CRO in San Francisco, USA

CRO in San Francisco, USA — CRO that converts Bay Area users into customers

Today, having conversion optimisation isn't enough for a San Francisco business. Your potential client opens a smartphone on BART, sees three or four similar offers, and decides in 5 seconds which one to engage. If yours is slow, unclear on mobile, or doesn't render correctly under iOS Safari with intermittent BART connectivity — you've lost that customer before they finished reading your headline. That's why investing in quality CRO isn't a "luxury expense", it's a direct investment in revenue.

I'm Alex Filiuk, a Senior practitioner with 15 years of experience and a portfolio of 130+ projects. I deliver conversion optimisation for businesses in San Francisco, across the US (San Francisco, LA, Boston, Austin), in Europe (London, Manchester, Edinburgh), and in Ukraine. On this page I've collected what's worth knowing for an Bay Area business owner before commissioning cro: how the engagement works, USD pricing brackets, which mistakes destroy ROI, and which 2025-2026 trends actually matter for the Bay Area market.

Why conversion-rate optimization matters for San Francisco businesses

Bay Area traffic is expensive. Whether you're running Meta Ads against a Mission DTC audience, LinkedIn lead-gen for a SoMa B2B SaaS, or Google Ads for a SoMa service business, your CPM is among the highest in the US. Every percentage point of conversion-rate improvement compounds across that ad spend. A 0.8% → 1.4% conversion uplift on $50K/month of paid traffic is roughly $360K of additional revenue per year, with zero incremental ad spend.

What quality CRO delivers for an Bay Area business:

• Direct revenue lift. CRO programs typically deliver 10–35% conversion-rate improvement in the first 90 days, with the gains compounding on existing traffic.
• Lower effective CAC. Same ad budget, more customers — your CAC drops, your payback period shortens, your LTV/CAC ratio expands.
• Faster experiment cadence than agencies. Async workflow plus single-Senior contact = test-launch within 5 business days, not the 3-week agency cycle.
• Mobile-first by design. Most Bay Area traffic is mobile (BART commutes, midtown lunch breaks). CRO programs prioritize mobile conversion before desktop polish.
• Insight library, not 'tests'. Every test ships with a documented hypothesis and post-mortem, building a knowledge base your team can compound for years.

Conversion-rate optimization vs the templated approach

Naive CRO is 'change the button color and run an A/B test'. That's the cargo-cult version. Real CRO is a research-led discipline that combines quantitative analytics, qualitative session data, and structured hypothesis design.

A real CRO program runs four parallel tracks:

• Quantitative analysis. GA4 funnel exploration, segmented by device / source / geo. Drop-off points quantified before any test is designed.
• Qualitative analysis. Hotjar / Microsoft Clarity session recordings, scroll maps, rage-click tracking. Hypothesis-generation grounded in user behavior, not founder intuition.
• Hypothesis design. Every test starts with a written hypothesis, success criteria, traffic-volume sample-size calc, and pre-registered analysis plan.
• Statistical rigor. Tests run to significance (Bayesian or frequentist depending on volume), winners shipped, learnings documented even when null.

If your conversion problem is more fundamental — broken information architecture, mobile-hostile UX, slow load — start with a UX audit before running tests. CRO compounds on a solid foundation, not a broken one.

Project types most-requested by Bay Area clients

Across 15 years and 130+ projects, I've noticed Bay Area business categories have their own digital signature. Most-common requests for CRO:

• DTC e-commerce checkout optimization. Oakland / Marina brands whose Shopify checkout converts at 1.4% — pushing it to 2.1–2.6% with mobile-first redesign and trust-signal layering.
• B2B SaaS trial-to-paid. SoMa / Mission Bay SaaS with 800+ trials per month and 8% trial-to-paid conversion — re-architecting onboarding to push trial-to-paid past 14%.
• Lead-gen landing pages. Bay Area service businesses (legal, accounting, real estate) running Google Ads to a single landing page — uplift from 3% to 6–9% form-fill rate.
• Fintech onboarding flows. the Mission / FiDi fintech KYC and account-opening flows with 60% drop-off — rebuilt step-by-step, drop-off cut to 35%.
• Subscription DTC retention. Reducing first-month cancellations through onboarding-flow tests, smarter pause-vs-cancel UX.
• Content site monetization. SF-based publishers optimizing newsletter signup and paywall conversion without breaking reader experience.

