Conversion Rate Optimisation Pricing | What Does CRO Cost?
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is essential for any business that wants success online. But where should you get started, and how much does CRO cost? In this article, we’ll look at conversion rate optimisation pricing. We’ll also discuss some best practices to kickstart your CRO strategy and cut costs.
What Does CRO Cost?
The exact cost of CRO depends on various factors. These include
- The size and budget of your organisation.
- The tools used to support CRO.
- Whether you decide to invest in a CRO agency.
- The unique pricing structure of your agency.
As no two CRO campaigns are the same, costs tend to vary significantly. Average CRO cost can vary depending on who runs your CRO campaign and their rate. A good rule of thumb is that you will pay around 30% of your overall marketing budget.
When considering a CRO campaign, it’s important to understand the conversion rate optimisation pricing so you know what to expect.
Hiring a CRO agency
If you want to make sure your CRO campaign is effective, you might want to consider hiring a CRO agency.
If you’ve never worked with a CRO agency before, here’s what you can expect:
- Identify KPIs – CRO agencies help brands identify the data that is most important to them, working with you to gather as much useful data as possible.
- Implement CRO tools – Agencies come equipped with CRO tools such as Hotjar and UsabilityHub, which can be used to help improve your site’s usability and potentially conversion rates.
- Conversion tracking – Agencies can help you track conversions on your site by using tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.
- Custom UX design and development projects – The best CRO agencies employ UX designers to create custom designs to optimise the user experience.
- A/B testing – CRO Agencies will conduct A/B testing to identify the best changes for your website.
No two CRO agencies are the same, with each one having its own methods, meaning pricing will vary from agency to agency. Of course, if you decide to go with a smaller CRO agency, it’s likely you will be paying less.
A smaller CRO agency will typically cost less, but might not be as quick or efficient with their work. Whereas, larger CROs with more experience tend to be much more expensive.
While agencies might vary in price, it’s worth taking the time to find the right agency to fit your budget, and that has a proven track record of providing results.
Some smaller agencies are performance-based and only charge if they produce results. This is a better option for those on a budget who can’t afford to waste a budget without seeing a return on their investment.
Note: The size/price of a CRO agency is not necessarily an indication of quality. Some smaller CROs work with fewer clients to provide a more dedicated service. It’s always important to look for a partner who has a successful record of producing results.
Recommendation-based agencies
Another option is to work with a recommendation-based agency. These agencies recommend a CRO strategy instead of implementing it for you, giving you the information you need to run your own CRO campaign.
You should only choose this option if you have a team capable of carrying out CRO tasks, which can often require extensive technical knowledge.
The pros and cons of this approach
When hiring a CRO agency, you’re hiring a team of experts who have the knowledge and tools to improve your conversion rates. A good CRO agency should have a tried and tested approach, which they have honed through working with other organisations.
In terms of disadvantages, experience comes at a cost. Although professional CRO services pricing varies, working with a big agency can be expensive.
It’s worth noting that unlike digital marketing agencies, CRO services only work on conversion rates, and might not be able to help with services such as SEO.
Carrying out CRO in-house
While keeping CRO in-house might be preferable for many organisations, it can also come with additional costs.
Hiring specialist staff
To run effective CRO campaigns in-house, you will need to bring in several specialists to oversee CRO projects.
- A project manager – Oversees your overall CRO strategy and ensures that deadlines are met on time.
- Conversion strategist – Looks at your website to determine any barriers blocking conversions. They’ll create wireframes (illustrations) for new website designs or changes to deal with conversion issues.
- Front-end developer – Will bring the strategist’s vision to life. They’ll carry out A/B testing, trialling different designs to see which produces the most conversions.
- QA Specialist – Ensures that designs user friendly across multiple devices, and meets the needs of the user.
Buying software
You won’t be able to carry out your strategy if you don’t have the right software. Unfortunately, some CRO software comes with a hefty price tag. Here are some of the tools you’ll want to consider to make sure you run an effective CRO campaign.
- Analytics software – Analytics is an essential part of CRO. It helps you identify your site’s conversion barriers and monitor the impact of changes. Luckily, some analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, are free.
