Did you know that 74% of visitors are likely to return if your website has a good mobile UX?
This is only one of many ways that Chicago companies increase their website conversions.
But having an amazing-looking website isn’t enough anymore. You need to add a bit more effort if you want your Chicago website to bring in the conversions that you deserve.
Optimizing your website design for higher conversions means working on different areas of your website, such as data-driven digital marketing, having a user-centric design, and building trust locally in a strategic way.
This article will guide you through different design decisions, digital strategies, and principles that will help demonstrate how good Chicago companies increase their website conversions in 2026.
Are you trying to improve your conversions but don’t know where to start? Let us help.
Having a Good Grasp on Conversion Optimization
Conversion optimization is the main way Chicago companies increase their website conversions. In essence, conversion optimization is the process of guiding visitors toward a specific goal.
Whether it means filling out a contact form, booking a call, or completing a purchase, the goal is to optimize this and make it as easy as possible for it to happen.
Chicago brands have to serve both an urban and suburban audience, both with their unique expectations. Being able to see these audience differences lets you tailor your website messaging, layout, and CTAs in a way that resonates with your target audience.
An exceptional Chicago stands out from its competitors due to how it makes its digital experience feel local, credible, and human.
Conversion optimization begins with understanding your audience and where they are.
1. Understand User Behavior
Chicago’s highest-performing companies treat their websites as objects forever in movement and evolving. They invest in analytic tools such as Google Analytics, Hotjar, and Clarity to fully understand how users interact with their websites.
These Chicago companies increase their website conversions by understanding what their visitors do as soon as they enter their websites and work to optimize them.
Heatmaps, click tracking, and scroll-depth reports all reveal where visitors lose interest and end up leaving.
In short, data reveal the “why” behind underperformance and lack of conversions. Chicago businesses that are constantly checking analytics, testing, and refining will always see improvements in their conversions.
Analytics help you stop guessing when it comes to changes and help you strategize around the information you have.
2. Simplify Navigation
A bad website structure can instantly frustrate a user and make them leave. A key way Chicago companies increase their website conversions is by optimizing their navigation in a way that is easy to understand and use.
Remember, what might seem simple to you may be difficult for others.
You created the website and know the ins and outs of it, but a visitor doesn’t, and they shouldn’t have to learn how to get to a product or service they need.
A simple and streamlined navigation bar with fewer than six links can help visitors find exactly what they are looking for without having to check all over the homepage. Consistency across all pages matters, too.
Users shouldn’t feel lost as soon as they enter a new page due to it being completely different.
While uniqueness is important if you want your brand to stand out, you can’t go overboard and make your website feel abstract.
3. Optimize for Mobile Speed
When more than 60% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, it’s a must to have a website that is tailored to mobile devices.
Slow and clunky mobile websites not only frustrate users, but they show that you, as a brand, don’t care enough to make a good mobile website.
To add to it, a bad mobile website will hurt your SEO rankings due to Google’s search engine putting websites with a good mobile website over bad ones, regardless of their authority.
You can check your website’s mobile speed with tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to find out if you still need to optimize your mobile website or if you are doing well.
Compressing images and using modern formats such as WebP, using a CDN, and ensuring that your code is clean and free of fluff are all great ways to improve your website’s speed.
Explore how we reduced Blue Fin Group’s bounce rate by 16.7% with a brand new web design in our recent case study.
4. Strengthen Local SEO and Reviews
Visibility leads to more conversions. Big Chicago companies increase their website conversions by working on their local SEO constantly. By optimizing your Google Business Profile and gathering local reviews, you can drastically improve local visibility.
Always encourage your satisfied customers to leave a review on Google or Yelp.
This way, you can grab those reviews and showcase them on your homepage and product pages to add an extra layer of credibility.
Remember, people want to see what other people think about your website and product before they commit to buying anything.
5. Leveraging Retargeting
It doesn’t matter how amazing your website is; you will always lose potential customers.
But worry not, that’s why retargeting is a thing. By using tools such as Google Ads and Meta Pixel, your Chicago brand can re-engage with users who visited your website but didn’t convert.
Retargeting ads keep your business top of mind and give visitors another chance to act and potentially buy your product or service.
But you shouldn’t stop just there. Instead, you can personalize their experience even more.
You can display localized banners in your ads or even personalized product recommendations based on what they were browsing for when they visited your website.
6. Strong CTAs
Calls to action are generally an afterthought for most brands, and that is one of the biggest mistakes you can make on your website. A CTA is the final bridge between someone interested and someone who has bought your product or service.
The best CTAs are direct, time-sensitive, and benefit-driven. When creating your CTA, make sure that you clearly explain what the user needs to do or gets from clicking on it. Being vague only makes users not trust a CTA since they might not know what they’re really getting out of it.
Apart from having a direct and concise message in your CTAs, you should also consider different aspects of your CTA button.
Mainly, colors, placement.
Does the color help the CTA pop out from the rest of the content, or is it muted and easy to ignore?
Are your CTAs in a place where users can instantly see them, or do they take some scrolling and looking around to find them?
Using analytics and A/B testing is by far the best way for you to optimize your CTAs in a consistent way. By putting time and effort into your CTAs, you’ll see a clear improvement in conversions.
Learn how we increased Cloud 9’s engagement time by 26.4% with a new web design in our latest case study.
7. A/B Testing
What makes amazing Chicago companies increase their website conversions the most by far is A/B testing.
All these tips and ideas are great, but if you’re not constantly testing and finding ways to improve every aspect of your website, then you’ll never reach higher conversion rates.
What might seem like a small and useless change to your eyes might be the differentiator needed for customers to buy your product 50% more.
Chicago websites thrive on experimentation and finding out what works and what doesn’t, so don’t be afraid to move things around and see if it yields better results.
But remember, when using A/B testing, you want to compare one change at a time. It’s impossible for you to know which change improved or decreased your conversion rate if you made twenty changes to the homepage, for example.
Get a Custom Website that Converts With Blacksmith
The very best Chicago companies increase their website conversions in many ways, but the ideas and strategies shared in this article are by far the most important.
By applying these strategies and tips to your website, you will see an increase in conversions in a matter of weeks.
That being said, applying all of these strategies to your website might take weeks, if not months, depending on how much you want to A/B test and fine-tune it all.
This is time you could be using on other aspects of your business as well, so what now?
That’s where we come in. Blacksmith is a Chicago web design agency with a group of web design professionals ready to help you create the perfect website for your business.
From using the latest trends to implementing strategies tailored to your brand and industry, we will ensure that your website stands out from the rest while also keeping your conversion rates high.
Still unsure if investing in a new custom website is what your Chicago business needs?
Don’t worry, click here to schedule a call with us and we will provide you with a free audit. This way we can show you how your website is performing when compared to your main competitors and what we can do to help your business grow.
