Conversion Funnel Optimisation Guide for Affiliates
11-04-2025
Conversion Funnel Optimisation: How to Generate and Convert More Leads
Generating and converting increasingly more leads is the ultimate goal of any affiliate marketer. But it’s not easy: at best, only 3% of online users convert, while the rest request a follow-up or bounce outright.
The good news is you can significantly grow your conversion rates by optimising your conversion funnel, which boils down to ensuring the best possible experience for every customer across all touchpoints and interactions. From your website to social media to emails, the right conversion rate optimisation algorithm can help improve the customer journey from top to bottom.
Read on to learn everything you need about conversion funnel optimisation and how it can help you generate and convert more leads.
What Is Conversion Funnel Optimisation?
From discovering your content until clicking your affiliate link or call button, leads may go through multiple interactions with your brand across channels and touchpoints. The same lead may first discover you on Google on their PC, disengage for a few days, and return on a mobile phone to click your CTA and connect to the advertiser. The smoother all these transitions are, the better the user experience; the more relevant the advertiser is, the higher the chance the lead converts.
- Conversion funnel optimisation is the process of aligning your marketing efforts with a lead’s expectations at every stage—from the initial interaction to the final sale or commission earned from a referred lead.
Conversion funnel optimisation is about turning more users into profits by selling their contact information to advertisers or earning a commission on the sale, depending on your affiliate marketing model: pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale.
Conversion Funnel Optimisation Examples
Before we proceed to a step-by-step conversion funnel optimisation guide, let’s quickly go through the conversion funnel optimisation measures you can take to improve:
| Sales Funnel Stage | Goal | Conversion Funnel Optimisation Examples |
| Awareness | Generating traffic to your website, social media, and landing pages | Increasing organic traffic by doubling down on the keywords you can realistically rank for, depending on the keyword difficulty, your website DR, competition, and budget |
| Interest | Presenting the offer and keeping users interested and engaged | Placing CTAs where user attention is drawn and surrounding them with valuable, relevant content and trust elements |
| Consideration | Motivating a user to fill out a form or make a call | Adding urgency to the offer and explaining that the call is toll-free |
| Conversion | Ensuring the lead data is correct and capturing the user consent | Using consent verification software to collect, verify, and store lead consent and data |
Even after the lead is processed—whether sold or not—you can analyse their journey and the outcome against existing patterns. As you process more leads, it becomes clearer which types of leads you should double down on and which aren’t cost-effective enough to generate.
Conversion Funnel Optimisation Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1. Conduct an Audit to Estimate the State of Your Sales Funnel
First of all, you need to audit the conversion funnel to identify where users drop off. Even though you might already know some weak touchpoints, evaluating the effectiveness of each stage of the sales funnel can help improve your affiliate marketing across the board.
Awareness Metrics
| Impressions | The more frequently your content is shown to potential customers, the better. For example, if your SEO-driven content doesn’t get enough exposure, you might want to re-evaluate the chosen keywords, the competition, and the content itself. |
| Bounce Rate | The percentage of users leaving your website after viewing only a single page may mean you didn’t meet their expectations. Maybe the content isn’t good enough, the message is unclear, or the targeting is wrong. |
Awareness-focused conversion funnel optimisation mostly focuses on making your content discoverable and appealing so users don’t pass by. Organic lead generation starts with making what potential leads see attractive—logo, title, description, headline, subject line, etc.—while optimising your content for search to hit top positions in search.
Interest Metrics
Interest metrics reflect engagement that hasn’t yet converted into clicks, downloads, or sales: time on page, depth of scrolling, pages per session, etc. Knowing these metrics can reveal whether users who land on your website find it relevant and interesting.
For example, if you’ve got a large number of impressions, but most users leave your website without engaging, you might want to work on targeting and the content on the first screen. The expectations you’ve formed with your title and description must be followed by the content the user sees when they land on your website or blog.
Consideration Metrics
Having warmed up your audience, you want them to click on your affiliate link, fill out a quote form, or make a call, moving them closer to the target action (submitting contacts in pay-per-lead and purchasing in pay-per-sale affiliate marketing). So you need to evaluate how well engagement converts into action—how many people start filling out a form or making a call.
For example, if you’re seeing high engagement but no one’s requesting a quote, the issue could be with the quote button—maybe it’s poorly placed, lacks context, or the call-to-action (CTA) isn’t compelling enough. Just keep in mind that since the consideration stage naturally involves fewer users, you’ll need to collect enough data before drawing any solid conclusions.
