What to look out for in a CRO agency

What you should be looking for is a digital agency that specialises in CRO. This is because for good CRO you need a number of tactics working together at the same time:

• Well executed digital marketing
• Brilliant User Experience design
• Eye catching design
• Exceptional page performance
• Great content
• Experts to bring it all together

There’s plenty in the mix with this more holistic approach. This is especially true for service-based businesses where the customer journey is often longer and more complex than a simple e-commerce transaction.

Now that we've cleared that up, let's dive into what a CRO-focused agency actually does. Oh, and should we just call ourselves a CRO agency from now on?

The evolution of CRO

First things first, CRO is all about sales strategy, website and marketing.

Back in the day, conversion rates were just a column in Google Ads. As this became more valuable, UX designers (or web designers as we like to call them) started using CRO as a way to turn users into leads or sales. 

This continued to develop and became even more important when Shopify added it as a tool to show how many sales a website owner gets from clicks. CRO is now a full blown beast in its own right. 

What makes a great CRO agency

Now that we've covered the history lesson, let's get into what a digital agency specialising in CRO should actually do.

Zero sales or leads happen without great clicks. So, a CRO agency needs to be good at getting those clicks, or work with awesome SEO and pay-per-click companies or consultants. Getting 100 amazing clicks from super targeted keywords makes it way easier to turn users into sales or leads than 1,000 bad clicks from random keywords.

For service-based businesses, this is even more critical. A manufacturing company looking for specialised consulting services has very different intent than someone browsing for products. Your CRO strategy needs to reflect this – it's about quality over quantity and understanding the specific pain points that drive B2B decision-makers to seek your services.

Next, you need to understand what the user does on their journey through your website.

What landing page do they land on?

Does it match their expectations, goals and objectives?

Do you understand why they landed there?

Do they understand why they landed there?

All of this needs to be figured out before a CRO agency can make a positive impact.

Why research and analysis are key to CRO

CRO without good research and solid data is pretty useless. A good agency should use:

• Qualitative data/user surveys: User testing, workshops, surveys or even just asking your friends. 
• Quantitative data/analytics: Hotjar, Crazy Egg, all that heat map stuff and analytics data.
• Marketing data: Keyword traffic, high-performing keywords.
• Competitor analysis: What are your competitors doing that might work for you too?
• Branding: Is your brand effective in your market? Do you need a refresh? Remember, people buy based on trust – if your brand looks old and tired, they'll go to a competitor. 
• Personality: User journeys are weak if they don’t convey what you do best. Generic information won't cut it. Your content needs to demonstrate deep industry understanding and showcase your expertise in solving specific business challenges.

When the CRO agency understands all of this (and in my opinion, you should have a UX designer doing this work alongside an SEO or pay-per-click specialist), then you can design new user journeys to encourage visitors to interact with key content, understand what you do, what your service or product is, and ultimately, buy or take action.

As CRO experts, we usually work on hypotheses – what do we want users to achieve on which page? For example, if we hypothesise that service-based businesses need more detailed case studies early in their journey, we'll test different ways of presenting this social proof and measure its impact on conversion rates.

We apply our understanding of what we want them to do, taking into account our research and then design, develop and launch the page. We analyse the data once it's live to see if our experiment was successful and then move on to the next page. A CRO agency can also do a full redesign, but we'll cover that in another chapter.

We use spreadsheets to organise all data, research, project planning and to track conversion rates, measuring our performance as we go.

What other elements are you missing? Are referrals important to you? Are you using successful referral programs? Does your website look great, so when people talk about you, they can say "Wow, look at these guys!"? 

What methods we can use to help improve CRO

We have a number of proven methods up our sleeve that we can use to improve your CRO. 

Expert-led CRO workshops 

• Branding workshops that dig deep into your unique value proposition – what makes your service stand out in a crowded market?
• User targeting sessions to identify your ideal client profile and their specific pain points - we analyse your customers' needs, expectations and behavioural patterns
• Marketing analysis workshops to align your traffic strategy with conversion goals

Smart data gathering

• Comprehensive audit of current conversion rates across all key service pages
• Quality assessment of existing leads – are they matching your target client profile?
• Analysis of enquiry alignment – are people requesting services you actually offer?
• Investigation of drop-off points in your service enquiry journey
• Technical performance analysis including Google Core Vitals scores and page load speeds
• A/B testing of landing pages to select the best layouts and refine calls to action

UX design

• Deep dive into user journeys specific to your industry
• Mapping user intent against your service offerings
• Creating detailed user stories - e.g. I’m a finance director looking for… or I’m an HR manager who needs…
• Developing content structures that guide potential clients through your expertise
• Converting complex service offerings into clear, actionable user flows
• Designing and testing alternative versions of landing pages
• Implementation of changes through our expert development team

Strategic marketing

• Understanding the true value of each click for service-based businesses
• Building effective B2B sales funnels from quality traffic
• Creating content that positions you as an industry expert
• Developing clear calls-to-action that resonate with service buyers
• Investigation of keyword and marketing strategy effectiveness
• Recommendations for boosting engagement and increasing sales from web visits
• Ongoing optimisation to keep pace with shifting digital landscapes and industry trends

So, what should you look for in a CRO agency?

When choosing a CRO agency, look for one that understands the bigger picture – an agency that knows CRO isn't just about tweaking buttons or changing form layouts.

The right agency should demonstrate a holistic approach: they'll dig deep into your business through expert-led workshops, gather comprehensive data that goes beyond basic analytics, create user-centric designs that speak to your specific audience and develop strategic marketing approaches that value quality over quantity. 

Most importantly, they should be able to prove they understand businesses like yours. Look for an agency that sees CRO as an ongoing journey of optimisation, testing and improvement – because that's exactly what it is.

How do the best agencies do it?

✅ Holistic approach - Is a CRO agency even a thing? What you need is a digital agency that specialises in CRO.

✅ Data, data, data - User testing, workshops, surveys, analytics, keywords, competitors. CRO without good research and solid data is useless.

✅ Only with the data can you start to make decisions on user journeys. 

✅ Strategic UX design that converts.

✅ Continuous optimisation and testing.

The best CRO agencies are experts in turning visitors into customers. To learn more speak to CRO team today!