Digital Marketing
Conversion rate optimisation and landing pages
Conversion rate optimisation is the work done on the page after a visitor arrives: landing pages that keep the promise the advert made, forms and checkouts with fewer reasons to abandon them, and controlled tests that show which change actually helped. Every channel on this hub pays for traffic; this topic decides how much of that traffic becomes customers. The shop platforms themselves live in the e-commerce section.
Why this topic exists: Landing pages, testing, UX for marketers and the commerce funnel: DMI's Web Optimization, eCommerce and Social Commerce module; the ecommerce silo owns the shop platforms.
Conversion rate optimisation begins with a plain ratio: of the people who reached a page, how many did the thing that page exists for, whether buying, booking, signing up or calling. The discipline is everything done to raise that ratio without buying more visitors. In the DMI diploma it shares a module with e-commerce and social commerce, which reflects where most of the work happens: product pages, baskets, checkouts and the landing pages that paid campaigns point at.
The testing loop
- Find the leak. Funnel reports in Google Analytics show at which step visitors give up; session recordings and heatmaps show what they were doing there.
- Ask why. Watch a handful of people attempt the task, read support tickets, run a one-question poll on the page. Numbers locate a problem and people explain it; the methods sit under UX research.
- Write a hypothesis. One change, the reason it should help, and the figure that will move if it does.
- Run the test. Show the old and new version to comparable visitors over the same period, having fixed the sample size and duration in advance.
- Keep, discard, record. Log every result, the losers included, so nobody retests an idea the team has already disproved.
Why most small sites cannot run A/B tests
A controlled test needs enough conversions in each version to tell a real effect from chance. A page that converts a few dozen times a month may need many months to reach a verdict, and by then the season, the offer and the traffic mix have all shifted. Below that volume, fix what research shows is broken and watch the trend instead of dressing guesses up as experiments. Judging whether a difference is real is ordinary data analysis, and worth learning properly.
Where the gains usually hide
The large improvements seldom come from button colours. They come from matching the page to the promise that brought the visitor, so an advert about one product lands on that product and not the homepage; from deleting form fields nobody needs; from showing delivery costs, returns terms and reasons to trust the seller before checkout instead of inside it; and from speed, because a slow page loses people before they read a line. Hosting affects that last point more than many marketers assume, which is why the e-commerce hosting guide belongs on this reading list. Landing pages built from a web template are a sensible start, provided the template's structure is questioned like everything else.
The beginner's mistake is declaring a winner early. Checking a test every morning and stopping it when one version pulls ahead produces results that evaporate once the change goes live; the fix is to commit to the planned duration. Shop platforms such as Shopify are covered in the e-commerce section, and the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce certificate spends time on the online shop from the marketer's side. CRO specialists often move on towards product management, analytics or web design, since the job sits between all three.
Next to this topic
- Marketing strategy and fundamentalsSegments, positioning, the funnel, channel mix and the plan that ties them together: DMI's Digital Marketing Strategy module and the Fundamentals shelf; Google's free fundamentals course starts here.
- Search engine optimisationTechnical health, content and links as search engines rank them; DMI's SEO module, Semrush's courses and HubSpot's answer-engine successor to its retired SEO certificate.
- Paid search and display advertisingGoogle Ads across search, display, video and shopping, bidding and measurement: the site's five Skillshop records and DMI's Paid Search (PPC) and Display Advertising module.
- Social media marketingOrganic and paid presence on Meta's platforms, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube; DMI's Social module, HubSpot's social certificate and Meta's paid associate exam.
- Content marketing and copywritingPlanning, producing and distributing content that earns attention; DMI's Content module, HubSpot's and Semrush's content certificates.
- Email marketing and automationLists, segmentation, deliverability, sequences and the platforms that run them (Mailchimp, Brevo, HubSpot, Klaviyo); DMI's Email and Automation module, HubSpot's email certificate.
- Marketing analytics and attributionGA4, tags, conversion tracking, attribution and reporting: DMI's Analytics module, the Google Analytics and Ads Measurement certifications; the data field owns the statistics.
- Branding and public relationsPositioning, identity, reputation and earned media: DMI's strategy module names the brand; Udemy's Branding and PR shelves and getstudium's Markenfuehrung tag name the field.
- AI in marketingGenerative tools for copy, creative, audiences and analysis, and where they mislead: DMI now runs AI through every module; Google's Skillshop Ads training covers generative tools and AI-powered campaigns.
- Affiliate and partnership marketingNetworks, disclosure rules, tracking and the economics of commissions: a channel most marketing syllabi skip and the one this site runs on (Udemy Affiliate; the site's affiliate documentation).
Concepts to know
Glossary entries with the reason each one matters here.
- Template
Landing pages start from templates.
- Data Analysis
Testing is inference applied to pages.
Certifications that test it
Vendor exams and free certificates; facts, cost and the preparation path are on each page, and the certifications hub has them all.
Guides that apply
- E-commerce hosting: hosted vs self-hosted
Where the shop runs matters to conversion.
Tools of the trade
- Shopify
The hosted shop platform most small merchants pick.
- Google Analytics
Where funnel drop-off is measured.
Frequently asked
- What is a good conversion rate?
- There is no universal figure worth quoting. Rates vary with the sector, the price, the traffic source and what counts as a conversion, so a published average says little about your page. Compare a page against its own history and against similar pages on your site, and look at the revenue per visitor as well as the rate.
- Is CRO the same as UX design?
- They overlap heavily and use many of the same research methods. UX design aims at a product that works well for its users; CRO judges pages by a business outcome and uses experiments to prove a change paid off. A good CRO specialist thinks like a UX designer, and a good UX designer knows which numbers the business watches.
- How long should an A/B test run?
- Long enough to reach the sample size you calculated before starting, and at least one full weekly cycle so weekday and weekend visitors are both represented. Stopping as soon as a result looks significant is the most common way tests go wrong.
Courses in the directory
141 courses are filed here; the top 6 by our ranking, details and the provider link on each course page.
Last reviewed 26 September 2026 · Getting Digital