Most digital marketeers are currently trying to navigate through the rapidly changing world of online marketing. There are numerous aspects that need to be considered when working on a sustainable strategy for your websites and apps: the changes in information retrieval and online search, as well as the new ways of website and content generation. In this blog post, I would like to emphasize why I think this is the perfect time for a revival of good old Conversion Rate Optimization as part of Digital Marketing Strategies. I know, “revival” is not quite the right word. For most companies, CRO has always been an important part of their efforts to drive KPIs on their websites. But I feel like right now, many marketeers underestimate the role of CRO within the changing environment.
Just Because Users Come to Your Website, Doesn’t Mean They’re Taking Any Action at All
GAIO, AEO, LLMO - there are a lot of words out there for the new discipline emerging to optimize your websites towards the visibility and relevance within LLMs. Now, if you have a transactional website and you’re good at - enter your preferred acronym here - this might lead to your website getting more qualified traffic. Qualified, in this case, means traffic that is already in the state of performing an action, like a purchase or a form submission on your website. The problem is, just as with SEO before, that LLMs can send a huge amount of users to your website, but if the site isn’t optimized towards a conversion, you’ll gain no value from your LLM optimization. So, from this perspective - and I hope this isn’t new to anyone - there’s still the need to optimize your website for traffic coming from any source to actually convert in the end. That’s an old story.
Now, besides the change on the source side, we also face significant changes on websites themselves. There are hundreds of thousands of AI tools out there taking over parts or sometimes the whole process of design, website development, and content creation. With apps like lovable, for example, you get a ready-to-use webpage from one single prompt. ChatGPT generates the related content and assets et voilà: your website is live within a couple of hours. Of course, most companies are not moving the whole website building process towards AI, but most of them are at least testing on partially shifting in that direction.
This is where, in my opinion, the value of CRO comes into play: although some LLMs are unbelievably good at imitating human tone of voice and creating designs that match our needs, there is still very little data on the actual impact on user behavior and, in the end, conversion rates.
CRO as the Bridge Between Automation and Actual Performance
This is exactly why we need to bring CRO back to the center of our strategies. While AI can speed up processes, generate scalable content, and automate UX patterns, it cannot replace real-world user behavior data. CRO closes that gap by continuously testing, analyzing, and iterating, based on how users actually interact with your digital assets. In a world where everything from content to design can be machine-generated, CRO becomes the only way to validate what really works.
And it’s not just about button colors or headline variants anymore. Today’s CRO uses AI-powered tools itself - think automated testing, heatmaps enhanced by machine learning, or predictive UX optimization. So it’s not “AI vs CRO” - it’s “AI plus CRO”. One generates, the other optimizes. Together, they create value.
Why Should CRO be on Your Roadmap - Now
If your 2025 roadmap includes investments in content automation, SEO, or AI-driven customer experiences (and let’s be honest, most do), CRO should be right there alongside them. Not as an afterthought. Not as a side project. But as a core discipline that ensures all your shiny new tools and strategies move the needle.
We’ve seen it too often: companies double down on content production and traffic acquisition, but overlook the step where value is actually created - the conversion. In the best case, this leads to mediocre ROI. In the worst case, it results in bloated tech stacks and missed opportunities.
CRO is not just a tactic. It’s a mindset shift. One that puts users, data, and outcomes back at the heart of digital marketing.