Different category, different approach — so I don't ship templates. Every engagement starts with discovery against your actual Bay Area market context.

The CRO engagement, step by step

I work via a transparent process that 130+ clients have completed end-to-end. Each phase has a fixed deliverable that you receive in your hands. No "wait a month while I design" — you know what's happening every week, with weekly Slack updates and one Zoom sync at 8am Bay Area / 3pm Kyiv.

1. Audit and baseline (week 1–2). GA4, Hotjar / Clarity, ad-platform analytics review. Funnel mapped, drop-offs quantified, top 10 hypotheses documented.
2. Hypothesis prioritization (week 2). ICE-scored backlog (Impact / Confidence / Effort), aligned with traffic volume so tests reach significance in reasonable time.
3. Test design and build (week 3). First 2–3 tests built in your A/B platform (Convert / VWO / Optimizely / GrowthBook). QA across devices and browsers.
4. Launch and monitor (week 3–4). Tests live, daily monitoring for technical issues (sample-ratio mismatch, segment skew). No early-stopping based on lookerd numbers.
5. Analysis and decision (week 4–6). Each test runs to pre-registered significance. Winners shipped, losers documented, learnings added to insight library.
6. Iteration sprint (week 6+). Continuous program: 2–4 tests in flight at any time, weekly review, monthly synthesis report.
7. Quarterly strategic review. Roll-up of program impact, identification of next macro-pattern, recalibration of backlog priorities.

What you receive when the CRO project completes

• Audit report (15–25 pages): funnel breakdown, segmented analysis, top 20 hypotheses ICE-scored.
• Hypothesis backlog in Notion / Linear, prioritized and grouped by theme.
• A/B platform configuration: Convert / VWO / Optimizely / GrowthBook setup, custom events, segment definitions.
• Test variants: built in code or visual editor depending on platform, QA'd across devices and browsers.
• Test reports: one per test, with hypothesis, results, statistical analysis, screenshots, and learnings.
• Insight library: running document of validated and invalidated hypotheses, organized by funnel stage.
• Monthly program report: tests run, winners shipped, conversion-rate trend, attributable revenue lift.
• Quarterly synthesis: macro-patterns, recommendations for next quarter's focus areas.

Why hire a Ukraine-based Senior instead of an Bay Area agency

Bay Area has a deep pool of talent — and rates that match. A typical Senior at a SoMa agency: $180–280/hour. A 12-week engagement at a respectable SoMa studio: $80,000–180,000. The work is excellent, but the cost makes it inaccessible for most early-stage startups, mid-sized DTC brands, and bootstrapped B2B SaaS companies.

The remote Ukraine-Senior model gives you:

• 30–60% cost reduction. Same Senior expertise, same deliverables, transparent fixed-fee USD pricing.
• Single point of contact. No account manager, no project coordinator, no creative director "stepping in" mid-call. You talk directly with the person doing the work.
• Async-friendly cadence. The 7-hour gap (Bay Area EST → Kyiv) is a feature: I work while you sleep, you wake up to demos and questions in Slack, we sync 1× per week on Zoom.
• Production-grade quality. Same modern stack (Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind), same accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA, ADA-compliant), same handoff specs as a top-tier Bay Area agency.
• Transparent fixed pricing. No hourly invoices, no scope-creep surprises. You know the total before we start.

USD pricing model

All projects are quoted as fixed fee in USD, paid 50% upfront / 50% on delivery (or split into milestones for projects > $20K). No hourly invoices. If scope changes mid-project — we re-quote, you approve in writing, and the change is added with a clear delta.

Indicative ranges to set expectations (every quote is bespoke, but these brackets are realistic):

• UI/UX design — landing or simple website (4-6 weeks). $8,000–18,000. Bay Area agency equivalent: $30,000–80,000.
• Corporate website — full design + dev (8-12 weeks). $20,000–45,000. Bay Area agency equivalent: $80,000–250,000.
• B2B SaaS / web app — design + frontend + backend (16-28 weeks). $50,000–180,000.
• UX audit (2-3 weeks). $4,000–9,000.
• Branding — full identity system (8-12 weeks). $12,000–30,000.
• SEO retainer (3-6 months minimum). $2,500–6,000/month.
• Fractional CPO / consulting (15-20 hrs/month, 6+ months). $4,000–8,000/month.

