What is a CRO agency?
A CRO agency, or conversion rate optimization agency, is a company that specializes in raising the share of website visitors who take a desired action, such as buying, signing up or getting in touch. Unlike a general marketing agency, it does not bring more traffic. It works on what happens after visitors arrive, using research and A/B tests to decide what to change. You will also see it called a CRO marketing agency or a digital CRO agency; the work is the same.
By Kurt Philip, Founder
What does a CRO agency do?
A CRO agency checks your tracking, researches where and why visitors leave, ranks the fixes, designs and builds tests, reads the results and helps roll out what wins. A traditional agency supplies the whole team for this:
- A strategist, who sets goals with you and decides what gets tested next.
- A researcher or analyst, who checks the tracking, studies the funnel and the recordings, and reads test results. Our guide to CRO analysis walks through the method.
- A designer, who turns each hypothesis into a variation.
- A developer, who builds the variation and checks it works on every browser and device. The types of test are compared in our guide to CRO testing.
Some agencies also build the winning changes into your site. Others hand them back to your developers.
What does an ecommerce CRO agency do?
An ecommerce CRO agency does the same work for an online store, where most sales are won or lost on product pages, the cart and checkout, and where AI shopping agents may now read the catalog. Convertica's store work includes the JustThrive and dScryb case studies; the ecommerce conversion optimization guide covers the fixes that matter most for a store.
CRO agency, CRO company or CRO consultancy?
The names overlap, and people search for all three. In practice, a CRO agency or CRO company usually sells a done-for-you team, while a CRO consultancy diagnoses, prioritizes and directs, and your own people build. Convertica works as a CRO agency with fixed prices: an audit that says what to change, and rebuilds in which its team builds it. In medicine, a "CRO company" is a contract research organization that runs clinical trials, which has nothing to do with websites.
Should you hire a CRO agency or build an in-house team?
Hire a CRO agency when no one in your business can design, code and launch a change, or when you want results before you hire. Build an in-house team when you have the traffic to test all year and the budget for several specialists. Our guide to the CRO specialist role lists the skills to check, and the CRO consultant guide covers the middle option.