Conversion Metrics
Finally, optimising your sales funnel for conversions is the most important part of business because, at the end of the day, it only matters how many leads have converted into profits.
The conversion metrics depend on what you’re paid for as an affiliate. If you’re paid for leads, then you count the number of leads who’ve submitted their contacts; in pay-per-sale affiliate marketing, you count actual purchases; in more exotic marketing models, you might get paid for installations, downloads, clicks, or anything else that makes sense for the advertiser.
Step 2. Start Fixing the Conversion Funnel Where It Leaks
Once you’ve identified the problems, you can fix the funnel starting from the most underperforming stages and touchpoints. The only thing to keep in mind is that you have to ensure consistent customer experiences —if you change branding colours, messages, etc., make sure to coordinate these changes across all marketing channels.
Website Conversion Rate Optimisation
In most cases, your website is the place where you generate affiliate income, so you should go the extra mile to make it convincing and SEO-friendly. Aside from compelling content, your website should be mobile-optimised and fast. Tools like PageSpeed Insights can measure your website loading speed and identify what elements slow it down.
Here are the common website elements that can be optimised for conversions:
- Conversion funnel optimisation for search engines
Meta titles, meta descriptions, URL structure, headings (H1-H3), schema markup, internal and external links, focus keywords, page loading speed, mobile-friendliness. - Conversion funnel optimisation for users
CTAs, headlines, forms, trust & social proof elements, navigation.
Website conversion rate optimisation is an excellent way to sell more leads without spending more on lead generation, whether organic or paid. Sometimes all it takes is making quick fixes, like reformatting clunky images, to gain more attention from crawlers and user engagement.
Social Media Conversion Rate Optimisation
By and large, social media conversion rate optimisation is about creating emotionally charged content—scroll-stoppers—that resonates with the platform’s audience. For LinkedIn, check whether your content is data-driven and well-researched; for TikTok, make sure it’s conversational and fun; etc.
Optimisation-wise, social media content must catch attention fast and be relatable, usually concise, and persuasive, all while matching the expected tone and form. So check whether your content matches those boxes.
Email Conversion Rate Optimisation
Unless you’re sending cold emails, you’re addressing warmed-up audiences, so the strategies differ depending on the previous interactions. Aside from compelling copy, your emails must be well-timed—sent by triggers or when users tend to open emails more often, around 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., barring the first 15 minutes of an hour—and contain a clear call to action.
Likewise, emails must be personalised and short. With the average person receiving dozens of emails daily, you have to be on point with your message. Speaking of which, the AMP technology can provide interactive experiences right within emails.
Website vs. Social Media vs. Email Conversion Funnel Optimisation
| Website | Social Media | ||
| Traffic Quality | Moderate to high | Low | The highest |
| Goal | Conversion | Attention | Conversion |
| User Intent | Moderate to high | Low to moderate | Moderate to high |
| First Impression | Text and visual-focused | Visual-focused | Text-focused |
| CTA | Form fills and calls | Link clicks | Link clicks |
| Performance Metrics | Conversion rates, time on page, pages per session, bounce rates | CTR, CPC, CPM | Open rates, CTR, unsubscribe rates, revenue per email, leads to sales rates |
Finally, regardless of the marketing channels you’re using, make sure that most of your content—at least 80%—is non-promotional. As much as you’d like to convert more leads, you cannot do it by a hard sell—the effect is usually the opposite, for that matter.
Warm them up at least before providing the link you want them to click or the phone number to call. Remember, people are not reading or watching you because they cannot find a purchase link elsewhere—they likely seek a unique opinion or firsthand experience with the product in question.
Step 3. Choose a Matching Affiliate Marketing Program
As an affiliate, you have to factor in the terms and expectations of the affiliate programmes you’re going to participate in. For example, if an affiliate programme doesn’t accept social media or paid search traffic, you may not even need optimisation for these sources.
Here are some popular restrictions to keep in mind:
- Traffic source: If, for example, paid traffic isn’t accepted by your affiliate programme, you might get banned and have commissions revoked.
- Incentivised traffic: Forcing clicks by offering a giveaway in exchange is a popular restriction, so you may have to avoid this strategy.
- Location: Many affiliate programmes only accept traffic from specific countries or states, especially if the advertiser sells on-site services, so optimising the funnel for an international audience might not make sense.
