Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
The systematic practice of increasing the share of users who take a desired action, through testing and iterative improvement of the experience.
CRO is the discipline of raising the percentage of visitors who do the thing you want — sign up, buy, book, upgrade. It works by finding the friction and drop-off in a funnel, forming hypotheses about why, and validating fixes with A/B tests rather than guesses.
It is where design meets the bottom line. Small, compounding wins on a high-traffic step — a clearer value proposition, a shorter form, a better-timed prompt — can move revenue more than a big redesign. CRO is the tactical core of growth design.
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Related terms
A/B TestingComparing two versions of a design by showing each to a slice of live traffic and measuring which drives the target metric better.Conversion FunnelThe staged path users take toward a goal — visit, sign up, activate, pay — where measuring drop-off at each step reveals where to improve.Growth DesignDesign practiced as a growth lever — every flow, screen, and experiment aimed explicitly at activation, conversion, and retention metrics.ActivationThe point at which a new user first experiences the core value of a product — the 'aha moment' that predicts whether they'll stick around.