How do you start a conversion rate optimization (CRO) agency business in 2027?

Startup costs: Low — $2K-$6K. Hotjar/Microsoft Clarity (free-$200/mo), Optimizely or VWO ($50-$1K/mo, often passed to client), Userpilot/Pendo for SaaS clients, GA4 + GTM (free), laptop, LLC. Heatmap + session-replay tools and a stats engine (or Evan Miller's calculator) are the core stack.

LLC / contracts / insurance: LLC standard. E&O $1K-$2.5K/yr. Contracts must cover: code-deployment risk (you push experiments to production sites — limit liability), data privacy (GDPR/CCPA — session replay can capture PII), test-result attribution (define minimum sample size and significance threshold to avoid "your test broke our funnel" disputes).

Customer acquisition: Ecom Shopify Plus brands and B2B SaaS at $5M-$100M ARR are the buyer pools. Cold audits showing leaks (drop-off points, broken forms, weird mobile UX) get replies. Partner with paid-ads agencies — they bring traffic, you make it convert, rev-share both ways. Content on LinkedIn breaking down public test results compounds.

Revenue model: Retainer $5K-$20K/mo (1-3 tests in flight + analysis + roadmap). Project audits $5K-$15K. Win-share/performance pricing is a trap unless you're huge — small sample noise will eat your margin.

Year-1 reality: $80K-$240K solo, more with a designer + dev contractor. Sales cycle is 45-90 days. Many CRO agencies fail because they can't show wins in months 1-3 — most tests are flat or losers. Set expectations: "We'll run 6-10 tests per quarter, 25-35% will win, 1-2 will be home runs." Clients who expect every test to win will fire you.

Honest: stats literacy is the bar. If you don't understand sample size, sequential testing, or novelty effects, you'll ship false wins and lose clients in 6 months.