CRO in Kharkiv, Ukraine

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) in Kharkiv — earning more from the same traffic

Most businesses in Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region that have a website or app work with conversion blindly. They launched ads — saw enquiries. Few enquiries — added budget. Didn't help — blamed “the weak market”. The real cause is usually not the traffic but the fact that the site can't convert: a visitor arrives, doesn't find answers to their questions, doesn't trust, doesn't see a clear CTA — and leaves for a competitor who often sells the same thing but knows how to present themselves.

I'm Alex Filiuk, a Senior UI/UX designer with 15+ years of practice, specialising in conversion rate optimisation (CRO). Over this time I've delivered ~130 product projects, with CRO or conversion-focused UX in more than half of them. I've worked with businesses from Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv and with American and European SaaS companies. This page collects what a Kharkiv-region business owner or marketing lead should know before commissioning CRO: how it's structured, how much it costs, what typical conversion rates look like in Kharkiv niches, how CRO works on low traffic, and how to avoid common mistakes.

Why CRO is critical specifically for Kharkiv, not just for Kyiv

Kharkiv is a city of 240,000+ residents, with a strong small-and-medium business sector but a limited audience in any given niche. For comparison: your café in Kyiv has a potential audience of millions, in Kharkiv — tens of thousands. This means three things for conversion:

• Every visitor is more expensive. If in Kyiv you pay 8-15 UAH per click and get 200 clicks, in Kharkiv you often pay 12-20 UAH (because the audience is narrower, the Google Ads auction is less competitive but with a smaller pool of intent queries) and get 50-80 clicks. Every lost lead is -2-5% of the monthly budget.
• Less chance of a return visit. Big markets forgive “not the first time”. Small ones don't. A Kharkiv customer who didn't find on your site what they were looking for has a 70%+ probability of never coming back.
• Trust competition is higher. In Kharkiv, everybody knows everybody. If your site looks shady or amateur — that gets discussed in local chats before you even launch ads.

So CRO in Kharkiv isn't “a luxury for mature companies”, it's a baseline discipline for anyone spending money on traffic. Without it, Google Ads, SEO or SMM work two-three times worse than their potential.

What CRO is in my practice — and what it isn't

The internet is full of CRO myths: “red button beats green”, “add a timer for +20%”, “you must redo the whole site first”. That's not CRO, that's marketing noise. Real CRO is systematic, data-driven funnel work with four core components.

1. Quantitative analysis. GA4, Microsoft Clarity, GTM events. Answers “where exactly in the funnel we lose people”: at which checkout step, at which landing scroll block, from which traffic source.
2. Qualitative analysis. User interviews with real Kharkiv-region clients, session recordings, on-site surveys. Answers “why we lose people”: what barrier, what misunderstanding, what anxiety.
3. Heuristic audit. Systematic interface review against criteria (Nielsen 10 heuristics, Baymard 600+ guidelines for e-commerce, Cialdini psychology, typography). Closes the obvious problems before tests start.
4. Experiments. A/B tests, multivariate tests, sequential testing. Each hypothesis is verified on the real audience. The winner isn't the “designer's opinion” but statistics.

What CRO isn't: it isn't “make my site prettier”, isn't “one universal checklist”, isn't “guaranteed +50% conversion”. CRO is a long cycle of small but measured improvements that add up to a result over a 3-12 month horizon.

Typical conversion rates in Kharkiv niches — what to benchmark against

One of the most frequent questions from Kharkiv-region clients: “our conversion is 1.2%, is this normal?”. There's no single answer — it depends on niche, traffic source, sales model. But there are reference points I see across projects:

• Local Kharkiv e-commerce (clothing, kids' goods, accessories, home appliances): median 1.0-2.2% conversion to order. Top players — 3.5-4.5%.
• Services (dental, beauty, repairs, lawyers, accounting, real estate): 2-5% to enquiry/call. High-intent queries (like “urgent”) — up to 8-10%.
• B2B / Kharkiv-region manufacturing (furniture, packaging, food industry): 0.5-1.5% to enquiry, but average deal in thousands of dollars — so even 0.8% is healthy.
• Kharkiv education projects (private schools, courses, tutoring hubs): 1-3% to trial-class or consultation enquiry.
• Local SaaS startups from Kharkiv: 1-2% sign-up rate, 8-15% trial-to-paid.
• Cafés, restaurants, hotels in Kharkiv: 3-7% click-to-call or click on Google Maps route from the site.

