CRO Marketing Frameworks to Consider in 2025

We collaborate closely with CRO agencies and are always intrigued by their fresh approaches to conversion optimization. The way they dissect user behavior, refine strategies, and experiment with new ideas inspires us to explore deeper and share what we’ve learned. Conversion optimization isn’t just about fiddling with button colors or tweaking fonts — it’s about getting into the minds of your users, spotting opportunities, and running experiments that actually help you to increase conversions.

In this article, we’re sharing an exciting approach to CRO that breaks down key elements of the user journey into actionable areas of focus. You’ll discover practical tips for choosing which pages to optimize first, spotting problem areas, and addressing user concerns.

Why CRO Matters More Than Ever in 2025

Competition is fiercer, costs are rising, and consumer behavior is evolving faster than ever. Meanwhile, CRO ensures that every precious click and visitor on your site counts. Let’s take a closer look at the topic.

Rising Costs of Acquiring Traffic

You’re pouring your budget into ads, only to see fewer clicks and conversions than last year. Sound familiar? That’s because acquiring traffic isn’t just expensive — it’s now super expensive. Paid ads have seen costs per visit jump by 9.4%, while conversion rates have dipped by 5.5%.

Instead of pouring money into acquiring more traffic, using CRO strategy you can maximize the value of visitors you already have. Converting more qualified visitors will reduce your customer acquisition cost (CAC). Suddenly, those costly clicks are worth every penny.  

Shift in Consumer Behavior

Your audience is adept at filtering the endless stream of digital content, ignoring anything uninteresting. Despite the myth of shorter attention spans, people can focus deeply — but only on content that truly engages them. The real challenge is creating something worth their time. If your site isn’t optimized to grab their attention in seconds, you’re out. CRO ensures your site is:

• Lightning-fast (no one waits for slow-loading pages anymore).
• Clear and clutter-free.
• Action-driven with clear while irresistible CTAs.

The next challenge is that consumers have developed banner blindness. They don’t see ads, they see noise. Fatigue from overly generic or irrelevant messages also reduces engagement. CRO counters this by:

• Testing formats, colors, and placements to determine what cuts through the noise.
• Delivering messages at the right moment, such as exit pop-ups or post-purchase upsells.

Use this template

Static, one-way interactions are no longer enough. Consumers don’t just want to buy — they want to engage, explore, and feel involved. Use CRO strategy to transform passive browsing into active participation. Create experiences that foster emotional connections and drive conversions. For example, add gamified elements to your site, such as quizzes, spin-the-wheel popups, or other interactive features. You can also include dynamic feedback tools, like surveys, to encourage two-way communication.

The Importance of Personalization and Relevance

In 2025, unpersonalized, generic strategies are as outdated as floppy disks. CRO thrives on personalization, leveraging first-party data, user behavior analysis, and feedback to build tailored experiences. Examples of personalization include:

• Personalized popups offering discounts on products visitors actually want.
• Emails with offers that actually matter to your subscribers — content based on visitor behavior and preferences.

When you make your messages feel personal and spot-on, you’re not just meeting customer expectations — you’re exceeding them.

The Impact of CRO on the Key Metrics

Conversion Rate (CR)

Here is how CRO helps increase conversion rates across different industries.

E-commerce:

• Personalized recommendations: suggesting items based on browsing history leads to more ‘Add to Cart’ clicks.
• Streamlined checkouts: less headaches, more sales.
• Urgency triggers: countdown timers or low-stock alerts guide indecisive buyers to act fast.

Use this template

SaaS:

• Onboarding: a clear, quick start helps users see the product’s value right away.
• Pricing page tests: A/B testing layouts and offers shows what seals the deal.
• Targeted CTAs: smart prompts guide users through their journey and toward conversion.

Content makers:

• Content recommendations: keep readers hooked.
• Subscription popups: well-timed exclusive offers encourage sign-ups without feeling pushy.

Use this template

Retention and Loyalty

With a solid CRO strategy, you smooth out every step of the user journey and reduce friction across your site. Offer visitors streamlined checkouts and intuitive navigation, so they have no reason to leave. You can even enable social logins to simplify account creation. Why go elsewhere when your site feels like home?

Lifetime Value (LTV)

Every CRO tweak that enhances user experience isn’t just a win for the moment — it’s an investment in long-term revenue. Personalized upselling, targeted cross-selling, and relevant recommendations can increase your customers’ LTV.  

Key Actionable Steps for 2025

To help you stay relevant and impactful, here are the key actionable steps to master CRO in 2025.

Analyze Behavior and Preferences

You can’t optimize what you don’t understand. Guessing what your users want is like trying to win at roulette. Instead, use data to understand their journey. You need different tools and approaches to collect data and analyze it. So let's take a quick look at what you need and why.

