How to Unstuck Your Conversion Rate Optimization Process

Reading about CRO is one thing. Implementing these tactics in your company is another.

Even the term “conversion rate optimization” may sound intimidating. It seems like a very broad field (and it is broad indeed), so where does one even start in the first place? Many professionals that get interested in conversion rate optimization get stuck and have no idea how to proceed.

As a conversion rate optimization agency, we know that issue really well. We’ve seen dozens of companies struggling with implementing CRO processes. Based on our experiences, we’ve decided that an article about CRO challenges is very much needed.

With this blog post, you’re going to learn:

• what are the main obstacles when it comes to implementing conversion rate optimization practices
• what you can do to overcome CRO challenges
• how a CRO agency can help you unstuck your conversion rate optimization process

Ready to finally boost your conversion rates? Keep on reading to find out more!

What reasons will you find in this article?

What Are the Major Conversion Rate Optimization Challenges
Budget
Knowledge
Time
How to Unstuck Conversion Rate Optimization in Your Company
Dedicate a Bigger Fraction of Your Budget to CRO
Hire a Professional CRO Agency
Key Takeaways to Finally Unstuck your CRO Process

Sounds good? Let’s dig in.

What Are the Major Conversion Rate Optimization Challenges

A survey conducted by Unbounce suggests that CRO practitioners are struggling with 3 main obstacles. These include:

• lack of budget from the top executives
• lack of time to be allocated for conversion rate optimization activities
• lack of knowledge

Budget

53% of respondents in Unbounce’s survey claim that their company doesn’t have a specific CRO budget. 26% responded that their CRO funds are a part of the general marketing budget in the organization. This may sound promising at first, yet usually, it’s not a significant part of the budget.

Research by Crazy Egg shows that only 1.7% of general marketing budgets are allocated to conversion rate optimization. Given that CRO is a high-ROI tactic, it’s quite surprising that marketers are not too keen on investing in it.

Again, it could be because of the fact that this field is still relatively new. The ideas may sound a bit risky to people who have been working in the marketing industry for many years. Because of that, they might hesitate to spend more money on CRO efforts.

Knowledge

Let’s face it: conversion rate optimization is a really young industry. There are not that many renowned sources of information, whether on the internet or in print. Most articles on CRO cover the topic in a very general manner, without going too much into detail.

It’s easy to get introduced to what conversion rate optimization is, however it’s much harder to learn actual good practices.

Again, conversion rate optimization statistics give a nice overview of the current situation on the CRO market:

• Research by Unbounce suggests that almost 20% of all CRO practitioners have worked in their role for less than a year. This is clear proof that the industry is young indeed. When it comes to the bigger picture, in a report by ConversionXL 62% of respondents stated that they worked in the conversion rate optimization industry for less than 4 years. A whopping 81.7% of them have worked in the industry for less than 6 years. You can see it clearly on the graph below:

As the industry is relatively new, a great part of CRO practitioners has just a few years of experience.

• Another major CRO struggle is the lack of a well-defined process. As one would expect from a new industry, there is a lot of experimenting involved, but it’s not always well-documented. Unbounce’s statistics are quite puzzling. In an industry that claims to be highly data-driven, 52% of professionals claim that they’re not tracking the exact impact of successful experiments. Even worse, 63% don’t even track the percentage of winning tests! To top it all off, 56% of CRO practitioners don’t have a standardized stopping point for A/B tests.
• Optimization Report by Econsultancy is another source of interesting CRO insights. One of the most eye-opening findings is that 63% of companies don’t have a structured approach to optimization in place. What’s more, 41% don’t even have any clearly defined ecommerce metrics for their optimization strategy! This may sound worrying, as conversion optimization is supposed to be focused on data, isn’t it?

One of the most eye-opening findings is that 63% of companies don't have a structured approach to optimization in place. What's more, 41% don't even have any clearly defined ecommerce metrics for their optimization strategy! Click To Tweet

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Time

We all know that time is money, especially in the hectic tech industry. With so many things on their plates, busy digital marketing professionals can’t always fully commit to conversion optimization.

In Unbounce’s survey, 41% of respondents say that no one in their company is directly responsible for CRO. Imagine this: what if no one in your company felt directly responsible for marketing in general?

Time constraints are also clearly visible when it comes to the number of experiments conducted. 43% of practitioners replied that they only conduct 1-2 tests monthly!

If you’re looking to significantly increase your conversions, it’s much better to test at high velocity. Growthhackers is an excellent example of a company that leveraged this tactic to boost their growth.

Growthhackers observed a huge leap in growth after implementing high tempo testing.
Last but not least, the time of your in-house IT team is another big constraint. Not all CRO efforts can be applied without coding.

