5 CRO Tests We Run With Every Client

Your landing page isn’t converting the way you want it to. So what’s the fix?

If you’ve spent any time in the CRO trenches, you’ve probably heard the same advice on repeat: redesign the hero section, rebuild the funnel from scratch, rethink the entire page.

It sounds thorough. It’s usually the wrong first move.

Most landing pages don’t need a teardown. They need a handful of targeted, low-lift tests, run in the right order.

But “right order” is exactly where most operators get stuck.

Without a system for prioritizing what to test first, teams end up chasing whatever idea got mentioned at the last mastermind, or they stall out second-guessing which lever will actually move the needle.

Even seasoned operators often can’t tell the difference between a quick win with a big impact and a heavy lift that promises the same result. That distinction alone is worth an entire episode.

This is part one of a two-part CRO Quick Wins Playbook.

Kira Hug sits down with Sohail Chatur, Performance Manager at TNT, to break down the ICE framework the team uses internally to score and prioritize every test by Impact, Confidence, and Ease, then walks through five specific levers — starting in the hero section and moving below the fold — that are worth pulling before you touch anything else on the page.

The other five levers, including the VSL thumbnail lever covered here, get a deeper second round in part two.

Key Takeaways

The 3-second fix hiding in your hero section. A specific bullet sequence, built around three simple words, quietly answers the objections that make visitors leave before they ever see your offer.
Why “how confident are you?” matters more than “how good is the idea?” The scoring system TNT uses internally ranks every CRO idea by three numbers, and one of them has nothing to do with how much you love the idea.
The button most teams optimize way too early. It feels like the obvious place to start testing. It’s actually one of the last things that should land on your test calendar.
What separates a headline that converts from one that just sounds good. It has almost nothing to do with clever copywriting and everything to do with one detail about your audience most teams never check first.
The line below your headline that’s quietly costing you the sale. Most funnels treat it as filler. The highest-converting pages treat it as the second most important sentence on the entire page.
The default setting that’s silently capping your VSL’s performance. Most video hosting tools pick it for you automatically, and it could be costing you more per click than the traffic itself.
What one photo reveals about your buyer that no survey ever will. Swapping a single image can expose whether your audience wants to see themselves as they are, or as who they used to be.
The number that tells you if you have a testing problem or a bigger problem. If your conversion rate falls too far below it, no amount of bullet or button testing is going to save the page

Connect

Book a creative strategy consultation with the TNT team: [link]
Subscribe to Scaling Secrets, our weekly insights newsletter: [link]

Listen Now

FAQ

What is the ICE framework and how do I actually use it to prioritize CRO tests?

ICE stands for Impact, Confidence, and Ease. You score each test from 1 to 5 on all three factors, then multiply the scores together. A perfect score is 125; anything above roughly 100 signals a quick win worth prioritizing. It’s a useful system, but it still requires subject-matter judgment. Scoring “ease” accurately means actually understanding how long a change takes to implement, not just guessing.

Why start with hero section bullets instead of a bigger change?

Bullets in the hero section are a low-design-lift test that can be swapped in and out quickly. Structuring them around a “without,” “even if,” “in just” sequence lets you speak to multiple objections and hesitations in just three lines, which increases the odds a visitor scrolls to your CTA instead of bouncing.

How do I know which awareness stage my headline should target?

It depends on how much your audience already knows about their problem and your solution. Some visitors are pain-aware and need the headline to name the problem directly. Others need a belief shift before they’ll even consider your offer, and some respond better to an identity-forward headline. There’s no universal answer — it comes down to knowing where the bulk of your traffic sits on that spectrum before you start testing.

Is it worth testing my CTA button copy?

It’s a valid test, just not a high-priority one. Button copy has a low ceiling on impact because if visitors aren’t reading the content above the button, changing the button won’t get them to click. It’s better used later, once the rest of the page has already been optimized and you’re looking for smaller incremental gains — or as a way to learn more about your buyer through different micro-promises.

What’s a realistic VSL play rate benchmark, and how do I improve it?

A reasonable target is around 65% of visitors clicking play, though many unoptimized VSLs sit closer to 40% by default, since most video hosting tools just grab a random frame as the thumbnail. Testing a deliberate static image, a looping GIF, or an autoplay illusion that makes the video look already in progress are all low-lift ways to push that number up, which improves the return on every dollar spent driving traffic to the page.

Should I bother testing the hero image on my landing page?

Yes, and it’s one of the more overlooked levers. Many brands build their hero image around the customer they wish they had rather than the one they actually sell to. Testing a demographic match against a more aspirational image can reveal whether your audience wants to see themselves reflected as they are or as an idealized version of who they could become, and that insight can inform decisions well beyond the landing page itself.