Before you can persuade your visitors, you need to persuade your team

Published: July 2024

The image shows the original and variation screens side by side.

The most important conversion goal for any company often occurs long before they run their first A/B test. It’s the decision to become a different and vastly more effective type of business.

The challenge is encapsulated by two questions we hear a lot from our followers:

“How can I persuade my team that CRO should be our number one priority?”
“How can I convince my company to adopt a culture of CRO?”

If you’re struggling to get your team onside, this article will help you share some powerful arguments and resources.

What kind of company are you?

Although every business uses the internet, its impact allows us to draw a useful distinction between two types of companies:

Nondigital incumbents are companies that achieved success in the offline world. In travel, they include airlines and hotel chains. In finance, they encompass traditional banks and financial services. In retail, they are large chain stores.
Digital disruptors became successful because they were able to beat nondigital incumbents at their own game. They use technology to satisfy customers’ needs better. In travel, they are companies like Airbnb and Kayak. In finance, they are PayPal and Apple Pay. In retail, they are Amazon and … the companies that find clever ways to compete against Amazon.

Nondigital incumbents and digital disruptors don’t just have different origins; they tend to be wired differently. Although incumbents have a website (and often track analytics), they lack the culture, organization, and know-how to compete effectively online. Their competitors, the disruptors, aren’t just better; they are better by several orders of magnitude. Disruptors have testing, optimization, and rapid improvement in their DNA, allowing them to move over eight thousand times faster.

Someone streaming video on a tablet. — If you don’t *Netflix*, you’ll *Blockbuster*.

Here’s what this means for you. If your company doesn’t have the budget to improve its website, if your team can’t be persuaded to invest in better user experience, if your marketing team doesn’t have the resources to measure whether a website change has increased sales or decreased them, then you don’t stand a chance.

Because here’s something you might want to mention to your stakeholders: No one at Netflix is struggling to find a budget to improve its website. No one at Netflix is battling to find resources to optimize its user experience. No one at Netflix is fighting to adopt the approach that always wins. And neither are your most successful competitors.

If your company is yet to incorporate CRO into its DNA, then that’s your primary conversion goal—to persuade your decision-makers, stakeholders, and team members that focusing on CRO is the best way to grow.

Resources that will help you make the case for CRO

When you are straining at the leash to get started on CRO, it may seem unfair that your colleagues should be your biggest obstacles. It may help to remember that winning support for your CRO project is the greatest conversion lever you’re ever likely to find. Rather than viewing it as an irritating inconvenience, see it as a major milestone, and treat it as such, worthy of the same thought and effort you’d spend optimizing a landing page.

Here’s a persuasive, two-step process that can take you a long way:

Most website design is done wrong—and how to do it right, like the winners
This article covers three principles that every disrupter follows, and why they inevitably beat the standard approach to website development.
The Power Law of CRO
This article explains the economic argument for CRO—and shows why it is the highest leverage point for a web business.

2. Support your argument with evidence

Our Win Reports demonstrate the power of conversion rate optimization. These aren’t vague claims; they are data-driven demonstrations of our CRO methodology at work. Each report highlights a real-world test and shares the research and techniques that led to the win.

Here are a few to start with:

43% increase in paid trials for an online investment service.
15% increase in conversions for a worldwide media brand.
58% increase in demo requests for a B2B SaaS company.
36% increase in sales for a global leisure company.
32% sales increase for a B2C e‑commerce website.
20% rise in conversions for a B2C SaaS company.
96% increase in trial signups for a B2B SaaS company.
23% increase in sales for a B2C e‑commerce website.
8% increase in transactions for an online shipping platform.
25% increase in sales for a B2C manufacturer.
39% increase in subscriptions for a B2C website.
108% increase in signups for a B2C comparison platform.

You can also point your team to our Clients and results page, which includes over a hundred testimonials from companies that have massively benefitted from developing a CRO culture.

If your stakeholders still aren’t convinced, let us know their objections, and we’ll try to write more supporting materials for you. It’s worth the effort because winning this argument can take you to some amazing places…

We’ve won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise twice for our work on CRO.

From hero to… even bigger hero

One of our long-standing clients made his argument with incredible success. When he first hired us, years ago, he was the lone conversion manager in a multibillion-dollar incumbent. Since then, we have helped him get wins on his website and within his organization by evangelizing CRO. He now leads a dedicated CRO department of thirty people, who are hugely successful and highly influential within the organization. His company has won many awards for its digital achievements.

So, if you’re frustrated that your company won’t give you time and resources to work on CRO, treat that as your first persuasion project. Gather objections, assemble counterobjections, support them with evidence, and celebrate your wins.

To convert your visitors, first convert your team.

(We shudder to think where you’ll stick the tracking codes.)

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Win Report: How simplifying a homepage boosted sign-ups by 9%

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