CRO is on everyone's lips. More and more digital agencies and consultancies are promising this service, but in reality they are only offering a few cosmetic changes with no real impact on the business. CRO has become another empty promise that merely decorates the services section of their websites.
The problem is that CRO is not synonymous with UX design. Just as happened many years ago with the concept of UX, by talking about CRO so much, it is ending up becoming an unclear discipline with no clear methodology. But there is hope: there are ways to tell a real CRO service apart.
In this post we are going to teach you how to recognize real CRO and avoid being sold a bill of goods. With a simple method you will stop confusing it with a mere "facelift" for your website and you will know who to trust from now on.
Real CRO is much more than a redesign service. In reality it is a complete data-driven methodology that seeks, through different disciplines, to identify a hypothesis or optimization opportunity for results and test it through a measurable and reliable process.
In short: CRO is not something static and closed. It is an approach in itself, a way of tackling the problems and challenges of digital businesses, offering a comprehensive and structured solution that is reflected in real and measurable results. A method that translates your data into actions with direct impact on your business.
Unlike other services such as UX or brand design, CRO does not necessarily involve visual changes to your website or app. It might, but that is not always the case. A real CRO service covers all possibilities and improvements that can directly affect your metrics (and that sometimes does not involve redesigning anything).
We know: CRO can be too abstract a concept. And yes, CRO often includes some disciplines like UX or visual design within its services. But what matters is knowing how to tell apart what CRO really is from what can be part of CRO.
To identify the differences between CRO and mere design, it is necessary to understand the ultimate objective of each action or change that is carried out. That is why it is important to know that not everything offered to you is necessarily focused on optimizing your conversion:
The elements that make up the UX of your website or application matter. But they are not everything. In fact, betting on a radical change to your buttons, banners, or content blocks does not necessarily have to affect conversion. Sometimes it can even be counterproductive.
Many agencies and consultancies specialize in UX design, but do not necessarily make decisions based on real and measurable results. Their focus is a smooth experience, comfortable for the user. But what if that experience does not end up translating into conversions? There are many other aspects to consider. Design for the sake of design is not the solution.
Staying current, following trends, creating surprising web experiences... Many redesigns focus on purely aesthetic or branding issues. And while they may have a surprising short-term effect, most of the time they do not respond to any hypothesis and are not validated before launch.
Every change proposed to you must respond to a logical reasoning and be validated before it sees the light of day. Why do you need that redesign? What is the new one based on? How will you ensure that the new version is better than the previous one? All these questions need to be clear from the start. Without strategy, there is no CRO.
Many may sell you an A/B test or two. A quick validation of the changes. But a validation without rhyme or reason. A good A/B testing strategy involves much more than two versions and a couple of days of web traffic.
Hypothesis testing in a real CRO service goes beyond a single test. It is a continuous system of testing and validation, with a set of conditions that make the results representative and reliable. And this system extends over time, because CRO, as you know, is something that never ends.
Not everything that glitters is CRO. That is why it is important to stay alert and know how to identify red flags before an agency or consultancy sells you a redesign as a real CRO strategy.
No prior research or solid data analysis — It is quite common to jump to solutions without actually stopping to analyze the origin of the problems. A good CRO service always starts with a digital audit, bringing order to your data and drawing conclusions from it.
No clear hypotheses or defined objectives — Improving for the sake of improving is not a hypothesis. It is possible they will try to sell you a redesign as something logical in line with new trends, but that does not always mean it is something better. There must always be a reasoning behind it.
No business metrics or success criteria defined — CRO goes beyond conversion. And your business may need to focus on other important metrics. In general, when it is not a real CRO service, the metrics are not clear and focus on merely surface-level aspects.
The key to knowing how to tell CRO services apart from any other service is learning to ask the right questions. The difference between an agency that "promises" CRO and one that "does" CRO lies in the method it follows. If it does not meet these key criteria, forget about seeing solid and reliable results:
Any CRO worth its salt is always guided by data. Digital analytics is the compass of any conversion optimization action you are going to carry out. That is why it is important that the first thing an agency or consultancy offers you is a good audit of your data.
Thanks to this method you will be able to identify possible flaws in your analytics, duplicates in your data, or some inconsistency between them. And most importantly, data-driven CRO will always help you identify the root problem rather than rely on assumptions or abstract ideas from a designer.
CRO always follows a clear and organized logic. Thanks to a thorough analysis of the data, the main problem for the business is identified; based on the available information about user behavior, a hypothesis is proposed; and once a solution is designed, it is validated with a solid testing strategy.
Let us say, for example, that the data reveals a key finding: your customers drop out of the purchase process at the shipping method selection step. Problem identified. After analyzing heat maps, the team identifies that there are too many clicks on a button that is not activated. Hypothesis: the design of that button needs to change. The next step is to redesign that page and validate it with solid A/B tests.
The validation of any hypothesis must follow a clear testing strategy. For this, the environment must be well prepared. The different alternatives must receive enough traffic for the results to be representative, and the test must run long enough to ensure the result is not a fluke.
It is also important to consider other key factors for your business. If, for example, most of your traffic and conversion occurs on mobile devices, you also need to make sure the test takes place in that environment. In short, a good CRO service takes into account all those variables that many others overlook.
You must always be clear about one thing: CRO translates into measurable and reliable results. That is: any initiative you carry out must be tangible for your business. No "perceptions," "brand value," or "customer satisfaction." CRO translates into numbers.
Depending on the metrics and objectives set by your CRO strategy, all the actions you take will have a positive impact on your sales, leads, or even ROI. If your provider or agency does not give you concrete data, forget about doing CRO. You are doing something else.
Redesigning your website or user experience without a good CRO strategy is like painting a house over the cracks: it will look great on the outside, but it will have no solid foundations. It will be a patch that does not solve the root problem.
Understanding the differences between CRO and UX design is key to preventing someone from selling you a superficial service. Optimizing your conversion goes far beyond cosmetic fixes; it is a complete methodology that takes into account much deeper aspects of your business.
If you truly want the actions you carry out to translate into measurable results with real impact on your business, bet on a good CRO consultancy. At Boost we help digital businesses like yours turn their data into the engine of change and growth they need. Ready to see for yourself?
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