
Have you bent over backwards to enhance your sales and marketing strategy only to be left empty-handed? You need conversion rate optimisation!
Your hard-earned website visitors are bouncing faster than an introvert at a party, and sales remain low and slow. So frustrating, we know! Or perhaps they are okay and you want more of the good stuff from your hard-earned marketing dollars?
Maybe you need to switch up your strategy, or maybe you need to optimise!

Actions such as completing a purchase, adding an item to a wishlist or joining your mailing list. Really anything that is going to, in one way or another, bring in the dosh
Driving people in droves to your poorly optimised website is like pulling a Mariah Carey: showing up two hours late to your own show only to lip-sync through your whole set.

Talk about overpromising and underdelivering! You’ve done the work to get them there, but something isn’t sticking!
Something’s Giving Them The Ick!
Before you throw wads of cash at your marketing or invest in a full-re-brand (don’t even get me started on re-brands), you need to look closely at what is preventing your customers from converting.
A conversion rate optimisation project involves testing, experiments, setting goals and then working to see if you can hit, flunked or exceed those goals. It’s a hands-on job, and to get it right you need the right skills on your team!
7 Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) Skills You Need on Your Team

The following are the 7 most crucial skills your CRO team needs, BUT that does not mean your team HAS to be 7 people. For growing businesses, you may have one team member that wears multiple hats. It’s called a cross-functional team!
For each of the 7 crucial skills, I’ll discuss,
- Purpose of the skill
- The perspective they bring to the team
- Examples of questions they should be asking
Now let’s start building your ultimate CRO dream team!
Skill #1: Leadership

Leading with leadership – a skill that is obvious, but often left undefined. You’ve got quite the journey ahead of you and it won’t always be smooth sailing. When building your team, ensure your leader is supportive, clear on the objectives and capable of the job.
Leadership is required for support and in some cases, management of your team. The wrangler of chaos and questions. This skilled personnel should be able to look at your project from a metaphorical birds-eye view and provide strong direction and clarity on the tasks ahead.
They are the travel guide of your CRO journey. They should plan the itinerary, lead the way and fully understand the final destination.
Q: How can I help my team stay aligned and motivated?

Skill #2: Marketing

Your Marketing soul needs to be in the know!
Your marketing pro should be up to date with the latest trends and understand what makes your website visitors click and convert. Ultimately, they also offer the crucial perspective of the broader marketing strategy and understand how your key initiatives all tie together.
They are the human perspective of what could be hindering your conversions and work hand in hand with your Data Analyst to fix the non-technical, cosmetical errors with your customer experience.
Q: Is this cohesive with the greater customer experience?
Skill #3: Data Analysis

We are not licking our finger and sticking it to the wind here. Repeat after me: DATA DRIVES EVERYTHING!
Your Data Analyst is the brainy maths kid. The one that can de-code the data and pinpoint key insights to feed your experiments.
A true Analytics fanatic, your data analyst should be obsessed with all things tracking, testing and analysing.
This person is required to be able to pinpoint exactly how conversions can be optimised, with a strong understanding of what data metrics mean and how they reflect parts of the customer decision process.
Critically they must be able to detect when, where, why and how the roadblocks are occurring in the customer journey.
Q: How did you make that decision? Are we looking at both quantitative and qualitative data?
Skill #4: User Experience (UX)/ User Interface (UI) Design

Before I tell you why you need these skills, you need to understand the difference between them.
User-Experience (UX) and User-Interface (UI) and both about optimising the customer experience, they just have different priorities. I can explain it to you, like most things in life, using condiments.

The sauce bottles above illustrate how UX is focused on the functionality of the customer experience, a person with this skill is concerned more with how things work.
Q: Does the website have unnecessary friction points? Where do people get lost in checkout navigation? Is the design sending mixed messages?
The opposite of this is is our friend UI design. A person with this skill concentrates on making everything aesthetically pleasing. They are concerned with how things look and how this aligns with your brand.
Q: Is the design appealing? Do the colours look good together? Is the design mobile optimised?
The difference between the two highlights their importance. Your experience needs to be equally attractive as it is operational.
Though both these skills require specific knowledge and a degree of tunnel vision, they can be interchangeable.
Important! Don’t automatically assume that a web developer possesses these crucial skills. Web dev and a web design are two very different skills!
Skill #5: Website Development

Speak of the devil. You need website development skills, no question!
Your website is the official and final gateway for conversions. No matter how much time you spend on your socials, emails, etc, the final point of contact will always be your website.
A strong web-dev skillset is crucial in finding those conversion killers that aren’t immediately obvious to the naked (non-web dev) eye.
For example, a slow load time, coding glitch, checkout functionality or payments gateway error.
These secret assassins will be hiding in the deep depths of your website code. And trust us, your website design could be drop-dead gorgeous, but if it isn’t converting, what’s the point?
As discussed in Skill #4, your web developer needs to be competent with the technical side of things, BUT, don’t rely on this person to fill the shoes of a user experience or interface designer.
Your web dev is the repairman (or woman) who will take direction from your data analyst on what to fix and where.
Q: Are there any website errors preventing conversions?
Skill #6: Copy

Your brand is not Reddit. You can not just talk smack and magically create conversions. You need somebody who can write and edit super engaging copy.
The messaging at your key conversion points aka, your website, needs to be persuasive and meaningful.
Your copy needs to be the siren to your conversions. It should give consumers product info, buyer confidence and create interest around your brand, but at the same time be short and sweet.
It’s a known fact your consumers only read 20% of content on your page ((Nielson Norman Group) (hopefully this is part of that 20%)).
A skilled copywriter will know not to send the reader on an elaborate treasure hunt, your most important and compelling content should be front and centre.
Please, please, please, never underestimate the power of solid copy! This is such a crucial skill to have in your team.
Q: Is this copy an accurate representation of our brand? Do we have enough helpful info in the product descriptions?
Read: How to Minimise Website Clutter and Improve SEO
Skill #7: Project Management & Strategist

The role of a project manager and strategist is to provide connection and direction between your CRO project and business objectives.
These skills ensure all the moving elements within your experiments have been delegated and are due to be delivered in a timely manner.
Differing from leadership, project management is about ensuring the journey is mapped and the crew has all the resources and information they need to complete the task.
They are the timekeeper of your CRO journey, they must be on top of scheduling and time constraints to ensure your project is hitting targets and executing deliverables.
The two skills need to work simultaneously together to ensure the overall project and strategy plans of your business are aligned, to prevent the contradiction or misguidance of your marketing plans purpose and objectives.
Q: What’s our current priority? And what help do you need to move this forward?
Conclusion
There they are. The 7 superpowers of a superb conversion rate optimisation team!
Remember, if you’re running a lean team one person can possess two of these skills. The most important thing to consider is the perspective and expertise that these people bring to your team.
If everyone in your team is asking the same questions, it’s a good sign there is a missing piece to the CRO puzzle!
If CRO is on your mind, we have the program to make it a reality!
Time again, we were finding that our retailers were trying to solve their CRO woes while running major campaigns or project roll-outs. Putting out spot fires and kicking the can down the road.
The truth is, conversion rate optimisation takes focus, time and testing.
We’ve customised a 12-week program to audit, analyse, optimise and test your crucial conversion points.
So, before you jump into your next major campaign, project or product launch, let’s get CRO-savvy. Reach out to us at hello@miacademy.com.au or click here book your FREE 30-minute training exploration.

Read some of our most recent blogs:
- 3 Key Pillars for a Buzzing Voice of Customer (VoC) Program [PART 1]
- 3 Key Pillars for a Buzzing Voice of Customer (VoC) Program [PART 2]