If your numbers are significantly below the niche median — that's a signal CRO will give an obvious uplift. If you're at top-player level — focus on scaling next, via SEO, Google Ads and email marketing.

CRO specifics on low traffic — the reality of Kharkiv business

Classic CRO materials usually say nothing about low traffic: they assume you have 50k+ sessions per month. In Kharkiv this is rare — most local businesses have 1-15k sessions/mo. So a different methodology is needed:

• Bayesian statistics instead of frequentist. Allows cautious conclusions on smaller samples with transparent uncertainty understanding. Not “p < 0.05 — therefore victory”, but “with 92% probability variant B is better than A by 5-12%”.
• Big hypotheses instead of micro-optimisations. We test not the button colour but a rewritten block, a new checkout, a new landing. Bigger changes — bigger effect, visible even on small samples.
• Sequential testing and multi-armed bandit. Instead of “50/50 for half a year”, dynamically reroute traffic to the winning variant.
• More emphasis on qualitative methods. 8 user interviews with Kharkiv-region clients often deliver more insights than 3 months of A/B testing.
• Combining with SEO/content strategy. If traffic is scarce — we drive it in parallel via SEO or paid ads, so tests mature faster.

How the CRO process looks — step by step

A transparent cycle we go through with the client. Each stage has a fixed document or presentation — you know what you're paying for and what you're getting.

1. Week 1-2. Audit and analytics setup. I check GA4, GTM, events, goals. If “nothing is configured” (a frequent story in Kharkiv) — I rebuild from scratch. Connect Microsoft Clarity, configure Hotjar if needed. Output — a funnel map with real numbers of “where we lose how much”.
2. Week 2-3. Heuristic audit + qualitative research. I systematically walk through the entire interface (Nielsen heuristics, Baymard, niche specifics). I run 5-8 user interviews with real Kharkiv-region clients — by phone or in-person in Kharkiv. Analyse session recordings.
3. Week 3-4. Forming the hypothesis backlog. I move all findings into a structured document. Each hypothesis = “if we do X, metric Y will grow by Z%, because …”. Prioritisation via ICE or RICE.
4. Week 4-12. Experiments. We run tests sequentially or in parallel (where they don't conflict). Each experiment is a separate document: hypothesis, variant designs, metric, duration, result, conclusion.
5. Monthly. Report + next steps. Not a “technical report” but business metrics: how many extra orders, enquiries, money, what ROI on the CRO investment. Based on the report we decide what's next.

Top 5 CRO scenarios where I deliver the biggest uplift

From practice with various businesses — in Kharkiv, Kyiv, the US — there are funnel points with the highest ROI:

1. E-commerce checkout. For most Kharkiv online stores checkout is the main “leak”. Reducing steps from 5 to 2-3, guest checkout, autofill, cart preservation — typical uplift +15-40% to payment conversion. I work to Baymard Institute methodology.
2. Lead-gen forms. For services businesses (dental, salon, Kharkiv law firms) the enquiry form is the “last link”. Reducing 6-8 fields to 3-4, progress bar, multi-step, smart defaults — up to +60% submit rate.
3. Landing hero screen. Often the place where you lose 50-70% of traffic that doesn't scroll further. Clear value proposition, audience-relevant CTA, removed “visual noise” — +15-30%.
4. Pricing page. Anchoring (showing the expensive option first), highlighting “recommended”, comparison table, FAQ near pricing — +20% to click-on-CTA.
5. Product or service card. Social proof (real Kharkiv-region client reviews, order count), delivery/guarantees, sticky CTA — +10-25%.

Psychology in CRO — how triggers work and where the ethical line is

At the core of CRO are behavioural economics and decision-making psychology: Cialdini (“Influence”), Kahneman (“Thinking, Fast and Slow”), Thaler & Sunstein (“Nudge”). These aren't marketing tricks but scientifically described features of human psychology.

