Strategy and tactics for increasing conversion

Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader question on turning existing website traffic into customers, arguing that conversion work is one of the highest-return investments a growth team can make once acquisition channels are running. He splits the problem into two parts: keeping users moving through a flow by managing their focus, motivation, and friction, and bringing bounced users back through the right message and the right channel. He draws on specific experiments from his time at Airbnb to illustrate each lever. The advice matters because it offers a practical, testable structure for funnel optimization rather than a list of isolated tricks.

01Key takeaways

• Treat conversion improvements as high-ROI work once top-of-funnel channels are established, since gains compound over time.
• Organize conversion ideas around focus, motivation, and friction, and test many ideas rather than betting on a few.
• Watch for content that distracts users from the core action; removing a seemingly helpful feature can raise bookings.
• Use smart defaults and remove or simplify steps to cut friction, and treat slow performance as a hidden conversion killer.
• Re-engage only users who were distracted, confused, or not yet ready, using reminders, changed conditions, or new information.
• Choose re-engagement channels deliberately; email and retargeting are scalable options, while calls suit higher-value prospects.

02Key sections

Keeping users in the flow

Conversion is framed around three levers: maintaining focus, maintaining motivation, and reducing friction. Teams should generate many ideas within each lever and test broadly, relying on judgment when experiments are not feasible.

Airbnb examples by lever

Concrete wins include opening listings in new tabs to preserve options, restricting results by dates, using scarcity and highlights to motivate booking, enabling Instant Book, setting smart defaults, and improving page performance.

Bringing users back into the flow

Not every bounced user is a good prospect, but those who were distracted or confused can be re-engaged. The key questions are what to tell them and how to reach them.

Re-engagement messages and channels

Effective messages include reminders, notices of changed conditions or prices, and information about optional steps. The three channels are email and push, retargeting ads, and phone calls, with email and retargeting proving most effective at Airbnb.

Further reading

The post closes with a curated list of resources on A/B testing, conversion rate optimization, psychology-driven funnel design, and re-engagement emails.

03From the post

“Hello and welcome to another edition of my newsletter. My name is Lenny, and each week I tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out at the office. Send me your questions and in return, I’ll humbly offer actionable real-talk advice. 🤝 If you find this newsletter valuable, consider sharing it with friends 🤜🤛 Q: A lot is written about driving traffic to a website, but not so much about how to convert that traffic into customers. Any best practices you can share? What had the most impact on conversion at Airbnb? Increasing conversion (a.k.a fix the “leaks” in your funnel, get it?) is one of the highest ROI investments a growth team can make, particularly once you’ve got your top-of-funnel growth engines (e.g. paid, SEO, referrals) up and running. Not only do conversion improvements make your existing growth channels more efficient, the wins last forever (…or at least until you decide to redesign everything). When thinking about conversion, there are two places you can focus: 1. Keeping users in the flow…”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.