- The Conversion Ledger
- Posts
- Stop Guessing: The Power of Structured Discovery
Stop Guessing: The Power of Structured Discovery
Your A/B test isn’t broken. Your discovery process is.
Brian Schmitt
September 14, 2025
The best answers rarely come from gut instinct.
Most teams still rely on hunches when diagnosing conversion problems.
“It feels like we need a better headline.”
“Maybe the button isn’t big enough.”
“People just don’t get it.”
We call this guess-and-go CRO, and it’s a fast track to wasted time and lost revenue.
Most friction isn’t visible on the surface.
It hides in the tiny micro-moments where customers hesitate, re-read, or stop scrolling.
You won’t spot it in GA4, heatmaps, or your funnel reports. And you won’t hear it in interviews unless you ask the right questions.
That’s why we built the Revenue Friction Roadmap.
It’s not a redesign brief.
It’s a structured discovery framework rooted in behavioral observation.
Instead of asking “what’s broken?” we ask:
Where is the user losing confidence, clarity, or momentum?
Once you know where the dropoffs are happening, and why, the test ideas practically write themselves.
Win of the Week: Show Your Math, Win More Carts
Shoppers don’t abandon carts because they’re “distracted.”
They abandon because they hit uncertainty at the moment of commitment.
In this case, the Revenue Friction Roadmap flagged a consistent hesitation:
Cost opacity in the cart.
Shoppers couldn’t quickly tell what they were really about to pay. Taxes, shipping, and discounts weren’t clearly laid out. Confidence dropped before they ever hit the CTA.
So we tested a simple fix:
Itemize everything. Subtotal, discounts, shipping, and tax were upfront and clear.
No surprises. No vague “calculated later” promises.
Result: Transactions went up by +3.25%
Why it worked:
It wasn’t a cart design overhaul.
It removed a specific friction in the cart: lack of clarity at the final step.
Less guess-and-go. More trust, more checkouts.
Quote of the week:
If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.
TL;DR
If you’re still starting your testing roadmap with “let’s try…”
You’re doing it backwards.
Start with structured discovery.
Start with real user friction.
Start with a Revenue Friction Roadmap.
Looking forward,
How valuable was this week's newsletter? |
P.S. Ready to grow revenue without having to grow traffic? Let’s talk.