Best practices for healthcare conversions in 2025

Conversions in healthcare experimentation is not just about driving revenue. 

Healthcare conversions means creating experiences that put people first as they deal with the different issues that come with digitally accessing the care they need. Patients need to figure out insurance, understand their diagnoses, book appointments, and weigh treatment options. 

Taking a patient-first approach can mean a lot of things. It may mean changing and testing the call-to-action button so patients clearly understand “here’s what I do next” and “here’s what I can expect”. It could mean simplifying intake forms for specific, tough diagnoses to ease some of the associated stress. 

Optimizing for healthcare conversions is tricky. You need to comply with privacy regulations while providing a human touch in patient care. But getting it right is incredibly rewarding because you are improving outcomes for real people who are seeking help. 

In this article, we will discuss:

• What makes healthcare conversion optimization uniquely challenging?
• How to drive qualified patient interest
• Helping patients understand their options
• The high-stakes conversion moment
• Unified testing across the funnel
• Experiment your way to healthcare conversions with Kameleoon

What makes healthcare conversion optimization uniquely challenging?

Working in a healthcare organization, you find yourself walking a fine line. You need to balance running optimization programs that fully comply with privacy regulations while still improving outcomes for patients. In the US, HIPAA sets the rules for patient privacy and governs how healthcare providers can use patient data. This legislation specifically governs the use of personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI).

These HIPAA stipulations directly impact what kinds of tests you can run using patient data. It is not always practical to just run only experiments that do not require patient data. Sometimes, you need that information to deliver the personalized and human-centered experience that your organization prides itself on. 

Kelly Wortham, Founder Test & Learn Community (TLC) and Forward Digital, offers this advice: 

Privacy laws affect both what you test and how you run those tests. These regulations determine whether you run client-side or server-side testing. They also impact which experimentation platform you should be using. Your choice of experimentation platform is not merely about testing capability. It is also about the testing platform’s compliance with HIPAA and other privacy laws. 

Wortham continues, saying that she "advise[s her] healthcare clients to build their experimentation stack on a privacy-first, server-side architecture. This allows the system to securely link opt-ins with identifiers in a controlled way, while keeping sensitive information out of analytics and testing platforms entirely. Aggregate data is your friend here. The goal is not to understand individual behavior, but to observe meaningful patterns that inform better patient experiences and outcomes."

Healthcare conversions are team efforts. Your experimentation team needs to bring legal stakeholders and make them a part of your program to ensure you stay compliant with HIPAA. This may mean looping them in at the hypothesis phase to get an understanding of which testing ideas are compliant, could be made compliant or no go areas at all. 

Wortham’s advice also touches on governance layers in your organization if you plan to run a compliant and impactful healthcare experimentation program.

"Equally important is the governance layer," she adds. "I strongly recommend establishing an ethics board that includes legal, medical, and compliance experts. This board should review all experimentation roadmaps and proposed tests, not as a blocker, but as a compass. They provide consent, guidance, and a values-based lens to ensure that experiments respect patient autonomy, align with care standards, and stay focused on improving patient outcomes (the ultimate North Star metric in healthcare).

"When the structure is in place, opt-in, anonymity, privacy-first engineering, and an ethics-led governance model, experimentation can be both impactful and fully compliant in the healthcare setting."

How to drive qualified patient interest

Many healthcare conversion focused organizations want to generate qualified patient interest at the top of the funnel. But qualified patient interest does not mean the same thing in every organization. What constitutes qualified patient interest in a B2B healthcare organization would differ from what it looks like in a B2C healthcare provider. This distinction guides how you approach your entire experimentation strategy. 

Tha Magni, a Lead Conversion Optimization Consultant for healthcare and clinical research SaaS groups, shares what qualified interest looks like in a B2B healthcare company: 

Qualified interest in a B2B setting may be demo interest and requests. But that is significantly different from what you see in a B2C setting, even in the same industry.

Qualified interest may look like a patient filling in their information for a health insurance quote. It could look like a prospective patient downloading information specific to their condition. Your services determine what qualified interest looks like for you.

Magni offers some examples of tests she has run to drive qualified patient interest:

"Form flow: Are we asking only what’s necessary at this stage? Can we reorder or remove fields without hurting lead quality? Can we simplify fields or pre-fill using UTMs to reduce dropoff? Also outcome-focused messaging. Instead of generic copy like “Request a demo,” test language that reflects what they’ll get from the demo. For example, “See how [X] reduces admin time by 40%” often outperforms vague CTAs. Remember to also take into account all the decision-makers in the buying process."

Magni’s advice can also be applied in a B2C setting. For example, when patients want an insurance quote from your organization, is the form field too long? Has analytics shown the form to be an area where patients drop-off? If yes, this could be worth further investigation with heat maps to further understand what is happening. Areas where you notice significant drop-offs can give you testing ideas for your healthcare organization. 

Helping patients understand their options

Through experimentation, you can help patients understand important information about their care. Testing and simplifying page copy around health conditions, prognosis, diagnosis and treatment can be helpful to patients. Helping them understand what to expect with a condition they have, empowers them in their decision making about their health.

Magni offers a perspective on how important experimentation and optimization is to helping patients understand their options, noting that "this is one of the most human-centered applications of CRO. When we test different ways of explaining treatments or displaying next steps, we’re not just optimizing clicks or patient engagement — we’re reducing confusion, building trust, and empowering people to make informed decisions."