- Landing page builder – Landing page optimisation is essential for boosting conversions. Depending on your chosen solution and package, you could pay anything from $20 to $400 monthly.
- Survey tool – It’s important to know what users think of your site, and how easy they find it to use. A survey tool can help you get the answers you need from website visitors. The right feedback can be a great tool to help improve your average conversion rate.
- Heat mapping software – Heat mapping helps you better understand how users are interacting with your site, showing how far they scroll, where they click and much more. Pricing for heat mapping software usually depends on the monthly sessions you receive.
- A/B testing – A/B testing is essential for identifying the pages that produce the most conversions. You can get a basic solution for around $50 monthly, however, more advanced solutions tend to cost more.
Implementing A/B testing
There’s also the costs of A/B testing implementation to consider, which is required to measure the success of your CRO efforts. The process involves separating website traffic; some users will be shown the old version of a page design, and others will view a new design, helping you identify if changes have had a positive impact.
Behaviour on each version is monitored and compared. The design that can best optimise user journey is chosen. While this process isn’t overly costly, it can be time-consuming as multiple changes are often needed to find the best design for user journey and conversions.
For example, if you run eight A/B tests in a month. This will require between 80 and 160 hours of development time. During this time, you’ll need to have staff devoted solely to testing.
An average A/B test can last for a minimum of 2 weeks. During this time, you’ll need to have staff devoted solely to testing.
Updating your site with successful A/B tests
After you’ve carried out A/B testing and found a winning design, it needs to be added to your site. This means additional development time and QA testing, which will add to the overall cost.
The pros and cons of this approach
The most obvious advantage of this approach is that you’ll have complete control over the entire CRO process. You can bring on the best talent for your organisation, making sure you have a high-quality conversion optimisation campaign that’s more likely to deliver results.
Better results usually means a better customer journey, better user experience, and of course, the end goal, lead generation or sales.
In-house CRO has lots of downsides, too. Hiring a specialist team can be extremely expensive, not to mention that you’ll need to buy the right software for them to be able to do the job effectively.
In-house CRO can be risky. You won’t have the experience or expertise of an agency, meaning mistakes are much more likely. The wrong insights can lead to you implementing a design that has a negative impact on your conversion rates, rather than increasing them.
Working with a digital marketing agency
Some digital marketing agencies offer CRO services. In addition to running your CRO campaigns, they can also handle your SEO, PPC, and even content marketing. Not only can marketing agencies handle more services, but they are often cheaper too..
Not all content marketing agencies have the same levels of expertise as a dedicated CRO agency. If you decide to go with a marketing agency, it’s important to make sure they can offer the same level of expertise as a dedicated CRO.
That said, the right digital marketing agency can provide solid results, letting you focus on other important areas of your business while they work on conversion growth.
Marketing agency’s pricing depends on multiple factors, such as the CRO work required, whether they’re looking at just CRO or your overall marketing strategy, and of course, their own pricing structure, which tends to vary between agencies depending on their size and experience.
Working with a freelancer
You could go with a freelance CRO consultant. While they offer similar benefits to an agency, they tend to be cheaper.
with a freelance CRO consultant, you won’t be tied down by long-term contracts as you might be with an agency. You can set the terms of the contract and work with a freelancer for as long as needed. Freelancers are often cheaper and offer a more personalised service.
Freelancers can be hit and miss, with many of them being able to match the same level of conversion rates as an agency.
And unlike an agency, you’re only hiring one individual. You won’t have the support and expertise that comes with hiring a full team, which could hinder your optimization efforts.
Freelancers usually charge an hourly rate over a set rate, which can quickly become expensive with bigger projects.
Conversion rate optimisation pricing best practices
As you’ve probably guessed, the CRO cost factors vary massively. With that said, there are some steps that you can take to control spending. Exploring conversion rate optimization pricing best practices can help reduce CRO campaign costs without impacting your CRO goal.
Know your audience
If you’re not careful, your CRO campaign could see you pouring resources into ineffective website changes. To avoid this, you need to know your audience like the back of your hand, which is where having the right analytical data comes into play.
