Will This Finally Be The Year Of Conversion Optimization?

I remember reading in 2010 that it was going to be the year of conversion optimization then it didn’t happen. Then I waited patiently, hoping, but we came up with a goose egg then too. So now we’re two years down the road from that original prediction and call me naive or foolishly optimistic but I’m hopeful that we’ve finally got it together to make 2013 the year where CRO (conversion rate optimization) becomes the new SEO.

There have been some signs that this might be the year or at least we’re getting closer and heading in the right direction anyway.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen a number of signs indicating the field is growing, although oftentimes I feel like the CRO boat has sailed, not that many people are onboard, and the ship is realistically probably still in the doc and boarding passengers.

Some of the indicators that I’ve seen that point to some glimmers of hope include:

1. An increase in the number of conversion optimization books that have hit the market and there are a couple that is expected to hit publishing release dates soon from a few different agencies.
2. The integration of Google Experiments into the main framework of Google Analytics from Google Optimizer.
3. The growth of do-it-yourself testing tools like Visual Website Optimizer, Unbounce, Convert, Optimizely, and many others.
4. An increase in job postings for conversion optimization roles. This is a very recent change I’ve seen, so perhaps companies are starting to get more advanced.
5. An increase in the number of agencies and CRO service offerings overall.
6. The cost of targeted traffic is rising and the difficulty of ranking organically for traffic has been getting increasingly more and more difficult.
7. The growth of attendance of The Conversion Conference as well as a few competitor summits focusing on CRO (Traffic And Conversion Summit)

Granted I believe we’re still in the infant stage of CRO but I feel the ship has at least gotten out of dry dock and we’re gearing up to set sail, hopefully, this will be ‘The Year’ but I wouldn’t be surprised if it really took till 2015.

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