Insights
Big rebuilds are slow and risky. Random tweaks are worse. The winning model is a disciplined continuous improvement loop that blends product thinking, UX research and controlled experimentation, guided by clear outcomes and guardrails
Continuous improvement is the strategy. CRO is one of its instruments. Here's some tips for designing for conversion without breaking your site.
1) Set the record straight: CI and CRO are not the same
Continuous improvement is your operating system for change. CRO is the scientific method that runs inside it. Treat CRO as a subset of CI, not a replacement for product strategy. Decide what you optimise for, then pick experiments that serve that purpose.
CI answers:
Where we going, what problems matter, what is the cadence, who is accountable.
CRO answers:
What hypothesis do we test next, how do we prove it, what do we ship.
2) Start with outcomes, not outputs
Pick a single North Star outcome for the next quarter, for example qualified leads, successful checkouts, completed self‑serve tasks. Map 3 to 5 input metrics you can influence, for example form starts, time to first value, error‑free rate. Declare guardrails you will not harm, for example NPS, page speed, accessibility, unsubscribe rate. If an experiment lifts conversion but breaks a guardrail, it does not ship.
3) Instrumentation before iteration
If you cannot see it, you cannot fix it. Verify analytics accuracy, consent and privacy. Baseline the funnel and the five most important journeys by device, browser and traffic source. Add session replays, heatmaps and error tracking. Catalogue top drop‑offs and top error states. This is your first backlog.
4) Build a simple hypothesis pipeline
Good ideas have a clear source and a clear shape.
Sources:
User research, support tickets, analytics anomalies, competitive reviews, accessibility audits, performance logs.
Shape:
We believe [change] for [audience] will increase [metric] because [insight].
Triage:
Tag as Experiment, Improvement or Investigation. Do not A/B test obvious fixes like broken validation or unreadable labels.
Prioritise with RICE or ICE. Small teams can keep this lightweight in a shared doc, larger teams benefit from a backlog tool.
5) Design experiments that avoid fake wins
Pick the right method early: A/B, redirect, multivariate or holdout. Pre‑calculate minimum sample and duration, avoid peeking, account for novelty and day‑of‑week effects. Segment analysis matters: report results by device first, then by traffic source, then by persona. Promote variants on lift plus guardrail stability, not on p‑values alone. Write a short learning log: what happened, what we think it means, what we will try next.
6) Ship safely with progressive delivery
Release behind feature flags. Use canary rollouts and staged percentage ramps. Gate releases on performance and accessibility checks. Keep a rollback plan and a 24‑hour cool‑off window before deleting the control. Tie each release to a measurable intent so you can prove value, not just volume of change.
7) The unglamorous wins that move numbers
Speed is a conversion lever, treat it as such. Cut render‑blocking resources, reduce form latency, compress media. Clarity beats cleverness, so fix headings and microcopy, place trust cues at the decision point, show next steps. Remove friction: fewer fields, better defaults, modern payments, forgiving validation, clear error states. Accessibility is revenue, make the happy path work with keyboard and screen readers.
8) Beyond UI: content, IA and service design
Poor information architecture and weak content undo good UI. Curate content for intent, not hierarchy. Put proof next to calls to action. Fix search, filters and navigation before you test button colours. Align the service promise on the page with operations behind it, for example SLAs, refund policy and support handoff. CRO cannot compensate for a broken service.
9) Governance and ethics
No dark patterns. Use plain‑English consent and choices. Run an experiment review that checks for fairness and unintended harm. Keep an audit trail of changes and decisions. Good governance protects users and protects your long‑term brand metrics.
10) Roles and cadence that keep momentum
Small teams can wear multiple hats, but the hats still matter: product owner, UX researcher, analyst, engineer, experiment lead. Adopt a simple rhythm: weekly triage, fortnightly build and QA, monthly read‑out of wins, losses and bets. Maintain a living library of experiments with hypothesis, setup, screenshots, results and the narrative. This library prevents repeat mistakes and spreads wins across teams.
11) When to stop improving and rebuild
Call a rebuild when technical debt blocks iteration, core journeys cannot be instrumented, performance cannot be rescued, or the platform cannot meet roadmap needs. If you do rebuild, keep the CI loop alive from day one. Launch is the start, not the finish.
12) A 90‑day plan to prove it
Weeks 1 to 2
Instrumentation audit, consent review, baseline metrics, identify top 10 opportunities, pick the first 3.
Weeks 3 to 6
Ship two improvements and one experiment per sprint. Include at least one performance or accessibility fix.
Weeks 7 to 10
Roll forward winners, retire losers with a note, escalate promising segment insights to new tests.
Weeks 11 to 12
Publish a learning report, reset targets, refresh the roadmap. Share what you learned with adjacent teams.
If you only do one thing
Run a two‑week improvement sprint: validate analytics, fix the three biggest friction points in your primary funnel, and ship one well‑designed A/B test with a guardrail check. This will shift the dial faster than any visual refresh.