5 Courses to Build Your CRO Fundamentals

I’ve recently completed the Conversion Rate Optimization Minidegree by the CXL Institute. It consists of 33 courses and 86 hours of content.

It covers topics loved by any CRO under the sun such as conversion research, copywriting, web analytics, A/B testing, and how to grow and scale web experimentation teams inside an organization, or your own CRO agency.

If you’re a CRO practitioner that wants to up your ante or someone who wants to start your career in CRO, I’ve listed below five courses out of thirty-three that can take you to the next step.

Here we go:

Product Messaging by Momoko Price

If you are confused about:

• How to start your conversion research??
• What framework/process to follow?
• How to synthesize your conversion research for writing better copy?
• How to design a landing page?
• How to decide what to write on a landing page?

… then Momoko’s course on Product Messaging is one for you.

She was one of the most engaging instructors among others. Not only she shares her process to build better landing pages but also a lot of ready-to-use templates. These templates make it easy for anyone to gather and synthesize conversion research.?

Plus, you will learn how to use spreadsheets and pivot tables to create a landing page. Isn’t it cool?

Landing Page Optimization by Michael Aagaard

While Momoko’s course covers processes and tactics to conduct user research, copywriting, and building landing pages, Michael’s course on Landing Page Optimization will offer strategies and tactics that you can follow after your landing page is up.

From Michael, you will learn processes:

• for analyzing your landing pages,
• for conducting appropriate research
• For selecting and applying the right optimization tactics
• Fo getting into user psychology,
• For running quantitative and qualitative conversion research

The two courses are complementary to each other and cover some similar topics. You will understand how you can achieve different goals using similar research methods.

I personally believe that anyone who wants to get better at building and optimizing landing pages must enroll in these two courses.??

Heuristic Analysis frameworks for conversion optimization audits by André Morys

If you are into conversion optimization or copywriting, you understand the importance of heuristic analysis.?

It is the fastest way to find hypotheses to test and optimize a website. It can also overcome some of the shortcomings of user research as well and fills some of those gaps.?

Most importantly, heuristic analysis can save your days when you have to optimize a website with a low traffic/low conversion rate.

And André's course is a fantastic one. He shares his seven-step framework to run heuristic audits. Then he shows you how to apply each step of the framework using a bank's website throughout the course.

Also, André's heuristic model is a hybrid.

It covers other conversion models like The Lift Model, Rubicon Model, Limbic Map, Kano Model, Solution Selling, and his experience of running optimization campaigns and testing.?

Find André's course here: Heuristic Analysis Frameworks for CRO

A/B Testing Mastery by Ton Wessling

Ton Wesseling's course of A/B Testing Mastery lives up to its title.

This course is phenomenal! And I think this could be the best course out there on A/B testing.

Ton starts the course by going over the history of A/B testing and then he takes you on a long journey of 18 sessions where he shares:

• How to plan a test?
• How to run a test?
• Different statistical principles
• Common pitfalls and thinking patterns to avoid in A/B testing,
• Tools for better pre and post-test calculations and analysis,
• Testing math, pre-test planning, testing errors, and quality assurance
• How to do the calculation for a business case
• When to use Bayesian or Frequentist statistics?
• And many other things…?

Advance Experimentation by Chad Sanderson

Chad Sanderson's course on Advanced Experimentation Analysis is designed to inspire you to analyze your data yourself rather than relying only on the testing tools. This way you gain more insights than anyone who relies on a tool.

During the course, he walks you through different statistical techniques, shares how you can build custom metrics, and shows how powerful R Studio can be to gain more insights

Personally, I found Chad to be an awesome instructor. He inspired me to explore more statistical models and techniques. I came to understand how important marketing data analysis is for a business.

Chad gives different examples of how one combines R programming and statistical techniques to understand their data better and run more offline experiments.

I was blown away when I found that I can use segmented time series analysis to run experiments without a control. Also when I found that I run offline experiments to find which Sales pitch or deck is working better.?

Simply put, he helped me broaden my understanding of experimentation and its impacts. Now I know that experimentation is more than only A/B testing.?

***

I hope you liked the list.?

The first three provide you with the skills to conduct better user research and build and optimize landing pages. The other two courses are great from an A/B testing standpoint.?

These five courses are not the holy grail of everything to do with copywriting, landing page design, and A/B testing.?

But these are the five best, to begin with, if you are confused. Once you start, you find the way on your own.?