How to Improve Average Conversion Time: 15 Actionable Tactics

Wondering how to improve average conversion time to outperform your competitors, even with similar offerings?

The first thing you need to know is that this metric isn’t just about speeding up a process—it’s about optimizing every step of your user’s journey to make their path to conversion as smooth as possible.

That said, let’s explore what average conversion time is, and go over 15 actionable tactics to optimize your conversion time and retain customers.

Overview of how to improve average conversion time

• Average time to conversion is the time it takes for a user to complete a desired action. It can be making a purchase or signing up for a service, after their initial interaction with a website or app.
• Shorter conversion times can enhance user experience, increase customer satisfaction, boost revenue, improve efficiency, offer competitive advantages, and support scalability.
• You can calculate time to conversion by dividing the total time spent by the total number of conversions. However, you can use tools like Userpilot for automatic calculation.
• There are over 15 tactics to optimize conversion time, and they involve:

1. Simplify sign-up: Streamline the process with single sign-on (SSO) and minimal information requests.
2. Include testimonials: Leverage social proof like testimonials and G2 reviews, and include them in your landing page, sales page, and sign-up pages.
3. Support chatbot: Implement AI chatbots for 24/7 support and avoid drop-offs.
4. Personalize experiences: Use data from initial interactions to provide a unique onboarding process.
5. Interactive walkthroughs: Enhance understanding and time to value with interactive guidance.
6. Contextual tooltips: Trigger in-app guidance at the right time and at the right user based on user behavior.
7. Onboarding checklist: Simplify the onboarding process with in-app checklists.
8. Live demos: Use demos to showcase product value and address objections before upgrading.
9. In-app messages for FOMO: Create a sense of urgency with limited premium feature upgrades.
10. Contextual upgrade prompts: Trigger upselling messages based on feature usage.
11. A/B test prompts: Optimize conversion rates by testing the timing, design, and messaging of your in-app prompts.
12. Funnel analysis: Identify and address friction points by identifying what parts of the user journey are getting users stuck.
13. Path analysis: Understand user navigation paths to optimize the product experience and make smoother conversions.
14. Customer feedback: Use direct feedback to identify and remove barriers that prevent conversions.
15. In-App resource center: Offer 24/7 support with an organized knowledge base so users can have easy access to answers.

• If you’re looking to optimize your product experience, why not book a Userpilot demo to see how you can A/B test different in-app experiences and optimize conversion time?

Why should you improve conversion time?

Average time to conversion is the time it takes for a user to complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a service.

A shorter conversion time means that users quickly see the value in your offering—leading to a healthier bottom line and more resources to invest in further growth.

In SaaS, improving your average conversion time is beneficial for several reasons:

• Boosts revenue growth: Faster conversions can shorten sales cycles, leading to quicker revenue generation.
• Improves operational efficiency: Optimizing conversion processes can reduce costs associated with customer acquisition and support.
• Facilitates scalability: Streamlined conversion processes are easier to manage at scale, supporting business growth.

How do you track average conversion time?

The average conversion time is calculated by dividing the total time spent during the transactions by the total number of successful conversions.

In practice, you can use a tool like Userpilot to automate this process by:

1. Defining the specific actions that represent a conversion.
2. Utilizing tags to measure the time users spend on your app or website before converting.
3. Dividing the total time by the number of conversions to calculate the average time to conversion.

This way, you’re not just guessing about what works and what doesn’t but making informed decisions as you analyze visitor data.

15 Tactics to optimize and improve conversion time

Reducing the time it takes for potential customers to convert is crucial for any SaaS looking to grow.

That said, let’s go over 15 conversion rate optimization tips that can help streamline the conversion process:

Simplify the sign-up process

The first step for conversion optimization is to make the sign-up process as seamless as possible.

For example, implementing single sign-on (SSO) options can drastically reduce barriers to entry. Once a user has signed up, you can leverage this initial engagement to ask for essential information through welcome surveys.

The key is to minimize the number of steps and only request information necessary for effective follow-ups or personalized onboarding sequences.