Web Analytics

Start with tools to gather quantitative data about visitor actions:

• Google Analytics: see page views, bounce rates, session durations, traffic sources, and conversion paths. 
• Heatmap tools (like Hotjar or Crazy Egg): use them to figure out where users are dropping off or which pages have them hooked.
• Session recording: watch real user sessions to uncover specific pain points (such as abandoned forms, confusing navigation etc).

Surveys and Feedback

Ask visitors directly what they think. Ask them why they didn’t complete a purchase or what features / products they’d like to see. You can create on-site surveys using our exit-intent pop-up survey templates or gather insights through multi-step forms.

Use this template

Segmentation

Not all visitors behave the same, so segment them into meaningful groups. Slice your audience by traffic source, behavior, or demographics, and more. By focusing on specific groups, you can tailor strategies to each segment. For example, a new visitor from TikTok might need a different nudge than a loyal customer from your email list.

Focus on User Experience 

If you have already perfected your website, you can think of other approaches to further improve the user experience. It is especially important in highly competitive industries, where CX can be a key differentiator. According to one study, these are the tools provided by brands that consumers use most often and believe have the greatest impact on their customer experience:

• Mobile apps.
• Loyalty programs.
• Personalized product recommendations.

If you're considering implementing, say, a loyalty program, now might be the time to act.

Additionally, the survey revealed the following rarely used tools that have a high impact on user experience:

• Smart home devices.
• Voice commerce (making a purchase through an audio device).
• Natural language processing (NLP) platforms.
• Metaverse, AR, or VR experiences.

In this case you should keep an eye on how early adopters are using new tech — it’s like a sneak peek into what could go mainstream next. Try running small, controlled experiments to see if these innovations actually improve the customer experience. If they pass the test, roll them out on a larger scale to make a bigger impact and wow your audience.

Test More for Conversion Perfection

CRO is impossible without experiments, because they will allow you to confidently make adjustments to your website. You can conduct A/B tests or multivariate testing.     

A/B testing compares two versions of a webpage, pop-up, or element to see which one performs better. By isolating a single variable (say, headline, button color, or layout), A/B testing provides clear and actionable insights. It’s fast and focuses on testing one hypothesis at a time, giving you precise feedback without overwhelming your audience with too many variations.

For example, a retailer wants to determine the best layout for their product page to increase ‘Add to Cart’ actions. Here are the options to test:

• Variation A: one prominent ‘Add to Cart’ button located near the product image at the top of the page.
• Variation B: two buttons — one near the product image and another near the product description and customer reviews.

This experiment focuses solely on button placement to identify whether a small design change impacts user behavior. 

Instead, multivariate testing simultaneously evaluates multiple elements and their combinations on a page. It identifies not just the best-performing individual changes but the optimal combination of elements that drive user engagement.

In this case, an example with the same retailer might look like this. It expands the experiment to optimize not just button placement but also button design and CTA text combination.

By leveraging both methods, you can maximize conversions, refine the user experience, and ensure that every design and messaging element is working in harmony.

Create Smarter Retargeting Campaigns

Your visitors may not convert on their first visit, but that doesn’t mean the game is over. Retargeting can bring them back, but only if it’s done smartly:

• Personalized Ads: show users the exact product they browsed or a complementary one. Browsed sneakers? Show them those sneakers and maybe some running socks.
• Strategic incentives: sweeten the deal with free shipping or limited-time discounts.
• Segment audiences based on behavior: show cart abandoners reminder ads with incentives and category browsers ads for bestsellers.
• Frequency capping: don’t bombard users with ads — set up limits on ad exposure.

These strategies keep your retargeting efforts user-friendly, which is a core aspect of CRO. 

Use Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics uses data, algorithms, and machine learning to predict future outcomes based on past behavior. For website visitors, it helps you understand their preferences and needs, so you can stay ahead and act before they even realize it! Here are a few examples for different industries:

• Personalized recommendations: an e-commerce site can recommend products based on browsing history or similar customer behaviors.
• Churn prediction: a SaaS company might send proactive renewal offers to users whose engagement is declining.

Predictive analytics offers several key benefits. It enables better targeting by delivering exactly what visitors need at the right moment. This approach increases ROI by helping you focus on high-value actions. It also improves the user experience with personalized, smooth journeys and helps you make decisions ahead of time, tackling issues like customer churn before they grow. 

CRO Marketing Frameworks to Consider in 2025

Hype Digital Agency

Hype Digital is a global CRO agency that has been helping companies increase website and app conversion rates since 2017 using data-backed conversion tactics. Their model is heavily research-based and focuses on removing all guesswork when making decisions on how to scale websites. Today, Hype has a presence in multiple regions and works with customers of all sectors from all over the world.

