We asked 722 optimization people 48 questions to determine the state of the CRO industry in 2016.

1. State of the Industry Report
2016

2. Demographics: Age
Average age: 37

3. Demographics: Gender

4. Identified Issues
Demographics of respondents
- 44% (306) work in the U.S.
10% (68) work in the UK
7% (46) work in Canada
6% (39) work in the
Netherlands
33% (231) are from other
countries

5. Demographics: CRO jobs around the globe

6. Images
What type of CRO work do you do?
Out of 673 responses…
39% optimizers work for an
agency (with clients)
58% work in-house (on my own or
at an employer’s site)
3% answered other

7. What type of company do your work for?
Most respondents either work for an e-commerce company or for an agency/freelance

8. How long have you worked in a CRO role?
Almost 20% of
all respondents
have been
working in their
CRO role for less
than a year:
The industry is
growing.

9. What’s your gross annual salary in USD?
Average salary:
$71,340

10. Leading CRO nations and their average salaries:

11. Budget: Does CRO have its own budget?
More than half of respondents do not have a specifically mentioned CRO budget.
12%
53%
9%
26%
Reported budgets
range from $1k to $3m

12. What’s the online revenue of the business
you work at?
Mean budget:
$61,003,043
Most commonly
reported budget range:
Under $100k
Median budget range:
$1m-$2m

13. Counting all locations where your employer operates,
what is the total number of persons who work there?
Average salary based on company size:
Companies with less than 500 employees: $69,469 Companies with more than 500 employees: $78,120

14. Does your team have a conversion
optimization process you follow?
Who does
optimization in
your organization?

15. Smaller companies (less than 500 employees) are less likely to have a documented/structured
conversion optimization process compared to larger companies (more than 500 employees)
Does your team have a conversion optimization process you follow?
Smaller companies Larger companies
Yes, it is
documented
or structured.
Yes, it is
documented
or structured.
Yes, but it isn’t
documented
or structured.
Yes, but it isn’t
documented
or structured.
No. No.

16. Rate the usefulness (insights you get to take
successful optimization decisions) of your team’s
use of the following:
A/B Testing
Persuasion/Psychology
UX/Design
Copywriting
Digital Analytics
Personalization
Customer Surveys
Website Polls
Mouse Tracking
User Testing

17. Popular optimization job titles:
● “Analyst”
● “Conversion Optimizer”
● “Conversion
Specialist/Consultant/Strategist”
● “CRO Expert/Specialist”
“Digital Marketing
Analyst/Specialist/Consultant”
● “Director of
Optimization/Marketing”
● “E-commerce
Manager/Specialist”
● “Growth Hacker/Head of
Growth”
● “Marketer”, “Marketing
Analyst/Manager”, “Online
Marketer”
● “Optimizer”, “Optimization
Strategist/Specialist”
● “Product Manager”
● “Strategist”
“UX Analyst/Designer”
● “Web Analyst/Strategist”

18. How often do you
meet with others
on your
optimization team
to discuss CRO?
Which metrics does your team use to track CRO success?
Click-through rate, Conversion rate, Bounce rate, Revenue, Form fills/submissions, Google analytics,
Leads/Lead generation, ROI, Sales, Signups,

19. Which of the following tests does your optimization team use?
192 said MVT
53 said Bandit
584 said A/B testing
Approximately how many tests does your team run a month?

20. How are CRO test results typically archived?
Results are archived in the testing tool
Results are not archived at all
Results are exported (full data and variation
screenshots) and are kept in a central repository
Some other method
Use a dedicated testing workflow tool to
archive results

21. How does your optimization team decide what to test?

22. Does your optimization team track the
percentage of winning tests?
Does your optimization team track lift
per successful experiment?

23. Does your optimization team have a
standardized stopping point for A/B
tests?
Are CRO test results shared across your
team?

24. Popular testing tools:
Optimizely
VWO
Google Analytics
Adobe Target
In-House tools
Maxymiser
Monetate
Convert.com
SiteSpect
Webtrends
Other tools

25. Most respondents (64%) do not
implement any kind of web
personalization
Most common personalization techniques:
Location, traffic source, user-based, behavioral, weather-based,
product recommendations, segment based

26. Popular optimization know-how sources:

27. Popular CRO training/conferences in 2015:

28. What does your team optimize?

29. Compared to 2015, how is
conversion optimization
prioritized in your
organization in 2016?
Compared to 2015, how much
budget will your team allocate to
conversion optimization in 2016?

30. Companies who follow a conversion optimization process are
increasing their conversion optimization budgets 3% more than
companies who don’t follow a conversion optimization process.
Companies that follow a conversion
optimization process:
Companies that don’t follow a conversion
optimization process:
Compared to 2015, how much budget will your team allocate to
conversion optimization in 2016?

31. Biggest optimization challenges:

32. Thank you!
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