Include testimonials and reviews to engage potential customers

Social proof is a lever that induces enough trust in visitors and makes them take action fast.

This is not limited to testimonials and G2 reviews (which are very valuable), but also content like case studies, social media content, and customer results.

To do it effectively:

1. Gather as much social proof as you can. This can involve inviting regular users to leave a positive review on G2, reaching out to your most successful users to create a case study, or even interacting with people on social media.
2. Include social proof around your landing pages, signup pages, and every piece of content to compound trust at every stage of the journey.
3. Perform A/B tests to see what kind of social proof makes the most impact.

Implement a support chatbot for website visitors

Chatbots can answer potential customers’ questions immediately, preventing them from leaving due to unresolved questions.

For instance, AI chatbots like HubSpot are there to answer any present question before you decide to convert.

For this, design a chatbot that can provide valuable resources and support while allowing for escalation to human support when necessary. This way, users will feel supported at every time and address common sales objections.

Personalize customer experiences from the start

A personalized onboarding experience can significantly accelerate a user’s decision to upgrade.

For example, you can use a welcome survey to collect information from free trial signups and segment them based on their roles, goals, pain points, and jobs to be done (JTBD).

With such data, you can trigger a personalized onboarding flow designed for a specific target audience. This helps ensure users see the value of your product in the context of their specific needs and are more likely to upgrade.

Use interactive walkthroughs to shorten time to value

Interactive guidance is another way to increase your conversion rate. It helps users navigate and understand your product better—reducing the time to value and leading to faster upgrades.

Kommunicate has a great example (shown below), as it makes the onboarding process easy and interactive with a sequence of tooltips.

That said, instead of showing a generic product tour that users are likely to skip, you can implement an interactive walkthrough to:

• Guide users step-by-step with progressive onboarding.
• Respond to in-app behavior in real time.
• Avoid overwhelming users with information they won’t retain.
• Enhance the user’s learning experience, as they can grasp how to use core features while interacting with the product.

Implement contextual tooltips to enhance customer experience

Generic guidance won’t ever drive as many conversions as when you offer the right guidance, at the right user, at the right time.

For instance, it’s not the same as telling every user to set payment reminders during a generic product tour. Instead, you can try to deliver an in-app tooltip when a user is setting up their invoices.

Therefore, it’s better to implement contextual tooltips so they’re triggered during key moments. It can be when the users are stuck, when they’re interacting with core features, etc.

This way, you can reduce trial friction, improve feature discovery, and make conversions more likely to happen.

Build an onboarding checklist to prepare customers for conversion

A smoother onboarding process leads to faster conversions.

One way to do this is to add onboarding checklists to guide users toward activation and prepare them for conversion.

To create an effective checklist:

• Break down the onboarding process into the simplest tasks possible (can even add dummy tasks to add a sense of momentum);
• Add a progress bar so users can know how much work is left for them.

Make sure to use a tool like Userpilot to add different types of checklists inside your app quickly and without coding.

Offer live demos during customer onboarding

Live demos can serve as a crutch to boost your conversion time.

This experience won’t only educate users about your product but also build a deeper relationship from the start—increasing the likelihood of conversion.

To do this well, incorporate product demos within the trial experience. During the demo, you can:

• Showcase key features that are relevant to the customers.
• Answer questions that are preventing them from committing.
• Guide users through the product step by step.

Use in-app messages to promote FOMO for premium features

Creating a sense of urgency or FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is a powerful motivator for users to upgrade from freemium plans, fast.

For example, promoting a new offer where users can get early access to a new feature at a lower price.

For this, try sending targeted in-app messages that promote new features, limited-time offers, or exclusive content available only to paying customers. Make sure to design in-app messages that communicate the novelty of premium features or time-sensitive offers.

This way, using urgency can become helpful to encourage users to upgrade and access the full product experience.

Trigger contextual upgrade prompts based on feature usage

Tracking feature usage can help you generate more upgrades and convert faster, given the right upselling technique.

