Conversion work begins with a useful business decision: why do the right customers leave, which obstacle should the team address and how will it know the change helped? These twenty specialists bring different combinations of customer research, copy, UX, analytics and experimentation.
Some work directly with a client; others lead the consultancy through which you would buy a service. Read the engagement boundary alongside the profile. A founder’s reputation and the team assigned to your account are separate parts of the hiring decision.
Compare the twenty options
| Specialist |
Relevant focus |
| Talia Wolf |
Customer research and emotional targeting |
| Rich Page |
Direct specialist conversion research |
| Brian Massey |
Managed testing programs |
| Joanna Wiebe |
Conversion copy and messaging |
| Craig Sullivan |
Experiment design and measurement discipline |
| Jon MacDonald |
Ecommerce journeys and customer experience |
David Spiegel
 |
Product funnels and hands-on implementation |
| Oliver Palmer |
Measurement and experimentation foundations |
| Chris Neumann |
Experimentation across channels and product journeys |
| Martin Stone |
Research-led managed optimization |
| André Morys |
Behavioral design and organizational experimentation |
| Lotte Cornelissen |
Data and psychology in experimentation |
| Michael St Laurent |
Evolutionary redesign through experimentation |
| Tim Stewart |
Analytics, UX and conversion diagnosis |
| Dave Gowans |
Direct expert-led CRO with delivery support |
| Raphael Paulin-Daigle |
Ecommerce offers, journeys and landing pages |
| Khalid Saleh |
Managed research and testing programs |
| Johann van Tonder |
Customer research and ecommerce experimentation |
| Ben Labay |
Experimentation program development |
| Paul Boag |
UX-led conversion strategy |
How we selected these CRO specialists
The earlier recommendations offer a clear purchase around conversion research, a direct practitioner relationship or managed experiment delivery. Wolf leads for understanding customer hesitation; Page is a direct specialist option; Massey’s firm supplies a managed testing team. Wiebe and Sullivan follow for the more specific problems of persuasion and dependable experiment decisions, rather than being interchangeable production teams.
We then compare ecommerce journeys, broader product implementation, measurement and managed programs. Traffic, revenue and delivery requirements matter alongside the practitioner’s experience. A recognizable founder does not establish personal delivery: meet the team and agree who researches, builds and measures. Public service and project accounts support these judgments; historical results remain provider reports, not forecasts.
Choose the engagement model
For direct specialist review, compare Page, Sullivan, Palmer and Stewart. Wolf and Wiebe bring customer research and messaging into the work. Boag and Spiegel connect conversion with the product journey. For a managed program with research, design and development resources, compare the named leaders at Conversion Sciences, The Good, Cro Metrics, Conversion Rate Experts, konversionsKRAFT, Online Dialogue, Conversion, Browser to Buyer, SplitBase, Invesp, AWA and Speero. Each firm appears once.
Talia Wolf is the founder and Chief Optimizer of GetUplift and the creator of its Emotional Targeting Framework. Her firm’s services combine customer research with analytics, session recordings, and expert assessment of the experience. Its published process continues into a prioritized testing schedule and support for implementation. About Talia and GetUplift; GetUplift’s CRO services.
Wolf is our pick for a team that understands the mechanics of its funnel but cannot explain the hesitation behind the numbers. If prospects understand the product yet remain unconvinced, a research project should examine their concerns, desired outcomes, and reasons for choosing an alternative.
Ask how those findings will change a specific page or sequence. The useful deliverable is a connection between what customers say, the proposed experience, and the result the team will measure. GetUplift also publishes a distinct audit offer, so discuss whether research alone or continued support fits the team’s capacity. GetUplift’s service overview.
2. Rich Page: work directly with the person reviewing the funnel
Rich Page explicitly positions his CRO service around recommendations and A/B-test ideas delivered by him. His stated research methods include customer surveys and user testing, alongside review of the current conversion experience.
He is a useful comparison for a company that already has designers or developers but wants a specialist to identify what is worth changing. A direct practitioner relationship can make the reasoning easier to discuss: which customer objection does the proposed change address, and what observation supports it?
Bring the funnel, the conversion volume and the questions your team keeps debating. Ask which research he would commission before recommending tests and how he will prioritize the findings. Scope experiment development and statistical analysis explicitly; a strong review still needs a reliable path into production and a defensible readout.