The Lever Framework 

Colleagues from Hype Digital agency shared with our readers valuable tips on applying the Lever Framework strategy, which they use to conduct their own experiments.

The Lever Framework in CRO refers to identifying and focusing on the key ‘levers’ or areas of influence within a user journey that can significantly impact conversion rates. Put simply, a lever is any feature of the UX that influences user behavior.
The Lever Framework is a system for defining and categorizing the different features of user experience that influence user behavior on an online site. The five levers they use are:

• Usability
• Motivation
• Comprehension
• Trust
• Cost

Whenever the agency team looks at running a new test, they attach one (or more) levers to the reasoning behind running such a test. This helps them zone in on what they are trying to achieve with the test and understand which part of the customer’s emotions they will address. Let's take a closer look at these levers.

Usability

This Master Lever concerned with the practical, on-site steps that a user has to take in order to convert. For instance, simplifying navigation, aligning CTAs and enhancing content discoverability.

Motivation

In the Hype Digital agency Levers Framework, motivation is the master lever associated with the upsides that a user stands to gain from purchasing the product or service. For example, making the product as appealing as possible for the user through the use of gamification and other methods that increase engagement.

Comprehension

Refers to how well a website explains information about the product / service or company. Let’s say, contextual explanations and interactive elements to ensure the user has no confusion when trying to understand the product.

Trust 

In the agency’s Levers Framework, trust is about the assessment of risk users make when interacting with a website. For example, integrating trust-building elements and consistent branding across the platform.

Cost    

Cost is concerned with the costs that a user encounters – whether monetary, effort-related, or otherwise – while purchasing or using a product. For instance, minimizing user effort while maximizing user engagement.

The Lever Framework forms a core part of the research and testing process that the Hype Digital team is using daily to help make decisions.

Getting Started with the Lever Framework: Essential Tips 

Start by analyzing your website to identify which levers require focus. Use tools like Google Analytics to track user behavior. Look for pages with high bounce rates or drop-offs. For example:

• If users abandon checkout, the ‘Cost’ lever might need attention (like simplifying effort or reducing perceived monetary costs). 
• If product pages have high traffic but low engagement, ‘Comprehension’ may need improvement (such as clearer descriptions).

Tools like Hotjar or Clarity can help you observe how users interact with your website. Are users struggling with navigation? That points to the ‘Usability’ lever. Are they not engaging with your calls-to-action? This might indicate a lack of ‘Motivation’.

Gather direct insights from surveys, chat transcripts, or reviews. If users frequently mention concerns like trust or confusion, focus on the corresponding levers (‘Trust’ or ‘Comprehension’).
By combining data from these sources, you can pinpoint the levers most likely to influence user behavior.

How to Select Pages for Running Experiments

Begin with pages that have the highest traffic and are closest to conversion, as these tend to have the most immediate impact. It depends on your website's goals, but here’s a breakdown by page type and lever:

• Homepage: focus on ‘Motivation’ and ‘Trust’. Ensure your value proposition is clear and that trust signals like awards, certifications, or testimonials are prominent.
• Product pages: focus on ‘Comprehension’ and ‘Motivation’. Make sure product descriptions, images, and benefits are easy to understand and visually appealing.
• Checkout Page: focus on ‘Cost’ and ‘Usability’. Simplify the steps required to complete a purchase and reduce effort or friction points.
• Pricing page and Product comparison sections: focus on ‘Cost’. These areas must minimize perceived effort or risk, such as offering flexible payment options, etc. 
• About or Contact pages: focus on ‘Trust’. Use these pages to establish credibility with strong branding, customer testimonials, and clear contact information.
• FAQ: focus on ‘Comprehension’ and ‘Trust’. The page explains your offerings, so clarity is essential to avoid confusion. 
• Entire website: focus on ‘Usability’. It affects navigation menus, forms, and checkout flows. If users struggle to interact with your site, they’ll leave before converting. 

By identifying which lever corresponds to specific areas of the user journey, you can plan targeted experiments that yield meaningful results.

Simplify CRO with Claspo

Conversion rate optimization isn’t a one-and-done deal. You’ve got to analyze, brainstorm, and be open to trying new things. Using smart strategies like the Lever Framework helps you focus on the areas of the user journey that really matter. Maybe it’s making navigation simpler, earning trust, or creating content that actually gets people excited. Every little tweak gets you closer to a smoother experience for your users — and better results for you.

And hey, why not make the journey even easier? With Claspo, you can effortlessly add pop-ups and forms to your site and make them one of the key parts of your CRO strategy. Test different ideas with A/B experiments, and fine-tune your results — all within our Lifetime Free plan. Sign up today, and let’s make optimization feel a little more fun (and a lot more rewarding)!