Remember, the goal of CRO is to make the user’s journey towards conversion easier. To do that, you need to understand them. This means in-depth audience research; if you’re working with an agency, this should be included as part of your package. If you handling CRO in-house you’ll need to tackle your own analytics.
Here’s the best way to collect user data:
- Use analytics tools – Analytics tools can help you dig deep into your audience’s journey and understand what’s preventing them from progressing through the conversion funnel. You can better understand behavioural patterns, demographics, and other key information.
- Conduct surveys – Surveys represent a chance to collect data from your audience directly. You can learn more about audience pain points on your site and how to improve them. You could even run exit surveys for users who leave your landing pages.
- Create heatmaps – Heatmap and click stream testing can show how users interact with webpages. Areas of frequent interaction are highlighted in deeper colours. By understanding high-traffic parts of your site, you can alter CTAs and potentially improve conversions.
Create a CRO roadmap
Conversion rate optimisation requires a solid plan in place, without one you might find your CRO campaign isn’t effective, leaving you wasting your budget. That’s why creating a clear roadmap should be the first step in any CRO strategy.
Here’s how you create a CRO roadmap.
- Every roadmap starts with a clear set of goals. Consider your business objectives, and how your CRO strategy can align with them.
- Choose key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor your success. To help pick the right metrics, it’s worth creating subgoals for your website that will help achieve your overall goal.
- Carry out a CRO audit to identify pain points. This can be used as a baseline to compare your progress as you carry out your CRO strategy.
- Use data to identify areas for optimisation. This should combine various sources such as Google Analytics, heatmaps, and ads software.
- Try out your designs within a testing pipeline. Keep a close eye on each test, and use your findings to improve your conversion rate optimizations.
Run thorough QA tests
If you want to avoid costly changes, thorough quality assurance testing is essential. When carrying out QA testing, it’s worth considering:
- Have you set conversion tracking correctly to measure your goals?
- Does your test run properly on different devices and browsers?
- Are links working as they should be?
- Are images a good fit, the right size, and to the right scale?
FAQ
What is CRO?
Conversion rate optimisation helps you to Increase conversions on your site. You’ll optimise user journeys making it easier for them to navigate the site and potentially convert.
This could be as simple as changing the position of a button or changing the text size. In other instances, CRO campaigns can involve a complete redesign of a website. Understanding the scope of CRO is essential before beginning any strategy.
How does a CRO agency work?
CRO agencies work to improve your conversion rate. They’ll combine a mix of CRO tools A/B testing, and analytics to find conversion blockers and optimise your website. The right agency will help you create a winning CRO strategy.
Some agencies offer broad assistance to all businesses. Others are specialists in certain industries. It’s worth researching to find a partner that meets your needs.
Where can I find help from a CRO agency?
MeasureMinds is an agency with a proven track record, having worked with world-renowned brands such as Citroen and National Geographic. Using the power of data, our CRO services will increase your conversion rates and boost your revenue. Why not get in touch for a free quote today?
What impacts conversion rate optimisation pricing?
Several factors impact CRO pricing. This includes whether you choose to run your strategy in-house, employ an agency, or a freelancer. Other influences include the scope of your project, the complexity of your website, and your budget.
Can my developer handle A/B testing?
You shouldn’t get your web developer to deal with A/B testing. The task is highly specialised and isn’t something a developer would usually take on. Where web developers work with code, A/B testers write their own scripts. Whilst using your web developer might be cheaper, you’re less likely to get accurate answers.
Wrapping up
CRO is an essential process for any business that wants to increase its revenue online. A successful strategy comes with a price tag but can increase your online revenue. The conversion rate optimisation pricing is impacted by many factors – who you work with, how extensive are your goals, etc?
We’ve also looked at some CRO pricing tips that can help you to reduce the cost. Starting with a solid plan is essential to getting the right results and avoiding costly changes. Take time with your strategy and try to encompass all your goals.
Remember, MeasureMinds is always on hand to provide a helping hand. Why not begin the discussion about your CRO strategy today?