Likewise, affiliate programmes may have specific rules for the content type, disclaimers, use of affiliate links, and many other nuances you should follow. So make sure to peruse the terms & conditions of the affiliate programmes you sell your traffic with.
Conversion Funnel Optimisation Checklist
| Build Trust, Credibility, and Transparency | With ever more users being concerned about privacy and data use—at least 40% want to get clear information on data use—you must be very straightforward regarding what information you collect, what advertisers will receive this information, and how they will use it. On top of well-targeted content, you surely must comply with GDPR and other pertinent compliance and ethical standards, like providing easy unsubscribe options and truthful information about the product. |
| Simplifying the User Journey | You might only have a consumer’s attention for a few seconds—even in 2015, when the well-known study by Microsoft Canada was published, the average attention span was around 8 seconds, one second short of that of a goldfish—so it’s essential to get them engaged at once and ensure a smooth transition between touchpoints. So minimise the number of steps between landing and conversion while still being clear and transparent about the product you promote:
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| Eliminate Extra Costs | Optimising your marketing funnel is crucial, but it’s also important not to overdo it, especially for smaller affiliates. Before paying thousands of dollars for conversion funnel optimisation services or software, make sure you’re going to get more in additional profits.
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| Lower the Entry Barrier | When promoting high-ticket products in industries like finance or insurance, focus on affordability and how much your solution can save them in the long run. The more commitment is required from consumers, the more persuasive, data-driven, and personal you should be. |
| Leverage Social Proof | Did you know 87% of consumers won’t consider a business with less than a 3-star rating? This is why it’s essential to select reputable advertisers and products and provide social proof, like reviews, testimonials, success stories, etc. User-generated content is more persuasive, so encourage consumers to leave feedback about their experiences with the product. |
| Test and Optimise | From A/B testing to real-time analytics, continuous testing allows you to expand into the most profitable audiences and campaigns and increase your performance across the board. |
5 Best Conversion Funnel Optimisation Agencies in the UK
If you’ve thoroughly followed the three steps above and the checklist, and your funnel conversion rates still leave much to be desired, you might need an external audit and assistance. It’s not out of the question that you may have blind spots that are extremely hard to spot on your own, or you might simply lack experience in the competitive market.
Below are the five best conversion funnel optimisation agencies in the UK:
Mr Digital – Brighton-Based Sales Conversion Funnel Optimisation Company
| Total Monthly Visits | Bounce Rate | Pages per Visit | Average Visit Duration | Direct Traffic | Referral Traffic | Organic Traffic | Paid Traffic | Social Traffic | Email Traffic |
| 2,900 | 47.62% | 1.81 | 00:04:07 | 21.41% | 26.75% | 25.3% | 21.89% | 3.22% | 0.07% |
Mr Digital is a Brighton-based conversion funnel optimisation agency that provides digital marketing, paid advertising, and web design services, and offers tailored optimisation packages that include both one-time analyses and ongoing conversion rate optimisation (CRO) support.
Here are the packages they offer:
- Landing page analysis: If landing pages are where your customers drop off, you might need to re-evaluate the layout and content there. Landing page analysis is a must for businesses running ad campaigns with low landing page conversion rates.
- Website analysis: If your website traffic doesn’t convert into leads or sales, you likely need profound website conversion funnel analytics and optimisation.
- Conversion rate optimisation: The CRO services are necessary for continuous improvement across the board by revealing your strongest and weakest parts of the conversion funnel and strategising your marketing and budget.
- Conversion rate optimisation and redesign: Sometimes, CRO requires a complete redesign to build a conversion-focused website for your target audience.
From immediate improvement to long-term optimisation, Mr Digital might be the best place to grow your ROI consistently without much extra effort. Beyond conversion funnel optimisation, they offer marketing and web packages, so you can get most of the job done in one place.
Conversion Rate Experts – London-Based Conversion Rate Optimisation Agency
| Total Monthly Visits | Bounce Rate | Pages per Visit | Average Visit Duration | Direct Traffic | Referral Traffic | Organic Traffic | Paid Traffic | Social Traffic | Email Traffic |
| 42,100 | 50.38% | 1.57 | 00:00:42 | 44.24% | 7.49% | 27.03% | 15.47% | 4.72% | 0.22% |
Conversion Rate Experts is a London-based conversion rate optimisation company that has helped to grow thousands of small and big companies in 40 countries, including giants like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Dropbox.
