In almost every industry, there are certain people deemed experts in the field. These experts usually have quite a bit of experience, the guts to take risks, and the grace to share their learnings with others.
Are you interested in becoming an expert? Do you love conversion rate optimization? If you aren’t, I find it quite sad. There are numerous reasons why we love CRO and I only hope to continue to spread the love.
There are, of course, a few things to consider before declaring your ultimate goal of becoming a CRO expert. Consider finding a specialty underneath the CRO umbrella. Do you enjoy the direct user feedback and experience? Do you focus on color theory? Do you find happiness in the more technical aspects of landing pages? Focusing your multitude of skills into a key area will probably help you figure out just what you can best contribute to the CRO industry.
One other tip would be to write down your goal of becoming an expert. Having a visual reminder will only help funnel you and guide you to fulfill your passion. Put this visual reminder in a prominent place – where you will see it every day. Almost to the point where it becomes annoying. That little annoying reminder will turn into fuel for your fire to further ignite you to your goal.
Resources
There are numerous resources that we can use to become experts. Whether it’s first finding out what you want to be an expert in or using these tools to refine your skills. Blogs have been one of the key resources for me in becoming a CRO expert. There are many great blogs to follow to read about CRO best practices, examples of tests that have been successful and unsuccessful, and how-to guides from companies and industry professionals.
Another, usually free, resource to utilize are webinars. There are multiple industry professionals teaming up together to put on these great webinars. They’re filled with best practices, how-to guides, and usually live questions and answers on the webinar topics.
Another resource is to start following these other experts on social media. Find out what they’re willing to share on a day-to-day basis, #CRO. Whether it’s a link to a blog article or a quick bit of information, it’s just another way to collect as much data and information as possible and to find even more resources to get key findings.
Lastly, conferences are great ways to not only hear firsthand about opinions and testing recommendation ideas, but they’re a wonderful place to network with other experts. The one expert you meet could turn into a mentor and further help you on your path to becoming a CRO expert.
Direct Experience
Another way to become an expert in CRO is using direct experience. It’s one thing to say you know that moving a form from the left-hand side of the page to the right will produce more leads but it’s another to have tested out that theory on a landing page and be able to measure the results of doing so. By setting up tests, both technically and theoretically, the active interest will lead to more of an investment in performance and how it further impacts the website.
There are ways to try to get some direct experience without impacting an actual site or landing page. Creating mock-ups of layouts or using color to gain attention can be created and put into actual testing sites just to see if the type of change you would make on a landing page would gain any positive results in the changes you made. And if that doesn’t work, be sure to express your interest to whoever will listen and you might just find yourself in a position to work directly with the CRO process.
Advocate & Educate
There are two of many ways we can advocate for CRO and educate about CRO. By writing, much like I’m doing now, for a blog or newsletter, are great ways to share your knowledge and experiences to others in the industry or interested in the industry. By sharing experiences through writing, others can use those experiences to start their own path to becoming an expert. One great thing about writing is you have the ability to receive feedback on your thoughts and ideas. Comments and shares may lead you to question certain parts of your process or further reinforce that what you’re doing is on track to optimize a landing page best.
Another way to educate about CRO is speaking. I mentioned conferences as being great resources to learn more information about CRO, but one way to share knowledge is by speaking at those conferences or hosting webinars. Sharing the information you have, whether you’re a newly deemed CRO expert or a veteran, is just one way to establish yourself and inspire others to learn more about CRO and truly understand the power it has to influence landing pages and user experiences.
Final Thoughts
Above are just a few ways, of many more, to become an expert in this industry. There are so many aspects that there is bound to be just one that you find fits best. One way you’ll know for sure about your efforts in becoming an expert is to immerse yourself in the process and conversation and make mistakes. It’s from those mistakes that you’ll find your greatest learnings. I would like to say I’m already an expert but I will take my own advice and go through this article over and over to further become a CRO expert and inspire others to find the value that I do in conversion rate optimization.