Developers have a lot on their plates and their time is at a premium. You will probably need to wait for weeks or even months before you manage to fit new tasks into their jam-packed sprints. This is why developers are usually one of the biggest bottlenecks in the whole process.

How to Unstuck Conversion Rate Optimization in Your Company

Now that you’re aware of the main obstacles that the conversion rate optimization industry is struggling with, it’s time for the big question. How can you unstuck the conversion rate optimization process in your case? Here are some of our best tips on that matter:

Dedicate a Bigger Fraction of Your Budget to CRO

We know what you’re thinking. That’s true – easier said than done.

So, how do you convince the decision-makers to invest more money in conversion rate optimization?

Here are some ideas that can point you in the right direction:

• Find great success stories to show them that these strategies actually work – There are tons of impressive case studies that can show the stakeholders how CRO-based decisions can lead to tremendous growth. We recommend starting from Growcode success stories – we’re covering different industries, with a particular focus on ecommerce businesses. You can read about companies that increased their revenues and conversion rates by 10-30%, in just a couple of weeks, without involving the IT department!
• Focus on ROI – There goes the magic acronym to open all the doors. One of the main advantages of CRO is its return on investment (ROI). Hayden Miyamoto, a famous digital entrepreneur, once stated that “CRO is the highest ROI activity you can engage in. It is the base of your success in online business”. This is definitely true: according to Forbes, the average ROI of CRO tools is as much as 223%! So, what’s the secret? Conversion rate optimization is not just about increasing conversions, but it’s primarily focused on increasing the revenue – and here’s what your CEO cares about most.
• Start from consultations – Before you make the big decision, it’s best to ask some experts for their experience-based input. For example, you can get in touch with us first. We’re going to analyze your website and help you identify some quick wins that can help you grow your business right away – at no extra charge! Our philosophy is to deliver value first. Thanks to consultations like these, the decision-makers will be able to see the potential that goes with CRO.

Hire a Professional CRO Agency

There’s another important question you’re going to face sooner or later. What’s better: should you invest in conversion rate optimization tools, in-house conversion optimization professionals or hire a CRO agency instead?

The answer here is not so obvious. From our experience, we can tell that hiring an agency is usually the fastest and the most efficient way to get satisfying results. Here’s why it might be the best option for your business as well:

• Tools won’t help you with strategy – While CRO tools can do wonders, it doesn’t mean much if you don’t have a well-crafted conversion optimization strategy in place. Data is not useful in itself – you need a qualified human to interpret it, understand user behavior, draw the right conclusions and eventually create a data-backed test hypothesis. If you want to get the most out of CRO, you got to work with someone who has enough experience to do it the right way. The agency will know exactly which tools they should use and for what purpose.
• CRO agencies come up with comprehensive solutions – An in-house expert can usually tackle only a limited number of different issues. Most of them focus on conversion rates only, while there are loads of other metrics that can help with boosting your growth. Agencies, on the other hand, usually consist of interdisciplinary teams. They know that diverse talents are needed to achieve a truly significant increase in revenue.
• An agency has all the resources necessary for success – Agencies are an all-in solution. They come with years of expertise, a strong technical background and hundreds of successful experiments and A/B tests. They know their way around Google Analytics, session replay tools and A/B testing platforms. As you can see, it’s an extensive skillset to master. Instead of trying to take a shot in the dark and exploring a whole new field, why not let the professionals do that for you?
• Hiring an agency can be a more affordable choice – Quite often, you can hire a top-notch CRO agency for the cost of a single senior-level employee. An in-house specialist comes with a separate salary, office space costs and other benefits. The agency, on the other hand, can offer a whole range of services within one bill.

Have you any more problems with making the decision (or convincing your board) to get CRO process going, arm yourself with arguments on why CRO should be a priority for ecommerce managers.

Key Takeaways to Finally Unstuck your CRO Process

To sum up, here’s a quick recap and some of the most important facts to keep in mind when trying to unstuck CRO processes in your company:

• The conversion optimization industry is struggling with three main issues: lack of funds, shortage of time and insufficient knowledge. All of them are mostly caused by the fact that conversion rate optimization is a relatively new field.
• If you want to convince your boss to invest in conversion rate optimization, it’s best to show them the ROI of CRO and a couple of interesting success stories. It’s also good to start with consultations first. A CRO professional is sure to point you in the right direction.
• Oftentimes, choosing a CRO agency over an in-house specialist is a much better choice. Not only is it more affordable, but also an agency already has all the resources necessary to make the right decisions and, ultimately, achieve great results.

Actually, why not contact Growcode today and learn how can we help you achieve better results in conversion rate optimization?

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