Conversion funnel optimisation-wise, they use their unique 9-step CRE Methodology™, which starts with establishing the rules of the game for their clients and ends up with website campaign testing and transferring the winning campaigns into other media. At the same time, the optimisation strategies they use are diverse, encompassing all marketing avenues, from copywriting to traffic tracking and analytics.
Last but not least, quite ambitiously, they claim they can suggest strategies to double sales for companies that generate over $1 million online, all within a free website strategy consultation.
Conversion – a Global Conversion Funnel Optimisation Agency
| Total Monthly Visits | Bounce Rate | Pages per Visit | Average Visit Duration | Direct Traffic | Referral Traffic | Organic Traffic | Paid Traffic | Social Traffic | Email Traffic |
| 34,500 | 47% | 2.06 | 00:01:10 | 46.39% | 6.76% | 43.34% | 0% | 2.89% | 0.15% |
Conversion does exactly what its name suggests—they optimise the conversion funnel and boost conversion rates through A/B testing, UX research, personalisation, and multiple other strategies, having helped their clients to generate over $2 billion in revenue.
Here are the services you can get on top of conversion funnel optimisation:
- Enterprise programme consulting
- Product and pricing experimentation
- Personalisation
- Conversion-centred design
- UX research & competitor benchmarking
- Liftmap (scaling)
With over 15 years of experience, Conversion has worked with dozens of industries—SaaS, tech, e-commerce, finance, retail, etc.—so they may have unique expertise other companies lack. They’ve helped brands like Meta, Domino’s, Unity, and Dollar Shave Club to achieve industry-leading results consistently through the proprietary Levers Framework, Experiment Repository, and Confidence solutions.
Convertize – London-Based Conversion Funnel Optimisation Agency
| Total Monthly Visits | Bounce Rate | Pages per Visit | Average Visit Duration | Direct Traffic | Referral Traffic | Organic Traffic | Paid Traffic | Social Traffic | Email Traffic |
| 26,500 | 47.83% | 1.69 | 00:00:41 | 36.57% | 7.95% | 50.94% | 0% | 3.8% | 0.13% |
Convertize is a London-based conversion funnel optimisation agency that combines analytics and behavioural insights to grow conversion rates and ensure a smooth customer journey across campaigns and touchpoints.
Here are the main conversion funnel optimisation services they provide:
- Conversion funnel audit & user behaviour analysis
- Conversion audit of Google & Facebook ad campaigns
- Value proposition audit
It’s worth noting that Convertize’s approach is quite unconventional—they’re using the Smart Persuasion approach, which is described in detail in their eponymous book. So you can either try to optimise the funnel based on the insights from the book or outsource the job to the experts.
Speero – European Conversion Funnel Optimisation Agency
| Total Monthly Visits | Bounce Rate | Pages per Visit | Average Visit Duration | Direct Traffic | Referral Traffic | Organic Traffic | Paid Traffic | Social Traffic | Email Traffic |
| 27,000 | 48.43% | 1.87 | 00:00:53 | 37.55% | 10.39% | 48.03% | 0% | 3.31% | 0.11% |
Speero is a Tallinn-based conversion funnel optimisation agency that provides the full spectrum of conversion funnel optimisation services, including auditing, testing, and analytics. They evaluate your performance and provide detailed guidance on where you can improve and how it can be done.
Among the main types of services are:
- Experimentation and CRO
- Research and strategising
- Data collection and analytics
Through thorough research and data-driven CRO strategies, Speero has helped companies generate millions in additional revenues and implement an experimentation culture that supports ongoing testing and improvement.
Join us as an affiliate or advertiser. For more information, call 01202 122 280 or email us at info@t.uk.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a conversion funnel?
A conversion funnel is a representation of the journey of potential customers with your company, from discovery to interest to conversion and possibly beyond. The names of the funnel stages vary, but the principle is that the funnel starts wide at the top—lots of potential customers—and narrows down as they drop off at each stage until some percentage actually converts into profits.
What is a good funnel conversion rate?
Depending on the industry, the sales funnel conversion rate benchmarks vary from around 1.5% to 3%, which means you can expect around 2 sales out of 100 generated leads. Obviously, the conversion rate within the pay-per-lead affiliate marketing model is much higher because you only sell the lead’s contact information and don’t need them to make a purchase.
How do you calculate a funnel conversion rate?
The conversion rate for the entire sales funnel is the percentage of users who have brought you profit out of the total number of users in your sales funnel. For example, in pay-per-lead affiliate marketing, the conversion rate is the number of sold contacts divided by the number of users that landed on your website, social media, landing pages, etc.
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