# CRO Methodology

> Conversion rate optimization methodology — an AI agent skill based on *Making Websites Win* by Karl Blanks & Ben Jesson.

Published 2026-02-19 · Updated 2026-08-17 · Sales & Persuasion · Free and MIT-licensed
Canonical: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/cro-methodology/
Source: https://github.com/wondelai/skills/tree/main/cro-methodology

**Install:** `npx skills add wondelai/skills/cro-methodology --global`

## What is the CRO Methodology skill?

CRO Methodology hands your AI agent the process Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson run at Conversion Rate Experts, from Making Websites Win. Rather than guessing at button colours, it researches why visitors leave — analytics, surveys, session evidence — turns each objection it finds into a testable hypothesis, and ranks those by expected impact.

## Key concepts from Making Websites Win your agent applies

- **Conversion Research** — Combine analytics, user testing, surveys, and heuristic analysis to identify real conversion blockers.
- **Objection Handling** — Identify and address every visitor objection on the page — price, trust, effort, timing.
- **Clarity over Cleverness** — Clear copy that answers visitor questions outperforms clever or creative messaging every time.
- **Social Proof Strategy** — Deploy the right type of proof (testimonials, case studies, logos) at the right decision point.
- **Test Prioritization** — Use impact × confidence × ease to prioritize tests that move the needle fastest.

## When to use CRO Methodology — and when not to

Reach for it when:

- Traffic is healthy, the funnel leaks, and nobody can say at which step or for what reason.
- People start a trial or fill a cart, then vanish one screen before the commitment.
- Your team keeps testing headline variants and every result comes back inconclusive.
- The page explains what the product does but never answers the three things a buyer is quietly worried about.

Reach for something else when:

- Almost nobody is visiting yet — Predictable Revenue or the 1-Page Marketing Plan get you something worth optimising.
- The offer itself is the blocker and no headline will rescue it; that’s the job of $100M Offers.
- Users can’t operate the interface at all — UX Heuristics diagnoses usability, which is a different failure.
- You’re still deciding what to build — Jobs to Be Done and Continuous Discovery sit upstream of any page.

## About Karl Blanks & Ben Jesson

Co-founders of Conversion Rate Experts, optimized for Apple & Google. Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson co-founded Conversion Rate Experts, the agency that has optimized conversions for Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Their evidence-based methodology has generated billions in additional revenue for clients.
The book: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL51034723M/Making_Websites_Win

## Example prompts

- Audit my landing page for conversion blockers using cro-methodology skill _(CRO audit)_
- Identify and address visitor objections on my pricing page using cro-methodology skill _(Objection handling)_
- Design an A/B test for my hero section headline using cro-methodology skill _(Testing)_
- Create a CRO roadmap prioritized by expected impact using cro-methodology skill _(Strategy)_

## Frequently asked questions

### How do I install the CRO Methodology skill?

Run `npx skills add wondelai/skills/cro-methodology --global`. It takes about 30 seconds and needs no account. The CRO Methodology skill then works in Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw and Hermes Agent — anything that reads the open agentskills.io format — and your agent loads it on its own when a task calls for it. It is free and MIT-licensed, and the source is at https://github.com/wondelai/skills.

### Which book is the CRO Methodology skill based on?

It packages *Making Websites Win* by Karl Blanks & Ben Jesson — co-founders of Conversion Rate Experts, optimized for Apple & Google. The skill distils the book's method into instructions your agent follows while it works, covering conversion research, objection handling and clarity over cleverness. It sits in the Sales & Persuasion part of the library.

### Do I need Making Websites Win to get value from this?

No. The book is a field manual, roughly a tactic per short chapter, and the skill carries the operational spine: the research sequence, the objection-and-counter-objection pass, and the impact-confidence-ease prioritisation. What you lose by not reading it is the agency’s war stories — the before-and-after pages and the reasoning about why a long page that answers everything so often beats the short one that looks cleaner.

### What does “conversion research” actually involve?

Five sources, each answering a different question. Analytics tells you where people drop. On-site surveys and customer interviews tell you why. Usability sessions expose friction people never report. A heuristic and competitor pass finds what’s missing. And your customers’ own phrasing becomes the copy — the words they use for the problem outperform yours nearly every time. The skill runs the sweep and reconciles the sources when they disagree.

### How is this different from the UX Heuristics skill?

Usability asks whether someone can complete the task; conversion asks whether they want to. A checkout can be flawlessly navigable and still lose people who never believed the guarantee or couldn’t find the delivery cost. UX Heuristics finds broken affordances, confusing labels, unclear system state. CRO Methodology finds unaddressed objections, weak proof and missing motivation. Fix usability first when both are broken — persuasion can’t rescue a form nobody can submit.

### What can’t it do on its own?

It can’t see your visitors. Point it at a page with no analytics, no survey responses and no session data and you get plausible best practice, which is a hypothesis rather than evidence — and best practice is exactly the thing that wins on one site and loses on the next. It also can’t stop you calling a test early: ask it for the sample size before you launch, and accept when it says your traffic won’t settle the question.

## Related

- All Sales & Persuasion skills: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/sales/
- $100M Offers: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/hundred-million-offers/
- Negotiation: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/negotiation/
- Influence Psychology: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/influence-psychology/
- Predictable Revenue: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/predictable-revenue/
- Monetizing Innovation: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/monetizing-innovation/