Learn How To Optimize For A Better User Experience
Whether your goal is to drive purchases, boost newsletter subscriptions, or increase form completions, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the key to turning more visitors into leads or customers. True CRO goes beyond making surface-level changes – it’s a strategic, data-informed process that helps get a better understanding of your users and how they engage with your site.
Yet, many organizations fall into common pitfalls that fall short of meeting CRO best practices, ultimately wasting valuable time, resources, and opportunities that’ll help grow the brand.
Today, we’ll explore 3 of the most common mistakes – along with the solutions to fixing them – to ensure the next experiment is a successful one.
Here, we will look at why ad creatives are a strong driver of performance, how to measure impact, and what defines a top-performing creative. Whether you’re running campaigns on Meta, TikTok, Google Search, or Display, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to help improve your results by focusing on the creative itself.
3 Common CRO Mistakes to Avoid:
- Optimizing Without Data
- Neglecting Mobile Optimizations
- Running Tests That Are Too Small
Mistake 1: Optimizing Without Data
One of the most frequent – and costly – mistakes in conversion rate optimization is making changes based on assumptions, personal opinions, or the latest industry buzz – rather than solid, measurable evidence. It’s tempting to believe that a design tweak or headline change will yield results simply because it worked for another business or is currently trending in your industry. However, CRO is not about guesswork – it’s about making deliberate, evidence-backed decisions that improve performance in every measurable step.
The truth is, every business has its unique audience with specific motivations, pain points, and decision-making processes. What works brilliantly for one company may fall flat for another. Without validating changes through real user data, you risk implementing strategies that don’t solve the underlying issues in your funnel.
How to Avoid This Mistake:
- Leverage Analytical Tools: Platforms like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or Hotjar provide valuable insights into user behaviour, traffic sources, and conversion paths. Use this data to identify bottlenecks in your funnel before making changes.
- Develop Data-Driven Hypotheses: Define clear, measurable hypotheses before testing. This ensures your efforts are focused, measurable, and based on evidence rather than guesswork.
- Store Data Through Spreadsheets or Reports: Utilizing spreadsheets (ie Google Sheets, etc) or internal reports (ie: GA4, Looker Studio, etc) will help keep track of how the experiments performed and can keep a historical record of what did and did not work – great for future experiments.
Mistake 2: Neglecting Mobile Optimizations
We now live in a mobile-first digital landscape where smartphones are often the primary device. Think about it – how often do you instinctively grab your phone to research a product, check reviews, or browse social media? For most people, it’ ‘s second nature. The data back this up: in 2023, mobile devices accounted for over 57% of global website traffic, and in many industries, that percentage is significantly higher. Failing to optimize for mobile users isn’t just an oversight = it’s a direct hit to your potential conversions.
When a site isn’t mobile-friendly, the friction is immediate and costly. Things like small, unreadable fonts, slow loading times, and mends that require pinching and zooming can frustrate users in seconds.High bounce rates, abandoned sessions, and low engagement are often the direct result.
Picture yourself trying to complete a purchase or fill out a form on a desktop-only design crammed onto a four-inch screen – it’s clunky, frustrating, and enough to send potential customers straight to a competitor.
How to Avoid This Mistake:
- Adopt a Responsive Design: Your site’s layout and content should adapt automatically to any screen size, from desktops to smartphones. If your site doesn’t automatically adapt, then it may be time to create a new layout for your site. This will ensure visual consistency and functional usability across all devices.
- Prioritize Speed: Mobile users expect pages to load fast. Even a one-second delay in page load time can significantly reduce conversions. Compress images, leverage browser caching, and use a content delivery network (CDN) to keep performance sharp.
- Simplify Navigation: Replace cluttered menus with intuitive, mobile-friendly navigation. Prominent call-to-action (CTA) buttons, collapsible menus, and a visible search bar help visitors find what they need without frustration.
- Test on Real Devices: Don’t rely solely on desktop simulations. Test your site across different phones and tablets to identify and fix usability issues that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Mistake 3: Running Tests That Are Too Small
While it’s important not to dedicate all of your time to massive, resource-intensive experiments, the opposite – focusing only on tiny, low-impact tweaks – can be just as damaging to your CRO program. Adjusting a button colour or changing one word in a headline might feel like progress, and sure, it’s something we have all done before, but if these are the only tests you run, you’re limiting your potential for meaningful growth.
One of the most powerful advantages of experimentation is its ability to act as a safety net for bold ideas. A/B testing allows you to validate riskier, more transformative changes without committing to a full rollout.
When you avoid larger-scale tests in favour of only “safe” micro-optimizations, you miss the opportunity to discover breakthrough ideas that could fundamentally change your conversion rates, customer experience, or even your business model.
Think of it this way: small tweaks may deliver incremental improvements, but significant, innovative changes can deliver step-change growth. The ideal CRO program finds balance:
- Small, low-risk tests with a high probability of winning – useful for steady, compounding gains.
- Big, high-risk tests that might fail spectacularly, but could also deliver game-changing results.
Both are essential if you want to drive sustainable, long-term improvements rather than settling for marginal gains.
How to Avoid This Mistake:
- Adopt a Balanced Test Portfolio: Aim for a healthy mix – perhaps 60% ~ 70% smaller, iterative tests and 30% ~ 40% bigger, more innovative experiments. Treat small tests as a way to refine, and big tests as a way to redefine.
- Think Beyond the Page Level: Many high-impact experiments involve rethinking user flows, pricing structures, onboarding processes, or even product offerings – not just adjusting page elements.
- Prioritize Based on Potential Impact: Use frameworks like ICE (Impact, Confidence, Effort) or PIE (Potential, Importance, Ease) to identify which tests could deliver the most value.
- Encourage a Culture of Bold Thinking: Make it clear to your team that failure in testing is not failure in strategy – it’s an essential part of finding what works. Celebrate learning, not just wins.
- Document and Review Regularly: Keep a record of all your tests, their scale, and their outcomes. Review quarterly to ensure you’re not drifting into “small test only” territory
How Delta Growth Optimizes CRO For Long-Term Growth to evaluate Ad Creative effectiveness
At Delta Growth, we believe that the CRO process should be a fundamental part of any business strategy for growth. We collaborate and develop strategy plans to not only ensure a user’s experience is at the forefront of design, but more importantly, to change our visitors into customers by driving more conversions.
Our Analytics/CRO team will help the process of auditing your site, providing real-time data metrics and opportunities, and formulating a plan to ensure the success of your CRO plan.
