Definition
Skills, technologies, and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. – Wikipedia
Relevance in CRO
Data-driven decision-making. This is the world that CRO lives in… sort of.
BA can often be at odds with UX. Consider the famous anecdote about American Airlines saving $40,000 a year by removing an olive from their salads in the 1980’s; henceforth dubbed “Crandall’s Olive” after Robert L. Crandall, the then head of American Airlines. Businesses make decisions like that in order to cut costs and save money all the time. Often it comes at the expense of UX. Some business analyst, the eponymous “nameless, faceless, bean counter” that we all secretly dread crunches numbers and devises yet another cost-cutting measure. Cable companies and telecoms have infamously poor customer support. Chatbots. FAQs. Answers to business problems that create user problems.
This is where CRO comes in, bridging the gap between UX and BA; it has one foot firmly planted in both realms. UX or BA research identifies a problem, CRO proposes and evaluates a solution to that problem based on the goals of BOTH UX & BA. You have to satisfy both masters. Solutions should be considered within the contexts of both the needs of the user and the needs of the business.
Of course, this balance between UX & BA is an ideal to strive towards. Sometimes a sacrifice has to be made. Experimentation at least allows for an informed sacrifice.
…and that’s why CRO is a bad acronym to describe what we do.
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