Brian Massey is the founder and CEO of Conversion Sciences. The firm’s public description emphasizes measurement through to revenue, and its managed service covers strategy, setup, testing, and analysis. Its team includes conversion specialists and developers. Conversion Sciences’ team and approach; managed conversion optimization services.
Massey is our pick when a business wants to discuss an ongoing CRO program with a firm that can supply delivery capacity. This is relevant when opportunities remain untested because internal developers have other priorities, or when a marketing team lacks someone to own the complete testing cycle.
Ask how the proposed team will work with your release process and revenue reporting. Get explicit about which changes it can implement and which require your engineers. Since this is a firm engagement, confirm Massey’s role and the people responsible for your account. A recognizable founder and a well-staffed project are separate things to evaluate.
The current service overview describes the managed program’s best fit as at least 300 monthly conversions or $100,000 in monthly revenue. Audits and fractional support are separate routes for different volume and delivery needs.
Joanna Wiebe founded Copyhackers and writes about her consultancy practice through messaging and performance copy. Her public account of the business connects its origins in startup copywriting with listening to customers and finding the right message. Joanna Wiebe’s background and consultancy.
She is the specialist to consider when people reach the page but still cannot confidently answer: why this product, why this plan, and why now? Our fit recommendation is especially relevant when a team has enough product knowledge to overexplain features while leaving purchase questions unanswered.
Bring the offer, customer language, objections, and the exact action the page should support. Discuss messaging strategy and copy ownership together. A new headline will have limited use if the pricing explanation and the sales follow-up contradict it. Also distinguish a team workshop from an engagement that includes writing and revision; choose the scope around what your team needs to produce.
Craig Sullivan’s public profile connects his work with Optimise Or Die, while his own writing covers conversion optimization, UX, and analytics. His Hypothesis Kit asks teams to identify the research behind a proposed change, the people affected, and the expected outcome. It also asks them to consider negative effects alongside the primary metric. Craig Sullivan’s profile; Hypothesis Kit V4.
Our fit recommendation is a team that already runs experiments but struggles to make dependable decisions from them. More tests will not settle an argument if the team never agreed on what it expected to learn.
For an initial discussion, bring a recent experiment from idea to decision. Show the observation that prompted it, how the team chose the audience, and what happened after the result arrived. Ask what should change in that process. Sullivan’s published framework gives you a practical way to assess that conversation before agreeing on a larger engagement.
Jon MacDonald is the founder and president of The Good and writes about CRO, UX, and digital journeys. The Good’s optimization program begins with an audit and can include customer journey mapping, prototyping, experimentation, and redesign work. It addresses both ecommerce and product marketing teams. Jon MacDonald’s background; The Good’s optimization program.
Our fit recommendation is an ecommerce team whose conversion problem spans several steps of the buying experience. Customers may need help choosing the right product, understanding an option, or feeling ready to complete a purchase. A journey review can make those connections visible before the team commissions another redesign.
Bring questions about product selection, the path to checkout, and what happens after purchase. Ask how the engagement will distinguish an inconvenient experience from a lack of demand. For work through The Good, confirm who will lead the research and how MacDonald will participate.
David Spiegel is an independent product and growth consultant whose work connects customer decisions with product implementation. His current CV describes pricing, plan selection, intake, checkout and subscription work at 5 Axis Health. It reports higher conversion and average order value from tested changes to the purchase flow. These are provider-reported historical results, not independently audited predictions.
That makes him a relevant alternative when a conversion problem crosses the offer, interface and operational journey. His Chargerless consulting account includes a homepage redesign and tracking work, while Memelord involved usage analysis and a prioritized improvement plan. The scope differs from hiring a staffed agency to run a large testing program.
Ask for a concrete first project, the baseline it will use and which changes he would own. Confirm whether the assignment needs diagnosis, design, implementation or a combination. The public work supports purchase-journey and product decisions; it does not establish specialist payment-gateway engineering or an automatically available production team.
8. Oliver Palmer: repair the measurement behind conversion decisions
Oliver Palmer offers quantitative reviews, analytics audits, measurement strategy and experimentation strategy. His public work includes measurement infrastructure, customer-data collection and establishing experimentation frameworks, with delivery partners named where relevant.
Consider him when the team cannot trust its conversion reports or draw a clear conclusion from a test. A missing event, inconsistent customer identity or poorly defined outcome can make a persuasive dashboard misleading. Fixing those foundations can be the highest-value conversion project before another variant is built.
