Why short-term wins can cost long-term growth
When you’re running an ecommerce brand, conversions can feel like the north star. Clicks become customers, ROAS becomes religion, and performance gets measured in decimal points.
But as Will Laurenson (from Customers Who Click) highlights in episode ten of The Leaf Colectivo, chasing conversions at all costs can be a trap, one that distracts from sustainable, profitable growth.
Here’s what we unpacked.
Conversion Rate ≠ Business Health
At first glance, conversion rate looks like a great performance metric. But it’s wildly incomplete. A CRO win that boosts conversion by 5% might mean lower AOV, higher returns, or unprofitable customer acquisition. Will calls out the classic mistake: testing button colours or layouts without understanding what really matters, messaging, intent, and customer behaviour.
Conversion rate went up? Great. But did AOV drop? Did returns increase? Are you more profitable or just more active?
CRO Isn’t About Changing Buttons
It’s About Changing Thinking
Most brands see CRO as an isolated marketing tactic: run a few A/B tests, tweak some UX, and get a lift. But Will reframes it as Customer Revenue Optimisation, a practice that touches:
- Return rate management
- Fulfilment costs
- Messaging and acquisition alignment
- Lifetime value (LTV) and retention
The biggest wins don’t come from UI changes. They come from knowing your customer and removing friction across the entire journey from the first click to the repeat purchase.
Not Every Win is Worth It
Tempted to offer 25% off just to bump sales? Careful.
Many brands over-incentivise the first purchase, only to attract low-intent buyers who don’t come back, or worse, return the product. That’s not growth. That’s churn.
A good CRO test gives you a clear signal, not just a +2% vanity win. Aim for results that teach you something meaningful.
When to Start Testing (and When to Wait)
Will suggests most brands can get to £1–2M in revenue without heavy CRO. Early gains come from traffic quality and messaging consistency.
But once you’re scaling, especially beyond 75K monthly visits, it’s time to dig deeper:
- Is your LTV real or inflated by returns?
- Are you capturing intent across the funnel?
- Are your messages and page experiences aligned?
Watch Out for the Frankenstein Store
The ease of adding apps to Shopify has led many brands to bloat their stores with 50+ tools. The result? Slower sites, overlapping tools, broken user journeys, and no clear ownership of the customer experience.
A quarterly audit of your stack (and a ruthless removal of what’s not working) is essential for keeping CRO efforts clean and effective.
The Takeaway: Conversion is Just One Piece
Real CRO doesn’t live in isolation. It’s the connective tissue between traffic, product, fulfilment, and retention.
If you’re only measuring conversions, you’re not optimising, you’re gambling. As Gilbert put it in the episode:
It’s not about just getting a result, it’s about learning what actually moves the needle.