I'm in conversion optimization since 2001. Back then in offline age and mail order dominance the conversion rate was known as "response rate".
I believe that the most important for the young person in business is to have a great mentor. I was lucky from the very start by mr. Marijan Grošelj (teaching me not only the business stuff).
During the first three years I was managing mail-order department of a small publishing house.
I have learned a lot about targeting, customer databases (remember a floppy disk?), user segmentation, the importance of good sales copy, and the churn rate.
In the big telco started paving my "digital" road by completing Drayton Bird's direct marketing academy.
Corp life blessed me with an amazing crew and taught me a few things about politics, "siloing," and committee decisions.
During my startup phase have been surrounded with very smart IT youngsters following the lean/agile approach. The most interesting to me was the different perspective of the same feature from the programmer vs designer perspective :).
Since 2012. certified in Google Ads (later on learned directly from Brad Geddes) and Google Analytics .
For my marketing/sales background it was a bit of challenge to dive into technical & analytics part of the conversion puzzle.
However it helped me to understand how data-driven insights might help with better decisions, risk mitigation and healthier acquisition/retention tactics. The only problem was/is to find the right mindset who will listen those data:)
This was the aha-moment for me as a small (o.k. micro) business owner.
I have realised how "noisy" is out there - a ton of biases and specialised "silos" (SEO agencies, PPC agencies, designers, developers, customer research analysts., ...) pushing their own perspective/goals instead of listening, i.e. tracking behavioural patterns of end users.
Fast forward through UpWork phase (I was in top 3% of providers) and 10 years later providing CRO/Experimentation services based on hands-on experience.
Full list of Certifications/Skills:
- by CXL Institute: Certified Optimizer, Digital Psychology and Behavioral Design, Statistics for A/B testing, Applied Neuromarketing, Advanced Experimentation Analysis, Heuristic Analysis Frameworks for Conversion Optimization Audits,...
- Landing Page Optimization certified by MECLABS Institute,
- SEO trained by the father of the SEO - Bruce Clay (suprisingly, even some SEO agencies don't follow the golden standard),
- Ronny Kohavi's "Accelerating Innovation by A/B Testing"
- Google: Google Partner since 2012., Google Search Ads, GA4.
In the last few years have found my "sweet spot" and integrated all of the aforementioned & 20+ years of experience into customized Conversion Optimization & Experimentation services for SMBs, SaaS and Startups.