Testing Mind Map Series: How to Think Like a CRO Pro (Part 23)
Interview with Danielle Schwolow
As an Associate Director of CRO at Single Grain, Danielle has a lot of experience with optimization. In fact, she’s been working in the field for nearly a decade. And when you have the privilege of speaking to her, that experience translates into pure passion for experimentation and A/B testing.
You may be forgiven for mistaking Danielle for being a pure growth and revenue veteran. If silos exist within Single Grain, they haven’t kept Danielle from understanding exactly what’s up with the rest of the company–from partnerships to PR and marketing.
This is what makes her such an inspiration to learn from. Danielle collects inputs from all available channels to enrich her CRO practice and team.
Kudos on that and where it will take you in the years to come.
Now, let’s dive in…
Danielle, tell us about yourself. What inspired you to get into testing & optimization?
I started working as a strategist for an optimization tool, HiConversion. We worked with some really neat brands (L’Oréal, FinishLine, Republic of Tea) doing AI experimentation when it was at its infancy.
How many years have you been optimizing?
9!
What’s the one resource you recommend to aspiring testers & optimizers?
CXL courses.
Answer in 5 words or less: What is the discipline of optimization to you?
Continuing to improve user experience.
What are the top 3 things people MUST understand before they start optimizing?
Where they are, where they want to go, what tool they will use to get there.
How do you treat qualitative & quantitative data so it tells an unbiased story?
Data speaks for itself as to what the pains and gains of websites are.
Qualitative data gives the users a voice to describe their experience with the brand. Oftentimes, we can connect the qualitative data to the quantitative data, this helps to tell an unbiased story of the user experience.
What is the most annoying optimization myth you wish would go away?
That once you find a winner you no longer need to test.
Sometimes, finding the right test to run next can feel like a difficult task. Download the infographic above to use when inspiration becomes hard to find!
Hopefully, our interview with Danielle will help guide your experimentation strategy in the right direction!
What advice resonated most with you?
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, and our latest with Nils Koppelmann.
