Quick little update: I recently passed the Google Conversion Optimization Certification Exam, and honestly, it just confirmed what I feel every day in my work — CRO is one of the most underrated skills of any senior SEO and marketer.
Traffic is great, rankings are great, but if the user comes to your site and doesn’t click, doesn’t fill the form, doesn’t call, doesn’t buy… then all that traffic doesn’t mean much.
That’s why CRO matters. It’s the “make it work” part of any SEO and Marketing strategy.
And since I get a lot of beginners asking where they should focus first, here are a few simple things I wish I knew earlier:
1. Nobody has a bad traffic problem, they have a CRO problem
You can double traffic and still make zero extra money.
But if you improve conversions just 10–20%, everything gets easier:
SEO, ads, email, everything.
Insight: A well-designed UI can increase conversion rates by up to 200%, and improved UX can boost conversions by up to 400% (source)
2. Fast sites win
Slow pages kill conversions.
Every extra second of load time drops conversions 7–10% (Google says this too).
Fixing speed is the cheapest CRO win you can make.
Insight 1: Pages that load in about 1 second have conversion rates nearly 40%, but at 2 seconds drop to ~34%. (source)
Insight 2: Over 53% of mobile visitors abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. (source)
3. Mobile is not optional anymore
Google’s test puts heavy attention on mobile UX, and for a reason:
Most users today land on your site from a phone.
If your mobile layout sucks, nothing else matters.
Insight: Mobile traffic now makes up over 58% of web traffic, and mobile conversion rates average around 1.8%, versus 3.9% for desktop. (source)
4. Heatmaps tell you the truth you don’t want to hear
Install Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity.
You’ll instantly see why people aren’t converting.
People don’t scroll, don’t see your CTA, or get lost on the page — it happens a lot.
Insight: Pages with a single CTA saw up to 371% higher conversion rates compared to pages with multiple CTAs. (source)
5. Don’t test 100 small things. Fix the big ones first.
Beginners love testing button colors.
But the real CRO wins are usually:
- – Clearer headline
- – Stronger offer
- – Easier form
- – One single CTA
- – Less noise on the page
Tiny tests come later.
Insight: Personalized CTAs increased conversion rates by 202% compared to generic versions. (source)