For instance, if a user reaches a limit during their free plan, you can take it as an opportunity to offer unlimited access.

For this, start by identifying high-value features that are exclusive to your premium plans (this could include those features that your power users engage with the most). Then, offer your free users a free trial for these premium features so they’re compelled to try it out (just like the example below).

Finally, once the user gets used to them, prompt users to upgrade at the end of their free trial to retain access to the advanced features. Just ensure these prompts are well-written and timed.

This way, the free trial becomes an upsell opportunity as trial users experience the value of the premium features and realize that it’s worth upgrading their plan to keep using them.

A/B test upgrade prompts to improve conversion rates

One conventional way to optimize conversion rates is by A/B testing the timing, messaging, and design of your upgrade prompts.

This means creating two different versions of your modals, tooltips, or banners, and then running multivariate tests to see which one converts better. So if you’re trying to optimize the conversion rate of your onboarding process, you can use A/B testing to see what prompt generates more conversions at the end of the primary onboarding.

With A/B testing tools that support in-app flows (like Userpilot), you’ll be able to analyze the engagement performance of those versions such as time spent on each version, completion rates, and feature usage—as well as test continuously and improve your conversion time over time.

Conduct funnel analysis for conversion rate optimization

Funnel analysis helps you optimize your conversion time by pointing out exactly where users disengage.

For example, if you find out that users are stuck at the free trial stage, you can optimize the free trial experience to encourage more conversions.

For this, set up a conversion funnel that tracks the user journey from sign-up to paid conversion. Then analyze each friction point and find ways to get feedback on why it happens. This can involve reaching out to customers or looking at session recordings.

As you collect data, you can work your way up by implementing solutions until the journey is as smooth as it can get.

Conduct path analysis to understand the conversion path

Path analysis provides a detailed view of the user navigation path after sign-up. This includes which onboarding steps are completed and where users steer off course.

So let’s say that you’ve got a great amount of recent signups. This analysis helps you understand how users adopt your product and whether your onboarding flow effectively guides users toward conversion.

To do this:

• Check user path analysis to identify common points of exit or confusion.
• Optimize onboarding content to ensure it effectively leads users toward realizing the product’s value.
• Test it out to see if it improves your website’s conversion rate.
• Find new rooms for improvements and repeat.

Collect and act on customer feedback to remove conversion barriers

Direct feedback from users can highlight friction points that can’t be spotted through behavioral analysis.

For example, if users indicate that there’s a particular feature that’s quite complicated to use, you can then work on improving the usability of said feature and improve the average conversion rate.

For this, you can trigger in-app surveys at the end of the free trial period to gauge user satisfaction and identify obstacles to conversion. Make sure to use a mix of rating scales and open-ended questions to gather comprehensive feedback (e.g. you can ask for further details if the user reports that they’re not satisfied).

Then, analyze survey data to make user-driven improvements that would’ve been impossible through any other analytics tool.

Build an in-app resource center to provide 24/7 support

A great opportunity to improve average conversion time is through an in-app resource center. Since it prevents users from leaving your app to solve their issues (experiencing friction in the process), customers are more likely to stay engaged with your app.

The process for creating an effective knowledge base is simple:

• Identify common issues that make customers drop off and disengage.
• Survey your users, review your support tickets, and examine your usage data to see what’s causing friction and pushing customers away.
• Create help resources in different formats to directly tackle these challenges. It can include FAQs, tutorial videos, step-by-step guides, or help articles.
• Organize your resources in content modules so users can find resources that are relevant to them (instead of having to browse through messy documentation).
• Include launch messages for announcements, updates, and patch notes to keep customers informed 24/7.

Conclusion

When it comes to improving average conversion time, it’s not just a tactical adjustment—it’s a competitive advantage.

By implementing the conversion rate optimization strategies we discussed, you can make the conversion path as efficient and user-friendly as possible.

So if you’re looking to elevate your product experience, why not book a Userpilot demo to see how you can A/B test different in-app experiences and optimize conversion time?

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