A landing page is launched, ads are running, the first leads arrive. Then the page stays unchanged for a year. Meanwhile the product gets new features, the ads change their promises, competitors rewrite their offers — and the page slowly stops matching all of this.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the regular work of closing that gap: looking at the data, changing the page, measuring, repeating. The question is who will do it. There are three realistic options.
What the work consists of
Whoever does it, a healthy month looks roughly the same:
- Week 1 — audit. Look at analytics and recordings, find where visitors leave, choose what to change.
- Week 2 — rebuild. Rewrite the weak blocks, redo the form, adjust the page to current ads.
- Week 3 — tests. Release the changes and compare with the previous version.
- Week 4 — report. What was done, what changed in the numbers, what goes into next month.
This requires several skills at once: analytics, copywriting, design and build. This is exactly why the choice of format matters — rarely does one person have all four.
Option 1. In-house hire
How it works: you hire a marketer or designer who owns the site.
Strong side: deep knowledge of the product and constant presence in the team. For a company with large traffic and many pages this is the natural choice.
Weak side: hiring takes months; one person rarely covers analytics, text, design and build equally well; the salary is paid whether there is work this month or not. For an early startup with one or two landing pages there is often not enough work for a full-time role.
Option 2. Agency retainer
How it works: a contract for several months, a team with a manager, regular calls, a monthly plan.
Strong side: a full set of specialists and experience from many projects. Suitable when the budget is large and you need research, advertising and the site handled together.
Weak side: a minimum term, long approvals and a noticeable share of the budget spent on management and meetings rather than on changes to the page. Small tasks wait in line.
Option 3. Subscription
How it works: a fixed monthly payment for a continuous flow of tasks. You put tasks in a queue, they are done one after another, and each is released within a few days. There are no hourly estimates and no long contract: the subscription can be paused or cancelled.
Strong side: a predictable budget, a quick start, and you pay only for the months when there is work.
Weak side: tasks go in turn, not all at once. A subscription does not replace a strategy: someone on your side still has to know what the business needs. And it is not suited for a large one-off project with a hard deadline — a fixed-price project is better there.
Side by side
| In-house | Agency | Subscription | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start | After hiring and onboarding | After discovery and a contract | Within days |
| Commitment | Employment | Usually a minimum term | Month to month, with a pause |
| Skills | One person's set | A full team | A defined set for site tasks |
| Your time | Management of an employee | Calls and approvals | Writing tasks and reviewing results |
| Fits | Large traffic, many pages | Large budget, complex projects | One to several pages, paid traffic, a small team |
How to tell that a subscription makes sense for you
- You already spend money on ads, so every improvement of the page affects the cost of a lead.
- You have a list of site tasks that nobody gets to: a new block, a page for a campaign, a form rework.
- The developers are busy with the product, and changes to the site wait for weeks.
- There is not enough work for a full-time hire, and you do not want a long contract.
And when it does not: if there is almost no traffic yet, there is nothing to measure — a single well-built page is enough for now. If the page has obvious problems but otherwise suits you, a one-time audit with fixes will be cheaper than a month of subscription.
Growth subscription — $2,490 per month: one task in work at a time, releases every 48–72 hours, a monthly report. Pause or cancel in one click. Not sure there is enough work for a month? Start with a free teardown: we will show what we would fix first.
See subscription pricing → 💬 Discuss on WhatsAppIn short
- A site needs regular work after launch, otherwise it stops matching the product and the ads.
- In-house — for large traffic; agency — for large budgets and complex projects; subscription — for small teams with paid traffic.
- Before a subscription, check that you have traffic to measure and a queue of tasks. If not, start with one page or a one-time audit.