There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong in how most agencies think about CRO, it just isn’t the way we do it. But first, let’s see what marketing agencies typically do.

They Start With Research

The basic idea is that the marketer cannot develop an idea that drives higher conversion rates if the marketer doesn’t talk to the actual buyers. After all, the marketer isn’t the end buyer.

While we agree with this philosophy it has one major issue. Well, two issues– it’s expensive, bloody expensive, and it takes a long time.

We think there is an alternate approach, one that completely bypasses user research and we cover that in this article: Case Against User Research: Our Controversial Take.

They Look at the WHOLE Site

Again, the logic is sound– why limit the impact to improving conversion rate to one page when you can improve the conversion rate for the whole site. This is why most agencies test everything:

– UI and UX (basically the design and layout of the site)
– Mobile and desktop (since mobile and desktop visitors aren’t the same. We agree).
– Homepage, landing page, category page, product page, email signup popup, checkout flow. We think about only one of these.
– Advertising campaigns (the mechanism through which users are pulled in).
– New and returning visitors.

We don’t disagree. The list above certainly is comprehensive. But clients have budgets and time horizons. If we had 12 months we’d look more broadly, but we have just 90 days.

Having banged our heads on this puzzle for the last 12 years we’ve identified one thing that most consistently drives great results. And we’ve tested this model across 100+ highly successful multimillion-dollar eCom businesses. Here’s our approach to conversion rate optimization.