How to choose a CRO agency
How to judge a conversion rate optimisation agency: measurement first, research over opinion, honest testing for your traffic, and no guaranteed lifts.
Quick answer
Choose a CRO agency that checks your measurement before recommending anything, bases hypotheses on research rather than opinion, sizes its testing to your traffic, reports losing tests honestly and never guarantees a lift before seeing your data. Confirm who designs and builds the changes, and pick an agency that knows your business model: ecommerce, SaaS and lead generation convert for different reasons.
Start with measurement
A surprising share of conversion problems are tracking problems: duplicate events, missing checkout steps, broken attribution or consent banners blocking analytics. An agency that recommends design changes before checking tracking is optimising numbers that may be wrong.
Key takeaway
The first deliverable from a good CRO agency is usually a list of measurement fixes, not a redesign.
CRO agency checklist
- Measurement audit first: tracking, events and funnels verified before analysis
- Research-backed hypotheses: analytics, session recordings, surveys and usability tests
- Prioritisation: impact, confidence and effort scored transparently
- Honest testing: sample sizes planned in advance, no stopping tests early on a good day
- Implementation: a clear owner for designing and building changes
- Reporting: wins, losses and inconclusive tests all reported
- Model fit: experience with your type of funnel
Questions to ask
- What do you check before recommending any change?
- How do you decide what to test first?
- Is our traffic enough for A/B testing? What do you do if it isn't?
- Who designs and builds the changes you recommend?
- Can you show a report that includes tests that didn't win?
- What experience do you have with businesses like ours?
Low traffic changes the approach
For stores and sites without much traffic, A/B tests can run for months without a clear answer. A good agency will say so, and instead focus on high-confidence fixes from research and best practice, measured before and after. Our Shopify CRO checklist lists the common ones.
Match the agency to your funnel
Ecommerce CRO focuses on product pages, carts and checkout; SaaS CRO on messaging, signup and trial-to-paid; lead-generation CRO on forms, trust and follow-up speed. Some agencies combine CRO with paid ads or SEO, which suits businesses wanting one marketing partner.
For a comparison of CRO agencies in India, see our disclosed shortlist of CRO agencies in India.
Not sure where visitors drop off?
Start with an audit. See our CRO audit service.
Common questions.
It finds where and why visitors drop off using analytics and research, prioritises fixes, designs changes, runs tests where traffic allows, and measures results.