Sales & Persuasion

CRO Methodology

Conversion rate optimization methodology

Optimize conversion rates using the customer-centric methodology from "Making Websites Win." This skill equips your AI agent with systematic audit frameworks, A/B test design, and evidence-based techniques for turning more visitors into customers.

Updated Free & MIT-licensed
Making Websites Win by Karl Blanks & Ben Jesson

Making Websites Win

by Karl Blanks & Ben Jesson

npx skills add wondelai/skills/cro-methodology --global

This skill is compatible with Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, and other agentskills.io-compatible agents.

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.

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.

View Book →

Example prompts for the CRO Methodology skill

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

CRO Methodology vs the other Sales & Persuasion skills

All 6 Sales & Persuasion skills are free and install the same way — the only question is which framework fits the job in front of you.

SkillBased onBest for
$100M Offers$100M Offers — Alex HormoziGrand Slam Offer creation: Value Equation, pricing, guarantees
NegotiationNever Split the Difference — Chris VossTactical negotiation for high-stakes conversations
Influence PsychologyInfluence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Robert CialdiniPersuasion science and ethical influence
Predictable RevenuePredictable Revenue — Aaron RossOutbound sales process and Cold Calling 2.0
CRO MethodologyMaking Websites Win — Karl Blanks & Ben JessonConversion rate optimization methodology
Monetizing InnovationMonetizing Innovation — Madhavan Ramanujam & Georg TackeDesign the product around validated willingness to pay

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.

Install CRO Methodology

Free, open-source, and ready in 30 seconds.

npx skills add wondelai/skills/cro-methodology --global

MIT Licensed · Works with Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent & other agentskills.io agents · No account needed

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