Bring examples of decisions the current data cannot support. Ask which tracking defects are material, how repairs will be checked and what the future experiment process should require. His offer is strongest around analysis and decision infrastructure; specify any design or development work separately in the proposal.
9. Chris Neumann: a CRO program with supporting disciplines
Chris Neumann founded Cro Metrics, whose current practice extends website experimentation into paid media, lifecycle marketing, analytics and data infrastructure. Its team includes strategists, engineers and design specialists.
This is a relevant option when the conversion problem crosses the boundary between the campaign, landing page and subsequent customer journey. A single page test can improve one metric while a mismatched audience or follow-up flow absorbs the gain. A multidisciplinary engagement can investigate those connections.
The buying route is Cro Metrics’ team; a founder profile does not establish that Neumann will run every experiment personally. Ask for the named strategist and delivery team, then define which surfaces the program owns. Require clear business outcomes and an account of how experiments in different channels will be evaluated together.
10. Martin Stone: an established team for conversion research and testing
Martin Stone is CEO of Conversion Rate Experts, which publishes a research-led, A/B-tested approach to improving websites. The current company page identifies Stone and CTO Dave Redfern as its leaders and describes a distributed specialist team.
Consider this route when the company wants a managed CRO relationship rather than a one-off critique. The central question is what prevents the intended customer from completing a valuable action, followed by changes the team can test. That scope can suit complex buying journeys with several stakeholders and technical dependencies.
Engagements are with Conversion Rate Experts, so ask which practitioner will lead your account and how Stone participates. Request an example connecting customer research to an experiment decision. Establish the implementation boundaries, expected learning cadence and definition of commercial success before comparing the firm’s case-study results with your own opportunity.
Its current strategy-session qualification is more than $1 million in online revenue or external funding. Screen that requirement before assuming the firm is a fit for a small conversion project.
11. André Morys: connect customer behavior with a testing program
konversionsKRAFT, whose team identifies André Morys as board chair, works across conversion optimization, personalization and customer experience. Its public approach connects behavioral understanding with experimentation and the organizational ability to keep improving the digital journey.
It is a relevant comparison when a company has a testing tool but struggles to choose consequential experiments or act on what it learns. The problem may require research into customer motivation as well as a clearer operating model for the team. Behavioral ideas become useful when the business can turn them into a testable change.
The service is delivered through konversionsKRAFT; confirm Morys’s role and the specialists assigned to the account. Ask how the proposed work separates a plausible psychological explanation from an observed customer problem. Agree which research, design and experiment-development capabilities your team receives and which it must supply.
12. Lotte Cornelissen: develop an experimentation practice with behavioral depth
Online Dialogue, whose current team names Lotte Cornelissen as managing director, combines conversion optimization with qualitative research, product experimentation and program development. Its current service menu also includes training, automation and customer-journey discovery using process mining.
This makes the practice relevant when the business wants a better system for learning, especially across a journey where users take several routes. The useful work may be identifying an overlooked path, understanding the motivation behind it and deciding which intervention to test. More experiments are useful only if they answer decisions the company needs to make.
Discuss the engagement through Online Dialogue and confirm Cornelissen’s role in the relationship and the assigned delivery team. Ask whether your immediate need is a managed program, research on a particular journey or development of the internal team’s capabilities. Request an example of how qualitative findings become a test hypothesis and how the team handles an inconclusive result.
13. Michael St Laurent: use experiments to decide what a redesign should become
Michael St Laurent’s work in Conversion’s weBoost case study discusses how different page changes affected the buying journey. The account includes a losing variation as well as successful changes, giving readers a useful look at how the team interpreted customer behavior.
He is worth considering through Conversion when the brief involves a redesign that the business wants to evaluate incrementally. A visually convincing layout can conceal a weaker purchase path; isolating changes can reveal which part helped and which part hurt. The case is more useful for that reasoning than as a prediction of a new client’s result.
Ask who will lead the engagement and what St Laurent’s involvement would be. Set the sequence of redesign decisions, the conversion measures and any constraints on experimentation before production begins. Include downstream value so the team can judge a change beyond clicks.
Tim Stewart’s trsdigital is a data consultancy whose core services include analytics, conversion optimization, UX and business intelligence. The practice describes project and retainer engagements, with Stewart supported by selected contractors and partner agencies when the work needs them.
Consider him when the company knows a digital journey is underperforming but has competing explanations. It may need an analytics investigation before a redesign, or a combined review of behavior and business performance. The published scope supports that diagnostic role without forcing every problem into a testing calendar.