What I apply when working for Kharkiv-region business:

• Social proof. Real Kharkiv client reviews (with name and photo), weekly order counts, Google Business ratings, case studies.
• Authority. Certifications, expert content, specialist intros, cases in Kharkiv-region media.
• Reciprocity. A free lead magnet (checklist, video consultation, demo) before asking for an enquiry.
• Anchoring. Correct order of price display: expensive — standard — economy. Standard then looks like a deal.
• Loss aversion. Not “get a discount”, but “don't lose -20% today”. Same in essence, stronger pull.
• Cognitive ease. Simplify everything possible: fewer clicks, less text, clear CTAs, predictable navigation.

Under no circumstances do I use dark patterns: fake timers, fake reviews, “3 left in stock” when there are actually 50, hard-to-cancel flows. In Kharkiv, where the market is small and reputation spreads quickly, dark patterns destroy a business in the medium term. I work on a principle: if I can't publicly justify it to the client — I don't do it.

CRO for e-commerce, services, B2B and SaaS — different approaches

For different business models in Kharkiv — different CRO focus areas:

• E-commerce: the main thing is checkout (Baymard 67% cart abandonment methodology), product card, catalogue filters, search.
• Services: the main thing is enquiry forms, service card, transparent pricing, cases, local trust (address in Kharkiv, reviews from city clients).
• B2B / manufacturing: the main thing is landing structure for different ICPs, vertical case studies, a clear “from enquiry to proposal” process, long sales cycle and retargeting.
• SaaS: the main thing is sign-up flow, activation (aha-moment), trial-to-paid, in-product onboarding.

On the “Projects” page you can see examples of different formats — from CRM systems to consumer apps.

Common CRO mistakes among Kharkiv-region businesses — and how to avoid them

• “Just make a pretty redesign.” Without analytics and hypotheses — that's a blind bet. Often a new “pretty” design lowers conversion because patterns familiar to clients are broken.
• “Let's test everything at once.” Without ICE/RICE prioritisation — that's wasting traffic. One big test at a time, on one metric.
• “Like / don't like.” Conversion isn't determined by the owner's taste. It's determined by real customer behaviour. Design is evaluated by data, not voting.
• Stopping a test as soon as “one variant is ahead”. Without statistical significance that's randomness. Wait for the required sample size.
• Testing alongside major external changes (big promo, religious holiday, Black Friday). The effect gets drowned in background noise.
• Ignoring the mobile version. 60-75% of traffic in Kharkiv is mobile. If you only test desktop — a big chunk is missing.

What you receive after a CRO project

• Configured analytics (GA4, GTM, Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar if needed) — your team can work with it independently.
• “Funnel map” document with current metrics and bottlenecks.
• Hypothesis backlog (Notion / Airtable) with prioritisation — usable even after our cooperation ends.
• Reports for each experiment: hypothesis, variants, results, conclusions, next steps.
• Variant designs for tests — in Figma, ready to hand to a developer.
• Measured uplift in key business metrics — enquiries, orders, revenue, AOV.
• Monthly business reports for management — no jargon, in money and ROI.

My other services that pair well with CRO in Kharkiv

• UX audit — a fast start before a full CRO cycle.
• UI/UX design — for new products, where the CRO foundation is laid right away.
• Web development — implementation of test variants.
• E-commerce — specialised work with online stores and checkout.
• SEO — to bring better and bigger traffic into the funnel.
• Google Ads — ad setup synchronised with CRO logic.
• Email marketing — repeat sales and abandoned-cart reactivation.
• Product strategy — for SaaS and complex products.
• Business consulting — positioning and monetisation model.

CRO in other Ukrainian cities and abroad

I work not only with Kharkiv-region business. If you have offices in several cities or are expanding — we'll build a CRO strategy that scales:

• Kyiv — national e-commerce, IT products, chains
• Lviv — IT, creative, gastronomy
• Odesa — retail, tourism, e-commerce
• Dnipro — B2B, manufacturing, technology
• Kharkiv — IT, education, B2B

Full list — on the “Service Areas” page.

Ready to earn more from the same traffic?

If you already have a website or app with traffic but conversion is underwhelming — we start with a free 60-minute consultation. Fill in the contact form, and we'll discuss which CRO format suits your Kharkiv business: starter audit, full cycle or retainer. I'll send a detailed proposal with calculated ROI and a fixed price — no surprises.

I'm ready to help your business in Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region build a funnel where every visitor has the maximum chance of becoming a customer — and every hryvnia invested in traffic works 30-180% more efficiently.