Discounts apply when you bundle services (e.g. design + development + SEO together) — typically 15-25% vs. ordering each separately.

How the async workflow handles the timezone gap

The 7-hour difference between San Francisco (EST/EDT) and Kyiv (EET/EEST) is the biggest concern most Bay Area clients raise — and it's the easiest to solve. The honest answer: most Bay Area startup founders and product teams already work async with Slack-first cadence. The remote-Ukraine engagement just formalises what's already happening internally.

• Daily Slack handoff. When you wake up at 8am Bay Area time, I've already worked 8 hours. There's a thread in #project with the day's progress, demo link (Figma / Vercel preview), and 2-3 specific questions that need your call. You answer over coffee — by 4pm Bay Area time I'm already incorporating your feedback.
• Weekly Zoom sync. One 60-90 minute call per week, scheduled at 8am Bay Area / 3pm Kyiv. We walk through what shipped, what's next, what's blocked.
• Loom for async demos. Instead of scheduling a meeting to "show you what I built", I record a 5-10 minute walkthrough.
• Notion / Linear for tracking. Whatever you use, I'll join. No new tool to learn.
• Emergency Zoom on demand. Critical decisions get a 15-minute Zoom call within 4 hours of request, regardless of timezone.

Cases — Bay Area and US clients in my portfolio

My portfolio contains 130+ projects, including B2B SaaS for US founders, DTC brand sites for Bay Area and LA-based companies, and fintech dashboards for clients on the East Coast. For NDA reasons I can't list every client publicly — but on the discovery call I'll walk you through 5-10 most-relevant cases for your specific niche.

Other services for San Francisco businesses

• UI/UX design
• Web development
• Mobile app design
• Mobile app development
• Branding and logo design
• E-commerce
• CRM / ERP / SaaS
• SEO, Google Ads, SMM, email marketing
• UX audit, CRO
• Business consulting, product strategy

Other US and EU cities I serve

• Los Angeles — entertainment, creative agencies, e-commerce
• San Francisco / Bay Area — B2B SaaS, deep-tech, AI
• Boston — biotech, ed-tech, university spinoffs
• Austin — startups, gaming, tech
• London — fintech, B2B SaaS, creative
• Manchester — northern tech hub, sport-tech, MediaCity
• Edinburgh — fintech, ed-tech, data science

Full list of locations on the "Service Areas" page.

Ready to discuss your Bay Area project?

Fill out the contact form or message me through the channels in the footer. The first 60-90 minute call is free — we'll discuss your business, product goals, indicative scope, USD budget range, and timeline. If you have an existing site / app, I'll do a quick express-review and show you 3-5 issues that can be fixed in the first week, even before signing a full engagement.

Common mistakes Bay Area businesses make commissioning cro

• Hiring on hourly rate. A $25/hour practitioner in Eastern Europe is statistically a junior at best. The 30-60% cost gap with Bay Area agencies isn't from hourly rate — it's from removing layered agency overhead.
• Skipping the discovery phase to "save money". A 1-2 week paid discovery is the cheapest insurance against a $50K mistake.
• Not asking about IP and ownership. Get this in writing before kickoff.
• Underestimating the value of single-contact engagement. Talking directly to the person building your product cuts requirement-translation losses by ~40%.
• Treating cro as a one-off project. The strongest results come from continuous iteration, not handoff-and-forget.

2025-2026 trends I apply on Bay Area client cro projects

• Server-side A/B testing (Vercel Edge Config, GrowthBook) over client-side
• Sequential testing replacing fixed-horizon for faster decisions
• Mobile-first hypotheses — desktop is now secondary on most Bay Area sites
• Personalisation experiments at the segment level, not 1-to-1
• Long-tail page optimisation — many small wins beating one big swing
• Speed (Core Web Vitals) as a CRO lever, not just SEO
• Form micro-copy and field reduction as biggest single-test lift