I’ve been in the conversion optimization industry for three years now.
In 2013, I launched Omniconvert, a conversion rate optimization tool meant to help marketers around the world achieve their conversion goals.
Since then, our team and clients tested over 4 billion visits. By analyzing their results and looking at the trending graphs of our 10,000 users database, I have discovered the truth about the market of CRO tools.
Want to find it out?
I’m willing to share it with you in this article.
So, let’s start.
1. The tool means nothing without the human knowledge
Imagine that you’re buying for yourself a chef knife, but you haven’t cooked anything in your life. You cannot do anything with it until you learn how to cook.
Likewise, in conversion rate optimization, if you don’t have enough knowledge, you will not know what to do with a tool.
Observing our in-house CRO team growing at Omniconvert, I realized that optimizers are hard to find and that it takes time to train great optimizers. Here are just a few traits that optimizers should have:
- optimizers have to be multidisciplinary
- they should have analytical thinking
- they should understand the human behavior
- they should have basic HTML and CSS knowledge
- they understand statistics
As Peep Laja, one of the industry’s thought leaders wrote in a detailed article on this topic, it’s important to learn how to attract great optimizers to your company. Because they’re the ones who will bring results, not the tools.
As you also see, having a CRO tool is not on the list of skills that optimizers should have. Instead, if you become a great optimizer and manage to build a testing culture in your organization, then you will know which tool is right for you.
2. The existing tools have a low adoption rate
According to VentureBeat’s Report on the CRO tools published earlier in 2016, the overall adoption rate for tools is low, but it has a significant room to grow. As you see in the graph below, the internet companies aren’t investing enough in tools yet.
The low adoption of CRO tools could mean two things for companies looking for tools for their optimization program:
i) The CRO tools are not so good
When I analyzed the usage of Omniconvert vs. its direct competitors, Optimizely and VWO, I found out that a lot of people left the two companies that were the first to develop split testing tools on the market.
Here’s the comparison between the usage of the three tools mentioned above in a 3 months period:
[su_table]
| Company | % of websites that keep the tracking code | Variation 3 months |
| Omniconvert | 0.47% | 5,09% |
| Optimizely | 0.35% | -1,61% |
| VWO | 0.1% | -17,92% |
[/su_table]
As you can see, the number of live websites that use Optimizely and VWO has decreased, which means people are not satisfied with what they have.
Satisfaction stays at the intersection of the marketer’s needs and the tool’s capabilities. If there is a discrepancy between the two, then people become dissatisfied. This I think is the cause of people leaving the first testing tools that appeared on the market.
There is a place for new and better tools like Omniconvert that offer the same features or even more features at a more affordable price.
As a user on Quora commented about Optimizely’s pricing changes, companies that want to start optimization programs need tools that allow them to LEARN.
Well, Serdar, here we are. We are the testing tool that offers more than just a visual editor and doesn’t charge high amounts of money for what it offers.
In the second phase of the analysis conducted on Omniconvert’s competitors, I looked at the customer churn rate. The table below shows that people are not satisfied with their tools’ capabilities.
[su_table]
| Company | Churn rate |
| Omniconvert | 52,27% |
| Optimizely | 64,85% |
| VWO | 89,15% |
[/su_table]
ii) The CRO tools users don’t have enough knowledge yet
Conversion rate optimization is still a very young industry. As the State of Conversion Optimization Report published by ConversionXL shows, people learn optimization from blogs, courses, webinars, and other similar places.
The interest in optimization has grown in the last few years, but it’s still early to call companies around the world mature in terms of knowledge about CRO.
Most of the companies out there don’t have people trained to do optimization. As I said earlier, optimizers know a bit of analytics, a bit of copywriting, or a bit of psychology. But until they become mature optimizers, the company must spend money and time training them.
The lack of knowledge of the CRO people is the cause of a very common issue: companies purchase CRO tools, but if no one knows how to use them, after a few months they give up.
3. Some tools are overpriced
As the G2Crwowd’s report on the best CRO Tools shows, marketing specialists who are looking to purchase a conversion rate optimization tool look for essential features like A/B testing, personalization, qualitative research tools, and reporting.
If you do research on all the available CRO tools on the market, you’ll realize that the companies that offer complete solutions are usually very expensive.
- Qubit: $60,000 per year paid upfront
- Adobe Test & Target: requests upfront payment for 3 years
On the other hand, if you’re trying to purchase separate tools for A/B testing, surveys, and personalization, you have to pay more and use more snippets that have a negative effect on your website’s loading time.
For instance, if you want to get Qualaroo for surveys, Evergage for overlayers and Optimizely for A/B testing, you’ll end up paying a minimum fee of $500 per month.
Here’s the breakdown:
- Qualaroo: $199 per month for a “Startup Plan”
- Evergage pricing is around $3,000-$8,000/year, so the minimum price per month would be around $250
- Optimizely offers a “Pay as you go” option that’s $49 per 1,000 tested visitors
Instead of using separate conversion optimization tools to run a healthy optimization program, why would you not use Omniconvert? I am biased, but this deal is not to be missed.
Omniconvert offers you all the tools you need at an affordable price. Our plans start from $59 and it includes all the features you need for an optimization program: A/B testing, personalization, segmentation, and surveys.
Visit our pricing page to see all the plans and sign up for a trial. You won’t regret it!
