A conversion rate optimization consultant who has run the brand side.
Work directly with Andrew Cowan, a former CMO and brand owner who has scaled 8 and 9 figure DTC stores and runs every Parah Group account personally.
A conversion rate optimization consultant diagnoses why a site’s visitors do not buy, decides which fixes to test first, and reads every result against profit. At Parah Group that consultant is founder Andrew Cowan, who runs every account personally, backed by an in-house team that designs, builds and QA’s the tests.
What a CRO consultant actually does
Conversion rate optimization is mostly judgment. Tools can show you where visitors drop off; they cannot tell you which of fifty possible fixes is worth testing first, or whether a winning test should ship. That judgment is what a good consultant brings, and it is why the person matters more than the toolset.
The opportunity is usually larger than it looks. Baymard Institute puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22 percent across 50 studies, and estimates that large ecommerce sites could lift conversion 35.26 percent through better checkout design alone. But most ideas fail: Ron Kohavi and Stefan Thomke report in Harvard Business Review that only about a third of tested ideas at Microsoft improved the metric they targeted. A consultant’s job is to find the third that wins, faster and with less wasted traffic.
- Diagnosis. Analytics, session recordings, heat maps, reviews and surveys, read together to find where and why visitors leave.
- Prioritization. Ideas ranked by expected business impact, confidence and effort.
- Test design. Hypotheses, variants and success metrics defined before anything is built.
- Analysis. Results read against conversion, average order value, subscription take rate and profit.
- Decisions. Which winners ship, which losers teach something, and what to test next.
Why work with Andrew Cowan
Andrew was a CMO and brand owner on the client side before he started Parah Group, which is where most of the tests the agency runs were learned, the expensive way. He has scaled 8 and 9 figure DTC stores and has been running Facebook ads for close to 15 years, so he reads a conversion problem with the ad account in view, not in isolation.
He runs every account personally. There is no hand-off from the person who sold you the engagement to a junior account manager, and the person reading your results is the person deciding what comes next. More on his background is on the About page.
Consultant, agency or in-house: how they compare
| Option | What you get | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance CRO consultant | Senior judgment and a roadmap | Someone still has to design, build and QA the tests |
| Typical CRO agency | Capacity to build and run tests | A junior manager between you and the decisions |
| In-house CRO hire | Full-time focus on your site | One person’s experience, plus design and dev resources to find |
| Parah Group | The founder’s judgment and an in-house team that designs, writes, builds and QA’s every test | Needs enough traffic to test properly; we will tell you if you are not there yet |
How a consulting engagement starts
It starts with a 30-minute intro call: your store, your traffic, your margins and where you think it leaks. If testing is not your next dollar, Andrew will say so. If it is, the engagement begins with research and a roadmap, then runs as a monthly program.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Intro call | A first read on where revenue is leaking, and whether a testing program fits your stage and traffic. |
| Onboarding | A structured document and call: customers, best sellers, margins, goals and competitors, plus access to analytics and your developers. |
| Research and roadmap | Recordings, heat maps, reviews and surveys turned into a ranked list of tests. |
| Testing program | Tests designed, built and QA’d in-house, reported weekly with losers included. This is The CRO Program. |
Where stores most often leak
The first pass should be about money, not design. These are the places stores most often lose revenue they have already paid to attract.
- Where in the funnel the biggest share of revenue is lost, from landing page to checkout.
- Whether paid traffic lands on pages built for it.
- The product page buy box, subscription option and proof.
- The cart: shipping threshold, progress bar, bundles and free gifts.
- Checkout friction and surprise costs.
- Post-purchase, which most stores leave untouched.
Results from consultant-led programs
- Salt & Stone: more than $7M in additional annual revenue.
- Grab Green: average order value up 80 percent through bundling.
- STRNG Seeds: revenue per visitor up 90 percent in six months.
- Combat Iron Apparel: conversion rate up 35 percent in six months.
- Momentous: subscription take rate up 10 percent, and one shipping test added $2M in profit.
Different brands, different profit levers, same process every time: research first, tests ranked by business impact, results read against profit. The tests behind each number are in the case studies.
CRO consulting for brands that run paid traffic
Most stores that need a CRO consultant are paying for their traffic. A consultant who only looks at the site misses half the cost per acquisition; one who only looks at the ads misses the other half. Because Andrew has been running Facebook ads for close to 15 years, the roadmap treats the ad and the page it lands on as one journey: one landing page per winning angle, the promise repeated above the fold, and the cart built to lift order value on paid orders.
When a brand wants it, the same team runs the ads too, through our paid social agency on Meta, TikTok and the other platforms, so the test results and the ad results are read together.
How to choose a CRO consultant
- Ask who will actually do the analysis, and who will build the tests.
- Ask what a winning test is measured on. Conversion rate alone is not enough.
- Ask to see a losing test and what was learned from it.
- Ask whether they have run a brand themselves, or only advised one.
- Ask whether they will tell you when your traffic cannot support testing.
Be wary of anyone who promises a percentage lift before they have seen your data. Honest consultants promise a process and a way of reporting; the numbers come from the tests.
The work itself is described on The CRO Program, ecommerce CRO, Shopify CRO and B2B and lead-gen CRO.
Numbers our clients said we could publish.
CRO consultant FAQs
01What does a conversion rate optimization consultant do? +
A CRO consultant finds out why visitors do not buy, decides which fixes to test first, designs the tests, and reads the results against revenue and profit. At Parah Group the consultant is Andrew Cowan, and an in-house team builds, QA’s and ships the tests.
02How much does a CRO consultant cost? +
Parah Group prices consultant-led work as a monthly retainer scoped to your stage and traffic, agreed before we start and fixed for the engagement. No percentage of lift and no seat fees. Standalone landing page projects start at $2,500.
03What is the difference between a CRO consultant and a CRO agency? +
A consultant brings judgment; an agency brings capacity. Freelance consultants often advise and leave the building to you, while many agencies put a junior manager between you and the work. Parah Group combines both: the founder runs your account and the team builds the tests.
04Do you work with in-house marketing and development teams? +
Yes. We ship in coordination with your developers through shared repositories and Slack channels, and your team keeps ownership of the site.
05How quickly does CRO consulting show results? +
Results typically compound across the first quarter. Willie’s Remedy Seed Co. saw conversion rate up 20 percent, average order value up 25 percent and subscription take rate up 75 percent within three months.
06Which platforms do you work on? +
Mostly Shopify, where we run Intelligems and Shoplift, plus VWO, Convert and Nelio elsewhere, including WordPress. We decline heavily customized Magento backends.
07Is my store big enough for a CRO consultant? +
If you are still building traffic, testing is not your next dollar, and Andrew will tell you so on the intro call. If you are pre-traffic, we are honest about it: come back when there is traffic to convert.
Related services
The CRO Program
Research, design, copy, development, QA and analysis as one monthly program, judged on profit.
Ecommerce CRO
Collections, PDP, cart, checkout, subscription and post-purchase, tested as one path to purchase.
Shopify CRO
Intelligems and Shoplift tests that ship with your developers and never break the store.
Landing page design
One page per traffic source and offer, built and tested by the team that runs the program.
A/B testing
A testing program with a memory: research-led ideas, honest analysis, losers reported too.
B2B and lead-gen CRO
More booked calls and qualified form fills from the traffic your site already gets.
Talk to the consultant, not a salesperson.
Book an intro call with Andrew.