Even if your website boasts stellar traffic, that doesn’t necessarily mean stellar profits. If you struggle with low conversion rates, your traffic doesn’t really mean all that much. And if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong, you risk losing out to the competition. This is where a conversion rate optimization consultant can help you. But what exactly can this type of professional do for your business or, alternatively, is this type of career worth pursuing? That’s exactly what we’ll find out in this guide. Read on!
What Does a Conversion Optimization Consultant Do?
A conversion rate optimization (CRO) consultant is responsible for helping marketers and businesses increase their conversion rates. In other words, a CRO consultant helps businesses to convert more of their website visitors into customers or leads. How do they do that exactly?
- They conduct user research to identify any barriers that are preventing visitors from converting.
- They analyze website data to pinpoint opportunities for improvement
- They develop and implement testing strategies to improve conversion rates.
- They can provide guidance and support to businesses on how to continue optimizing their conversion rates.
Note that the point of the above is not to increase website traffic but to lift the number of people who take the desired action on them — essentially, to increase leads — by applying conversion rate optimization best practices, among other things.
Most digital marketers, while not bad at optimizing their websites to get a conversion, don’t necessarily know how to make them achieve their full potential. CRO consultants are the experts that fill this gap — they are highly effective in increasing online marketing profits over a much shorter period than a regular marketer.
What Skills Does a Conversion Consultant Need?
When it comes to conversion rate optimization, there are a few key skills that every consultant needs to be successful. We will list them here and explain each one briefly so that you will know how to develop them better if you want to become a good conversion rate optimization consultant.
Marketing Knowledge
To be successful in digital marketing and conversion rate optimization, conversion rate optimization consultants need to have a strong understanding of how marketing and ecommerce work. A good conversion rate specialist will have a firm grasp of market research, how sales work, branding, and the latest trends in these areas, including up-to-date ecommerce conversion rates by industry. Additionally, it is also essential to keep up with changes in the marketplace and new marketing opportunities.
Data Analysis
Conversion rate optimization experts need to be apt at analyzing various data, insights, and reports about the consumers to be able to tailor a successful marketing strategy for their employer. This means that knowing your way around various analytics and the ability to gather relevant info from reading the data is essential for being a good website conversion optimization consultant.
User Experience (UX) Design
When it comes to website performance, UX and CRO complement one another. As a result, UX design skills are essential for conversion rate optimization consulting — these skills will provide a deeper understanding of how the user interacts with the website and, by implication, what can be improved in this interaction to drive the desired results, in this case, better conversion rates.
A/B Testing
Testing is a key element of effective marketing strategies. While understanding what drives the customers is excellent, the ideas need to be put to practice to see which ones work best for the website or business in question. In this case, A/B testing is an important skill to have as a conversion optimization consultant, as it can quickly show you how effective your ideas are. That is why the leading conversion rate optimization software have this listed as a key element.
Copywriting
While not necessarily an essential skill, it’s always a good idea to be knowledgeable in copywriting if you want to be an expert in ecommerce conversion rate optimization. This is because the knowledge in copywriting gives conversion optimization consultants an inside look at how certain points (such as specific words or designs) can make a website or an app much more prominent, findable, and effective.
CRO Consultant Jobs: How Do They Work?
A great benefit of conversion optimization consulting is the fact that how you will work can be quite customizable to your wishes and needs, be it in-house, freelance, or remote work.
If you want an in-house job, you will likely be able to get it within this field, as nowadays, many companies look for CRO specialists to improve their websites and pages. Alternatively, you could consider working for companies offering CRO services.
Moreover, there are many freelance opportunities and ways to work independently as a website conversion rate optimization consultant. You can easily create your own website promoting your services, or you can advertise them on websites such as LinkedIn and other job platforms.
How Much Do Conversion Consultants Earn?
Depending on how good they are and how many clients they end up having, a conversion rate specialist can earn anywhere between $29,000 and $100,000 per year. According to the latest CRO stats, the US salaries for this job are usually between $65,000 and $100,000 annually. The average salary for a CRO expert is above the average US salary, with Washington, New York, and Maryland being the top paying states for this type of work.
In addition, this job has a high opportunity for advancement, so even if you start with a lower wage, you will be able to climb the economic ladder reasonably quickly, depending on the quality of your work.
Summary
As a conversion rate optimization consultant, you would be able to have a gratifying, high-paying job, helping digital marketers increase conversion rates on their websites and apps by finding out what their audience is looking for. If you have skills such as marketing knowledge, UX design, and data analysis, consider looking into this job. Alternatively, those are the skills that you need to look for if you want to hire a CRO consultant to take your website’s conversion rates to the next level.