Krista Suchy Lohse, Director of Experience Optimization at Terakeet, offers advice on how to approach this crucial step in optimizing healthcare conversions:

Lohse also shares practical areas to focus on in your optimization efforts. "This would be a great place to utilize user research data for test ideation or page creation," she observes. "When it comes to scary diagnoses, understanding what language resonates or what information they need to make an educated decision can build a strong testing roadmap and result in a better patient experience."

Copy is not the only area you can optimize; how the copy is presented also matters. 

Gintare Forshaw, the co-founder at CRO agency Convertex Digital, says not to limit yourself to testing only copy when working for healthcare conversions.

When testing the language used in your copy, also look at how the copy and the entire page presentation affects patients. Lean into qualitative research methods, heat maps for example, to understand how the information presented is affecting your patients. This research could form the basis of an experiment.

The high-stakes conversion moment

When you are looking at the bottom of the funnel, it's all about removing friction that causes patients to click away instead of following through. Meeting points of frustration may cause patients to abandon their current action. Page areas where patients drop-off are places where you can focus your optimization efforts. By identifying and fixing these friction points, you can guide more patients to complete their journey rather than clicking off. 

• Lohse talks about different areas to look at in your optimization:
  • “Generally, bottom of funnel testing could impact things like scheduling appointments, completing forms, signing up for plans, or accessing specific information. Always consider the needs of your specific users as this will garner better results from your experimentation outcomes."

• Forshaw says to look at form optimization:
  • “Form optimization is key. Also, understanding the enquiries people do submit, speaking their language at that point in the funnel is very important."

Outside of removing friction, healthcare conversions could also be impacted by patient trust. When patients distrust you as their healthcare provider, they would look for other providers whom they can trust. 

Magni offers advice on patient trust and testing: "Test trust. At the bottom of the funnel, the lead is no longer asking 'What is this?' They’re asking: 'Can I trust this enough to move forward?'"

Testing trust sounds a bit abstract, so Magni clarifies with practical recommendations: 

"Final CTA phrasing: is it clear what happens next? 'Book a call' sounds like a sales pitch. But something like: 'See how X helps Clinical Ops teams cut onboarding time by 40% live, in 30 minutes' instantly communicates value, scope, and safety. It tells them what they'll get, how long it takes, and what it's not. That kind of clarity builds trust and drives action — especially at the bottom of the funnel.

"Or, more patient-centric: 'Get started' or 'Submit' tells the patient nothing. But a CTA like: 'Talk to a nurse today; no forms, no wait times' sets clear expectations and reduces friction. It shifts the moment from feeling uncertain or transactional to feeling helpful and outcome-focused. And that often makes the difference between hesitation and action."

To promote trust in your patients, be clear with what they can expect when they take the final step with you as their provider. Always back up whatever you promise in your CTA with action. If your CTA promises no forms, keep that promise by removing all forms in the final step.

Unified testing across the funnel

Conversions may happen at the bottom of the funnel but it did not start there. The journey to conversion began when the patient first became aware of your healthcare organization. The actions you take during from before a patient becomes aware of you to when they pick you as their provider matters.

This is why it is important for you to run experiments and make improvements across the entire patient journey. Looking at one part of this journey would mean you miss valuable opportunities to enhance your patients’ overall experience.

Lohse recommends testing across the funnel:

"Testing at every stage is recommended. It’s important to consider the patient’s entire journey and how each stage is connected for a holistic patient-centered experience. From optimizing marketing channels at the awareness stage to improving patient retention, a full funnel approach can ensure a more engaged patient. This could result in a patient who recommends the healthcare organization to their friends and family and they would be more likely to follow their doctor’s recommendations and experience better health outcomes."

Testing at every funnel stage is not without its challenges. If you are just starting out, unified testing may be out of your reach as you need to build a solid testing foundation. "Full-funnel testing sounds great on paper," Magni warns, "but in practice, it's easy to spread yourself too thin.” 

If your healthcare organization lacks the capacity for full funnel experimentation from the get-go, it may be worth looking at points of the biggest leaks. Fixing those leaks as you build up to full funnel experimentation. 

Magni calls this "sequential focus:"

"Start where the stakes are highest—typically where intent is strongest and decisions are made—or where the leak is biggest, and work outward from there.

"For my clients in Healthcare SaaS, that usually means beginning with the demo-request page. It’s the most direct path to pipeline, where ad spend is concentrated, intent is high, and even small improvements there compound quickly across paid campaigns.

Once that’s converting better, we look upstream and downstream. But trying to optimize every stage all at once often leads to shallow insights."

Lohse recommends a different approach to full funnel experimentation:

Optimizing patient experience should happen at every stage of their journey. But you need to start somewhere. Consider your organizational capability before starting full funnel experimentation and which areas have the most leaks. Plug those leaks and work your way up to full funnel optimization. 

Experiment your way to healthcare conversions with Kameleoon

Despite its many challenges, running a healthcare experimentation program has the potential to alleviate stress and improve outcomes for many patients. To remain compliant in your healthcare conversion optimization, remember to follow privacy laws, build in a governance layer in your optimization program, and use a HIPAA-compliant experimentation platform that offers robust server-side infrastructure—like Kameleoon. 

When running tests, start with the biggest leaks you have on your app/site. Then work your way up to optimizing every stage of the funnel. This helps you provide better experience and outcomes at every stage of the patient journey. 

Build HIPAA-compliant, full-funnel experiments that improve patient outcomes and drive conversions: book a demo today!