you do not have analytics, we can set up a simple, privacy-respecting tool and record a baseline before making changes.
Will you add pop-ups to capture leads?
Only if you ask and only in a form that is easy to close and does not block content on phones. A clear page with an obvious next step is less intrusive and does not get in the way on phones.
Sources
Each source was opened and checked against the sentence it supports on 3 November 2026.
Ready to plan your redesign?
Tell us what your current site does well and what holds it back. You get a written, fixed quote in NZD before any work starts.