My system for getting landing pages to convert (some at 20%+)

Hey, I’m Nicholas.

I’ve helped landing pages go from 3.5% to over 20% conversion rates while others struggle to even break even on ad spend. See above. 

I’m one of the top 1% of freelancers on Upwork (out of 18 million), expert-vetted as a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) specialist.

Most marketers follow “best practices” and hope they’ll work. I don’t rely on hope. I rely on a system that delivers results, predictably.

Systems are what helped me help a MedEdTech company grow by millions of users, led dozens of clients into the double-digit conversion club, and excel during grad school at Harvard University.

But more importantly:

My CRO Clarity System is how you take the guesswork out of CRO.

Because here’s the truth, no one wants to admit:

CRO isn’t easy, but it is predictable.

Let me explain.

Have you ever worked on a website, made what seemed like a smart change—maybe moved a CTA, changed a headline, adjusted button colors—only for conversions to… stay flat? Or worse, drop?

You’re not alone.

Marketers are constantly told to “just follow best practices,” but here’s the issue:

Best practices aren’t predictable practices.

There is no universal rulebook that says “have exactly three CTAs,” or “green buttons convert better than red.” Sure, those tweaks can help—but they can also hurt.

What works on one site can completely flop on another. And when you’re constantly tweaking things based on advice from blog posts and Twitter threads, it’s easy to fall into the “two steps forward, three steps back” trap.

If you want predictable conversion gains, you need a way to know what to change, why to change it, and when to do it.

That’s where observation comes in.

Everyone talks about customer interviews and surveys. That’s great. But what they don’t talk about enough is watching your customers in the wild.

Tom and David Kelley—founders of Stanford’s d.school and IDEO (the minds behind Apple’s first mouse)—preached this concept early.

Here’s a quick story from their book Creative Confidence that changed how I approach CRO:

A team set out to redesign filing cabinets. They started by asking office workers what they wanted. Some said better labels. Some wanted new drawer sizes. No clear answers.

Then they started observing office workers at their desks.

What they found was stunning: Nearly everyone was stacking files on top of their cabinets, not inside. That single insight changed everything.

Instead of reworking the drawers, they focused on building a flat, usable top surface—a fix no one asked for, but everyone needed.

That’s the power of observing real behavior instead of relying on assumed intent.

Now ask yourself:

How are you observing your website visitors?

Because if you’re just reading GA4 dashboards, you’re only getting a piece of the puzzle.

This is the part most marketers overlook.

This is the part that makes your CRO work predictable.

Heatmaps and session recordings show you how people actually use your site:

• Where they click
• Where they scroll
• What they ignore
• What confuses them
• Where they drop off

It’s like watching over your visitor’s shoulder—at scale.

And here’s the kicker:

It takes less than 15 minutes to set up.

Just add a code snippet to your site’s head tag, update your privacy policy, and you’re off to the races.

Even better?
There are incredible tools like Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar that offer heatmaps and recordings for free.

Let’s break down what these tools actually do:

🔥 Heatmaps
Visual overlays that show where users are clicking, tapping, or scrolling. You can instantly see what draws attention—and what doesn’t.

🎥 Recordings
Screen-by-screen replays of real users on your site. You’ll spot rage clicks, hesitation, friction points, and unexpected user paths that analytics alone would never reveal.

🧠 Filters & Segmentation
Want to only watch recordings of users who didn’t convert? Easy. Want to compare mobile vs. desktop behavior? Done. The real insights are in the patterns.

Here’s the kicker most people miss:

• Heatmaps and session recordings don’t magically increase conversions—what you do with that knowledge does.

When you observe real user behavior, you’re no longer making blind guesses. 

You’re now in a position to apply best practices with precision. The “rules” become tools, not assumptions.

Suddenly, you’re not just A/B testing random ideas, but you’re making informed changes that are grounded in what your users actually do.

But here’s the thing: once you’ve gathered dozens of insights, how do you prioritize which changes to make first?

That’s where a decision-making framework comes in.

You don’t need 20 ideas. You need the right idea, implemented at the right time.

One approach I use is inspired by Tony Robbins’ RPM Method—which stands for Results, Purpose, and Massive Action. Here’s how it applies to CRO:

1. Result – What are we trying to improve (e.g. more form submissions, more qualified leads)?
2. Purpose – Why is this change important? What’s the underlying issue it’s solving?
3. Massive Action – Which actions have the highest potential impact based on user behavior?

Using this, I organize every insight into buckets:

• High-impact / high-confidence
• High-impact / low-confidence
• Low-impact

That way, we prioritize changes that are most likely to succeed—based on real user evidence, not opinions.

Let me show you exactly how this works in practice.

We were reviewing recordings and heatmaps for a client’s landing page that was converting at around 8%.

Here’s what we noticed:

• Desktop users had access to an additional CTA (a sticky button mid-page) that mobile users didn’t—and it was one of the highest-clicked elements.
• Users were scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page, then scrolling back up to the form to convert—showing intent, but friction.
• Users who watched the embedded video almost never converted—it was more of a distraction than a motivator.

We didn’t need to run 100 variations. We had the data. The roadmap was clear:

1. Remove the video—it distracted more than it helped.
2. Add the form to the bottom—meet users where their scroll behavior naturally ended.
3. Add the mid-page CTA to mobile—to give all users the same opportunity to take action.

We were confident—not because we were guessing, but because we had evidence.

We had other insights, too, but these were the changes that we had high confidence would make a high impact.

And just like that, conversion rates jumped from 8% to 12%.

You observe, analyze, prioritize, and act. That’s the formula.

That’s the CRO Clarity System.

Heatmaps and recordings are just the beginning. When you combine behavioral insights with clear objectives and a structured prioritization framework, you go from hoping for improvements to engineering them.

If you’ve made it this far, you already understand more about effective CRO than most marketers ever will.

Now imagine what you could do with a team that lives and breathes this process daily.

So if you’d rather not do it alone…

And want a team of CRO experts who know exactly what to observe, what to test, and how to prioritize changes based on impact then let’s talk.

Schedule a call with us today, and we’ll walk you through how we can help level up your conversion rates—with a proven, predictable CRO Clarity system.