Bring the commercial decision and the reports currently used to make it. Ask which analysis could change the team’s priorities and how any proposed intervention would be evaluated. Confirm who supplies research, design and experiment development, particularly when a project draws on additional specialists.
15. Dave Gowans: a direct specialist backed by an implementation team
Dave Gowans, Browser to Buyer’s founder and Director of Conversion, remains involved in client work according to the firm’s team page. His stated areas include SaaS, technology, comparison sites and ecommerce, with in-house design, development and analytics support.
The firm’s CRO offer connects research with building and running experiments. That makes Gowans a useful candidate when the buyer wants direct specialist judgment and also needs people to produce the changes. It avoids a common handoff problem where a research report waits for an already-full engineering backlog.
Ask who will be your day-to-day expert and which technical dependencies remain with your company. Bring the site’s conversion volume and profit model, then agree on the decisions the first experiments will answer. Keep paid acquisition changes and product changes distinguishable when interpreting the results. Its published fit excludes entry-level work below £1 million in revenue. Full-service programs target roughly 100,000 monthly visitors or 1,000 conversions; landing-page work has a separate 50,000-targeted-visitor minimum. Establish that fit before discussing a program.
16. Raphael Paulin-Daigle: conversion work connected to the ecommerce offer
SplitBase, founded by Raphael Paulin-Daigle, combines full-site conversion optimization, conversion-focused redesigns and landing-page work. Its method examines behavioral patterns, customer language and purchasing resistance before testing changes to offers, journeys and page experiences.
Consider this team when the conversion issue involves more than layout. A subscription option, bundle or product-discovery path can change whether the offer makes sense to the shopper, as well as what the shopper buys. The firm’s ecommerce focus is relevant to a brand evaluating conversion rate alongside order value and customer value.
Confirm Paulin-Daigle’s involvement and the team assigned to strategy, research and implementation. Ask how a proposed test will account for margin, discounts and subscriptions. A higher order value can be useful, but the program should explain whether it produces better economics after the purchase.
17. Khalid Saleh: a multidisciplinary conversion program through Invesp
Invesp, whose co-founder and CEO is Khalid Saleh, publishes a managed CRO service with research, analytics, design, development and testing resources. Its current site addresses ecommerce, SaaS and lead-generation businesses, which makes the engagement worth comparing when the company needs a team to carry the optimization work.
The useful question is how that team will investigate your specific customer and business model. A lead-generation funnel needs to track lead quality and eventual sales; an ecommerce journey needs to account for the value and cost of the resulting orders. The same headline conversion measure can hide very different outcomes.
Discuss Saleh’s role directly and meet the practitioner responsible for the account. Request a research plan, an example test specification and the rules used to interpret results. Read commercial terms separately from the methodology and make the expected implementation responsibilities explicit. Invesp’s current fit starts at about $1 million in revenue and 30,000 monthly visitors; its smaller Foundation Program is by application. Establish those conditions before commissioning a program.
18. Johann van Tonder: improve a program or build internal capability
Johann van Tonder is CEO of AWA Digital. The firm describes a customer-research-led approach to experimentation, with creative and optimization specialists. Its service overview distinguishes end-to-end CRO from helping a company develop its own processes and capabilities.
That distinction makes him a useful comparison for an ecommerce business deciding whether to outsource the program or strengthen an internal one. Both can work, but they require different staffing and handoffs. A program can fail because the experiments are weak, or because nobody can turn research into a release.
Ask for a view of the current constraint before buying a testing cadence. Confirm van Tonder’s involvement, the senior specialist assigned and how the work will use customer research. Agree whether the long-term outcome is a continuing managed relationship or an internal team that can run the practice itself.
19. Ben Labay: connect research with an operating experimentation system
Ben Labay at Speero combines a research and statistics background with customer-experience and UX work. Speero’s current services cover experimentation, research, analytics and engineering, with support for how the program operates as well as what it tests.
He is relevant when an organization needs to mature beyond a collection of isolated conversion tests. The brief may include how opportunities are researched, how teams prioritize them and how decisions are made after results arrive. That is especially useful when several product or marketing teams share the same customers.
Ask how Labay will participate and which specialists will do the ongoing work. Bring examples of stalled experiments and disputed readouts. The proposal should connect process changes with a concrete customer journey, then define the responsibilities, instrumentation and decision rules needed to improve it.
