Short answer
A CRO designer usually charges in one of three ways: by the hour, per project (a landing page or a funnel), or a monthly retainer for an ongoing A/B testing program. The price depends on how much research, copy, building and testing is included, and how much traffic you have to test with. Rates vary widely by experience and location, so judge the cost against the revenue a winning test can add, not against the price of a page design.
Key takeaways
- Three common pricing models: hourly, per project and monthly retainer.
- Price is driven by research depth, copywriting, build, number of tests and your traffic.
- A design-only page is cheaper, but it is a guess until it is tested.
- Judge ROI on revenue per visitor: a small lift on a large revenue base can pay for months of work.
- Budget for a testing program, not a single test. Many tests lose or come out flat.
How do CRO designers charge?
Most CRO designers use one of three models: hourly, per project or a monthly retainer. Some combine them, for example a fixed project to start and a retainer after.
| Model | Typical scope | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Small, open-ended tasks | Design changes, a page review, help with a single test | Teams that already have research and a test process and need extra hands |
| Per project: landing page | One page, from brief to handoff or build | Research on the current page, copy, mobile and desktop design, often the build, a test plan | A paid campaign with one key page |
| Per project: funnel | Several connected steps, such as ad, landing page, quiz or form, checkout | The same as a page, across each step, with tracking for each step | Lead gen and ecommerce funnels where drop-off is spread across steps |
| Monthly retainer | An ongoing testing program | Research, a prioritized test backlog, a set number of tests designed and launched each month, readouts in revenue | Sites with enough traffic to test continuously |
Hourly is easy to start and hard to budget. Per project gives you a fixed price and a clear deliverable. A retainer costs the most over time, but it is the only model built around learning from one test and using that in the next.
What are typical rates?
Rates vary a lot, and public numbers mostly cover design, not research and testing. Rate pages for landing page designers price the screens, not the research, the test plan or the readout. Upwork’s page for conversion rate optimizers gives no number and says rates vary with expertise, experience, location and market conditions. The better question is what one winning test is worth to you, which I cover below.
So use public rates as a rough floor for page design, not as a price for CRO work. A designer who also runs research, writes the copy, builds the page and reads the test is doing several jobs, and will price accordingly. Ask every candidate what is included before you compare numbers.
What drives the price of CRO design work?
Five things: research depth, copy, build, test volume and traffic.
- Research depth. A design based on a quick look at the page costs less than one based on analytics, session recordings, reviews, surveys and a full audit. The research is usually where the winning ideas come from. See the CRO audit checklist for what a thorough review covers.
- Copy. Headlines, offers and calls to action often move results more than layout. If the designer writes them, the scope is bigger.
- Build. Handing off a Figma file is one price. Building the page, or the variant inside your testing tool, with tracking checked on real devices, is more.
- Test volume. One test per month and four tests per month are very different amounts of work, especially once you add QA, launch and readouts.
- Traffic. Traffic decides how many tests you can run and how big the changes need to be. Low traffic means fewer, bolder tests. High traffic supports a steady program. See A/B test sample size.
What do you get at each level?
The more you pay, the more of the loop from research to result is covered. Roughly:
- Design only. A better-looking, better-structured page or set of screens. Useful, but it is a hypothesis until it is tested against the current version.
- Design plus research and copy. A page built on what visitors actually struggle with, with a written hypothesis for each change. More likely to win, and you learn why.
- Design, build and one test. The new page goes live as an A/B test against the old one, with a test plan, tracking checks and a readout in revenue per visitor.
- A testing program. A backlog ranked by expected impact, a steady run of tests, and each result feeding the next idea. This is where most of the long-term value is, because wins add up over time. See how to prioritize A/B test ideas.
How do you judge the ROI of a CRO designer?
Estimate what a winning test is worth in revenue per visitor, compare it with the cost, and remember that not every test wins.
Example
Say your store makes $200,000 a month, and all of it goes through the pages being tested. One winning test lifts revenue per visitor by 3%. That is about $6,000 a month, or $72,000 a year at current traffic, from a single change. These are made-up numbers to show the math, not a client result.
Now be honest about the odds. If only some of the tests in a program win, the cost of the losing and flat tests belongs in the same calculation. The question is whether the program as a whole earns more than it costs, not whether one test did.
Three things make the estimate more reliable:
- Use revenue per visitor, not conversion rate. A conversion rate lift can hide a drop in order value. See how to calculate revenue per visitor.
- Use a conservative lift. The low end of the confidence interval, not the best case. The method is in how to calculate the revenue impact of an A/B test.
- Count only the traffic that sees the change. A win on one landing page applies to that page’s traffic, not the whole site.
For context, tests I designed have added more than $16M in yearly revenue across the companies I have worked with. That number comes from many tests over six years, including plenty that lost. It is why I talk about a program rather than a single page.
Is a cheaper CRO designer a false economy?
Not always. It depends on whether the work gets tested. A low-cost page that is tested against the current one is still a safe experiment: if it loses, you keep the old page. The risk is paying for a redesign that goes live without a test. Then you never know whether it helped, hurt or did nothing.
Whatever you pay, ask for a test plan with a primary metric, a sample size and a duration before the work starts. That is the clearest sign you are paying for CRO and not only design. For what else to check, see how to hire a CRO designer.
If you want a quote for a page, a funnel or a testing program, book a call.
FAQ
Is it better to pay a CRO designer hourly or per project?
Per project is usually easier to budget and compare, because you agree on a deliverable. Hourly works for small, open-ended tasks when you already have research and a test process in place.
How much does a CRO landing page cost?
It depends on what is included: research, copy, design, build and an A/B test. A design-only page costs less than a researched, built and tested page. Public freelance rates for page design are a rough floor, and rates vary widely by experience and location, so compare quotes on scope, not only on price.
When is a CRO retainer worth it?
When you have enough traffic to run tests continuously and enough revenue going through the tested pages that small lifts in revenue per visitor add up to more than the retainer costs.
Can a CRO designer guarantee a lift?
No. An honest one won’t. Many A/B tests lose or come out flat. What a good CRO designer can promise is a process: research, clear hypotheses, clean tests and results reported in revenue.
Sources
I’m George (Djordje) Peric, a CRO designer, CXL certified in Conversion Optimization and Ecommerce Marketing. I design ads, landing pages and funnels and A/B test them.