Why CRO Needs a Human-Centred Approach in the Age of AI

As AI continues to shape how websites are built and optimised, Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is becoming increasingly standardised. Templates, automated insights, and recycled best practice patterns are making it faster to improve experiences, but also making those experiences more similar. Even styling and design are taking a hit: it is becoming too easy to go onto a site and think ‘this has Claude written all over it’ (although this just might be my CRO-wired brain!). 

In many cases, it feels like the internet is converging on the same design language, the same messaging structures, and the same optimisation tactics. The unintended consequence is that users are becoming less responsive to what used to work, and suddenly we are all just absorbing different content in the same font.

Over time, users have learned how to ignore traditional CRO tactics. Pop-ups, urgency messaging, countdown timers, and discount overlays no longer carry the same weight they once did. What was once persuasive is now background noise. 

This is often described as optimisation blindness (or banner blindness), where users subconsciously filter out familiar patterns because they recognise them as attempts to influence behaviour rather than genuine value. This is not a new phenomenon, and has been extensively explored by Usability pioneer Jakob Nielson since 1997, using eye-tracking studies to conclude how effectively we ignore content that fights for user attention. 

This long precedes the ‘Generative AI explosion’, but its effects are increasingly evident as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini (among others!) continue to generate recycled best practices. Even well-executed CRO patterns are starting to lose impact when they are overused.

AI has brought huge benefits to CRO and digital teams.

It speeds up analysis, improves testing efficiency, and reduces manual workload. As with many industries, laborious and mundane tasks have been shortened from days into a matter of minutes. 

However in many ways, despite the name, it is hardly generative -  it simply reinforces what already exists. Most AI systems are trained on historical data and best practice patterns. That means they are excellent at identifying what has worked before, but less effective at creating what feels meaningfully different. 

As more teams adopt similar tools and workflows, we are seeing a rise in homogenised user experiences. Websites are becoming more efficient, but less distinctive.

Within this environment, where consumerism is at its peak, and everything feels like a conversion effort, human signals are becoming a key differentiator.

Trust is a major factor. Users are increasingly cautious online, and in many industries scepticism is high – people have a heightened aversion to scams and ‘too good to be true’ promises. This means that real people, real experiences, and visible proof of credibility are often more persuasive than polished marketing copy.

This includes things like:

• genuine customer reviews and stories 
• visible founders and teams 
• transparent brand storytelling 
• lived expertise and real world experience 

In some cases, removing friction entirely can even reduce trust, because overly seamless experiences can feel artificial or suspicious. Ever bought something online and been on edge about just how easy it was? 

CRO best practice is to remove clicks, make journeys shorter and require minimal effort and engagement; this is exactly the advice Claude would give you too. However, continued experimentation might just prove that this isn’t always the case. 

It is true that consumer behaviour is evolving. Shorter attention spans, AI overviews, and TikTok-generations mean people expect immediate answers to what they're looking for, or they simply leave. However, these need to coexist - adding a human element is what captures attention and keeps these users on site.

Personalisation is not a new concept in the digital space, but it is becoming more important as expectations rise. 

Platforms like Netflix and Spotify have trained users to expect experiences that cater to them, not just segments of them. This is evidently easier to do when a single account dictates all the preferences of a single person, but we are seeing an evolving movement for this idea onsite as well. 

For CRO, this creates an opportunity to move beyond basic segmentation and towards more meaningful contextual relevance. Not just showing different content, but creating experiences that reflect intent, emotion, and different stages of the user journey. We are moving towards different content being delivered whether you are new or returning user, or dependent on what elements of the site you have engaged with, or even a unique experience dependent on what campaign or advert brought you to the site in the first place. Your journeys are not being shortened in one full sweep, but curated.

Another shift which is holding increasing value is the move from short-term conversion rate optimisation to long term customer retention.

Hand in hand with personalisation and real-life values is the big picture trajectory that ecommerce businesses strive for. Instead of changing a CTA colour to see a short-term 2% increase in transactions, businesses want people to turn to them time and time again, and this doesn’t come from easy UX fixes generated by AI. 

There is opportunity to dive deeper into the demographic of customer bases - what they want, what they enjoy, who they are.  Together with a better understanding of your brand than AI could ever gather, this human-centred approach is a priceless converter. 

Brands like Tala have shown how community driven strategies can create stronger outcomes than purely transactional optimisation. Initiatives like exclusive invites to store openings, member-only discounts and even launching maternity product lines that mirror their founder’s journey create emotional connections that play into the sense of community and drive loyalty.

Tala's results speak for themselves - from driving an initial £6m in sales in year one, entirely driven by an organic social community and CRM activity, to more recently driving £20m+ in revenue and opening two brick-and-mortar stores.

This shift recognises that retention, loyalty, and community, which all flourish with a human focus, are now just as important as initial conversion.

AI is not the enemy of CRO. It is a powerful tool that improves speed, efficiency, and scale. The risk is not in using it, but in relying on it too heavily as a substitute for differentiation and creativity. 

The real opportunity lies in combining AI driven optimisation with human-centred thinking. This means using data and automation to support decision making, while deliberately designing for trust, emotion, and real human behaviour. 

There's a truth here about how people work, too. Teams generating ideas in person out-create those working over video by 15–20%, and their best idea is measurably better (Brucks & Levav, 2022), because a screen narrows your field of view and thus, narrows your thinking. 

An AI-first, remote-default workflow is incomparable at the parts of CRO that reward volume and speed, but it minimises the in-person collaboration that genuinely new ideas depend on. CRO teams which recognise this balance will not just optimise journeys - they will create experiences that feel human, in a digital world that is becoming increasingly formulaic and automated.