Speero’s current CRO program targets at least 100,000 monthly unique visitors, with a full program from $10,000 a month for 12 months. Research and project work are separately scoped; smaller buyers should compare those routes.
20. Paul Boag: improve the customer journey behind the conversion
Paul Boag publishes UX and conversion-strategy consulting. His practice connects customer research, digital experience and commercial goals, making him a useful comparison when a conversion issue is rooted in the wider journey rather than a single page element.
Consider him when users struggle to understand the offer, find what they need or move between channels. The initial assignment might be an expert assessment or research-led direction for a team that can design and build. That is a different need from outsourcing a high-volume testing operation.
Bring a real customer task and the points where users abandon it. Ask which research would help separate a navigation problem from a proposition problem, and what the engagement will leave your team able to change. Specify design production, engineering and test operation separately rather than inferring them from a broad strategy title.
Start with a decision and measure the business result
Write a short brief before requesting proposals. Define the audience, the action that matters, and the business consequence of that action. Include your existing research and the team’s ability to build changes. Ask each specialist what they would need to learn first and what decision the first phase should make possible.
Set a primary outcome and watch for unwanted effects. A checkout change might increase completed orders while reducing order value; a signup change might attract more accounts that never activate. Sullivan’s Hypothesis Kit is useful here because it explicitly includes secondary outcomes and potential negative effects.
Agree on the analysis before launching an experiment. That includes the eligible audience, success metric, duration, and rule for making a decision. If traffic cannot support the proposed test, ask for a research or usability phase instead. Require the final handoff to distinguish observations, experimental findings, and recommendations. Those distinctions help your next product decision long after the engagement ends.
Sources
- About GetUplift - Conversion Optimization Services
- Conversion optimization services (CRO services)
- GetUplift - Customer-First Conversion Optimization
- CRO and A/B Testing Services From an Expert
- Conversion Experts - Consultants That Deliver Better ConversionsScroll to top
- Best Fully-Managed Conversion Optimization Services | CRO ServicesScroll to top
- Conversion Sciences — current service formats and qualification
- About Joanna (Jo) Wiebe, your messaging strategist
- Craig Sullivan - Optimise Or Die Ltd. | LinkedIn
- Hypothesis Kit V4
- Digital Journey, UX, CRO & Optimization Expert, Author, and Speaker – Jon MacDonald
- Digital Experience Optimization Program™ by The Good
- David Spiegel — product and growth lead
- David Spiegel — current CV and consulting work
- Oliver Palmer | Consulting
- Cro Metrics: Meet the team
- Cro Metrics: About the company
- Conversion rate optimization agency | Conversion Rate Experts
- Conversion Rate Experts — CRO services and strategy-session qualification
- konversionsKRAFT – Conversion-Optimierung, Personalisierung & CX
- Wer wir sind – Das Team von konversionsKRAFT
- Online Dialogue: Experimentation and conversion services
- Online Dialogue: Our team
- Michael St Laurent: public services and work
- About Us | trsdigital
- Meet the team - Browser to Buyer
- Browser to Buyer | Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) Agency for eCommerce, SaaS, Lead Generation & B2B - Browser to Buyer
- Ecommerce CRO Agency for 8-9 Figure DTC Brands | SplitBase
- Home CRO Diagnostic
- Invesp: Conversion optimization agency
- Invesp: About the CRO experts
- About AWA Digital | AWA Digital
- AWA Digital: Conversion optimization agency
- About Us | Speero US, UK, Au
- Growth Engineering Agency – AI Experimentation – Speero
- Speero — CRO program and separate research routes
- UX Consultant And CRO Strategist: Paul Boag
Frequently asked questions
What does a conversion rate optimization specialist do?
A CRO specialist investigates why visitors fail to complete a useful action, such as a purchase, qualified inquiry, or product signup. The work can include customer research, analytics, copy, UX changes, and experiments. Agree on the business outcome and who will implement changes before choosing an engagement.
Should I hire a CRO consultant or a CRO agency?
A consultant can suit a team that wants direct specialist judgment and already has implementation capacity. An agency or specialist consultancy can supply several disciplines for an ongoing program. With a founder-led firm, ask who will do the research, build experiments, and review results, and how involved the named founder will be.
Can a low-traffic website benefit from conversion optimization?
Yes. Customer interviews, usability sessions, clearer offers, and repairs to broken flows can be useful before an A/B test is practical. A specialist should assess your conversion volume and the size of the effect you need to detect before proposing a testing calendar. A before-and-after increase alone does not establish what caused it.
