Why Most Brands Are Doing CRO Wrong

Unpopular Take: Most Brands (and Agencies) Are Doing CRO Wrong

It’s not about testing button colors or swapping out photos.

Sure, there’s some value in isolated tests around styling, layout, or image choices. I’m not here to completely dismiss that.

But focusing solely on those details ignores the bigger picture of what you're actually optimizing for.

Let’s break this down.

How Does Traditional CRO Work (and Where Does It Go Wrong)?

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) typically centers around optimizing a single metric: conversion rate. But conversion rate alone is a poor optimization target.

You can have an impressive conversion rate while running a failing business.

For example, turn off all paid ads and only email your most loyal customers—your conversion rate will spike. You’ll look like a genius... for about two weeks. Then volume drops, you miss contribution margin targets, and suddenly you don’t have the cash flow to cover your expenses.

Optimizing around a single KPI is one of the most dangerous strategies you can take on as an operator or founder.

As the old saying goes: When a metric becomes an outcome, it ceases to be a good metric.

• Want a higher open rate? Only send to 0.1% of your most engaged email subscribers.
• Want a higher AOV? Force customers to buy bundles.
• Want more customers? Offer 80% discounts.

It's very easy in this way to get caught up in optimizing for a single outcome without fully realizing the impact it has on the rest of your business.

At Aplo Group, we like to say: There’s a data point for everything in e-commerce. So it’s no surprise people obsess over metrics and optimization. But anchoring your strategy to a narrow set of metrics—without analyzing the broader business impact—is a slippery and often risky slope.

Multi-Variate Modeling Is Hard (and Traditional Sensitivity Analysis Can Mislead)

Running a business would be much easier if you only had to worry about one variable.

But businesses are complex systems—and complex systems defy simplicity.

So what do we do?

As founders, marketers, CFOs, analysts, and media buyers, we simplify. We create frameworks that aim to represent complex systems using a narrow set of high-impact constraints.

In a recent blog, I wrote about the strengths and major pitfalls of traditional sensitivity analysis in financial modeling—especially how forecasters often make flawed assumptions when building models.

When you sensitize to a single variable, you assume it can change without impacting anything else. That’s rarely true.

Say you sensitize Contribution Margin to New Customer AOV. The model might show a clean, proportional CM increase with each bump in AOV.

But how do you know your CVR will hold? That aMER won’t flex with a changing offer strategy? That your product mix—and COGS—will remain consistent?

The best operators know that’s not how the world works. You don’t magically get a better AOV just because you typed in a bigger number.

In practice, you might increase AOV through a more premium product mix—but that likely means:

• Lower CVR
• Worse new customer acquisition efficiency (aMER)
• Higher COGS due to a remixed (and costlier) SKU assortment

This is why objectives alone are not enough. You need a strategy. More importantly, you need specific, executable actions tied to that strategy.

Everyone wants better AOV—with all the upside and none of the downside. But that’s not how it works.

How the Best Brands Approach CRO

One of the most common complaints we hear from brands is that CRO efforts yield little value despite the time, money, and energy invested.

Why? Because most brands—or the agencies they hire—approach CRO with a "spray and pray" mentality.

They queue up dozens of site tests and roll them out in 1–2 week cycles, testing variables one by one to try to isolate impact. This strategy sounds smart in theory. But in practice, it often leads brands down a time-consuming, low-impact path.

The problem? The variables being tested often don’t move the needle—or worse, they work against broader business goals.

The best brands don’t view CRO as just optimizing for CVR, RPS, or AOV. They zoom out and focus on the following:

• Offer strategy
• New vs. returning customer offers
• On-site subscriber capture
• Gross margin profile
• Offer placement and user journey
• Merchandising and product sorting
• Upsell/cross-sell strategy
• Product affinity and downstream metrics (LTV, GPLTV, CMLTV)

That’s not to say metrics like CVR and AOV don’t matter. They do. But they’re a starting point, not the whole picture.

Without a robust framework to understand how marketing or on-site changes impact these metrics, it’s nearly impossible to craft strategies that actually move the business forward—not just move a number in isolation.

How Should 8-Figure Brands Think About CRO?

Most brands don’t need more visual tweaks to their storefront.

Unless you’re in the middle of a rebrand, platform migration, creative overhaul, or DTC strategy shift, changes like button color or layout are likely to deliver minimal value.

The real impact? It comes from aligning offer and product strategy. Two sides of the same coin.

How you price, how you present value, and which products you showcase will have the biggest impact on performance.

From our perspective, here are 5 actionable CRO strategies for brands doing $5–50M:

1. Product Mix Analysis

Understand your product mix in context with your inventory. Identify what drives revenue and contribution margin—and what doesn’t. Then merchandise accordingly across your homepage, collections, product pages, and sales funnel.

2. Margin Profile Analysis

You can’t set smart marketing or financial goals without knowing where your profit comes from.

This analysis tells you:

• Which products can be discounted (and how much)
• Which products to leave full price
• Which slow movers to bundle with fast movers
• Where you’ve outgrown generic “10% off sitewide” promos

3. Price Testing

Want to truly move AOV—or better yet, Contribution Margin? Run price and offer tests.

This helps you identify the best combo of Price, CVR, and Gross Profit Per Session. It’s simple, high-leverage, and often overlooked.

4. Value Offers

Buy more, save more. Threshold offers. BOGOs. The list goes on.

How you merchandise your store goes beyond which products are shown on the homepage. Value offers are a clear way to deliver a discount while incentivizing customers into a higher purchase.

Offer the single item at full price, or buy the 3 pack and get 30% off. Hint: build your PDPs in such a way that your best offer is your default variant. 

5. Post-Purchase Upsells

The closest thing to pure upside. The order is already placed—any post-purchase offer is bonus profit.

Align these offers with email flows, test aggressively, and capitalize on the momentum. Since it's post-purchase, you’re not risking CVR. It’s just smart economics.

Final Thoughts

CRO can be incredibly high-leverage. But only if it’s done with the right objectives and strategic clarity.

In a world of nearly unlimited optimization paths, the key is knowing where the real value lies—and pursuing tests that impact your business, not just your metrics.

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