The hardest part of conversion optimization isn’t running tests — it’s deciding what to test first. Most websites have dozens of pages and hundreds of things you could change, and the temptation is to fix a little bit of everything. That spreads your effort thin and rarely moves the number that matters. A good conversion optimization plan starts somewhere specific: the handful of pages where a small improvement produces the largest result.
Where should you start optimizing?
Start with your top traffic pages — the ones visitors land on first from search, ads, email, and every other source. These pages carry the most opportunity for two reasons: more people see them, so a change reaches a bigger audience, and they get enough traffic for an A/B test to actually reach a reliable result instead of stalling on too few visitors.
This follows the 80/20 rule, also called the Pareto principle: most of the effect comes from a small share of the causes. Most websites fit this pattern. On an ecommerce site, the bulk of revenue comes from a small slice of the catalog — your best sellers. On a lead-generation site or a blog, the bulk of your traffic and conversions come from a small slice of your pages. That small slice is where your real opportunity lives, and it’s where a conversion optimization plan should begin.
How do you find those pages?
Use your analytics. This is quantitative data — the numbers and metrics your site already collects — and it tells you, without guessing, which pages do the heavy lifting. The report you want is the one that shows landing pages: the pages people arrive on first. Almost every site finds its home page near the top, alongside five to ten other pages pulling enough traffic to be worth optimizing.
Once you have that short list, narrow it with a few pointed questions. Which pages have the highest bounce rate? Which ones bring in plenty of traffic but convert poorly? Which ones drive the most revenue or the most leads? The pages where high traffic meets weak performance are your biggest, fastest wins — there’s enough volume to test a change and enough gap to close that you’ll see the impact in a reasonable time.
What if a page doesn’t have enough traffic?
Be honest about volume before you commit to a test. An A/B test needs a meaningful number of visitors to tell a real result from random noise; run one on a page with a trickle of traffic and you’ll wait a long time for an answer you still can’t trust. That’s exactly why you start with your top pages — they give you the traffic to learn quickly. Lower-traffic pages aren’t hopeless, but they call for different methods, and they’re not where a plan should start.
What comes after “where”?
Finding where to start is the first of three questions. Once you know which pages to focus on, the next is what to test on them — which elements actually shape the decision a visitor makes. After that comes why: why people convert or don’t, why they hand over an email or walk away. The “where” gives you a focused list grounded in real data instead of a hunch. That alone separates a conversion optimization plan that compounds from one that just stays busy.
If you want a second set of eyes on where your site is leaking conversions — and which pages would repay the effort first — that’s exactly what a conversion review is for. [Book a consultation](/contact/) and we’ll take a look.