Testing Mind Map Series: How to Think Like a CRO Pro (Part 31)

Interview with Gabriela Florea

Say hello to Gabriela Florea, the mastermind behind Verifone’s CRO strategy and a seriously impressive CRO knowledge repository (check it out below).

In today’s interview, Gabriela stresses the importance of having a healthy amount of website traffic before running experiments, and a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses UX, development, and analytics expertise. But the real game-changer? Understanding and catering to customer preferences, rather than personal motivations.

Now, Gabriela is quick to call out the most annoying optimization myth out there: that CRO will automatically lead to a win. Even with her CRO program’s high success rate, Gabriela knows optimization is not guaranteed success every time.

Ready to seriously elevate your CRO game? Let’s dive right in…

Gabriela, tell us about yourself. What inspired you to get into testing & optimization?

It all started with the first job that I got while still in college as a web content editor. After that, I did some copywriting, social media, SEO, and all these skills landed me my first role as a Digital Optimization Specialist at a big tech company. And with that opportunity, I started adding more layers of knowledge and expertise to everything related to web optimization and experimentation. And the rest is CRO history. 

How many years have you been optimizing for?

Give or take, close to 7 years now.

What’s the one resource you recommend to aspiring testers &
optimizers?

Not to toot my own horn, but the online CRO Knowledge Repository put together with my team centralizes a lot of resources a newbie to testing might need. You can check it out here. It’s a good start for someone who wants to learn what CRO is on their own. Plus, we’re updating it every 3 months, so it’s only getting better.

Answer in 5 words or less: What is the discipline of optimization to you?

Unbiased source for business decisions.

What are the top 3 things people MUST understand before they start optimizing?

1. You need enough traffic on your webpages to run accurate experiments.
2. Optimization requires numerous resources, skills and people: UX, development/integration, CRO, analytics.
3. Do not optimize to prove a personal point, but do it for your shoppers’ preferences and to understand them better. Revenue growth will follow.

How do you treat qualitative & quantitative data to remove bias?

Quantitative data is usually a detached and more mathematical way of looking at results and numbers. Qualitative data adds nuances. I believe that there is no bias involved if you’re looking at data and interpreting these two without adding personal opinions/ assumptions, looking to support your own preconceptions or your team’s or clients’ beliefs.

What is the most annoying optimization myth you wish would go away?

Investing in a paid CRO service or A/B testing a hypothesis should generate a win. An optimization team’s expertise is one thing, winning an A/B test is another thing. And I’m saying this even if we’re lucky enough to have a high success rate with our CRO program.

Thank you for joining us for this exclusive interview with Gabriela. We hope you’ve learned some valuable insights from his experiences and advice, and we encourage you to put them into action in your own optimization efforts.

Check back twice a month for upcoming interviews! And if you haven’t already, check out our past interviews with CRO legends Gursimran Gujral, Haley Carpenter, Rishi Rawat, Sina Fak, Eden Bidani, Jakub Linowski, Shiva Manjunath, Deborah O’Malley, Andra Baragan, Rich Page, Ruben de Boer, Abi Hough, Alex Birkett, John Ostrowski, Ryan Levander, Ryan Thomas, Bhavik Patel, Siobhan Solberg, Tim Mehta, Rommil Santiago, Steph Le Prevost, Nils Koppelmann, Danielle Schwolow, Kevin Szpak, Marianne Stjernvall, Christoph Böcker, Max Bradley, Samuel Hess, Riccardo Vandra, and our latest with Lukas Petrauskas.