I'm Brendon Rowe, MBA — a freelance conversion rate optimization consultant with 14+ years in growth marketing and 7+ years leading HIPAA-compliant acquisition in health and wellness. Every SEO and PPC dollar is wasted on a page that doesn't convert. I've grown web conversion 256% at Bradford Health and lifted contact conversion rates 54% at Lakeview Health through A/B testing and content improvements.
Testing is only worth doing when the winning variant changes a business number. Pick a client to see what the testing program actually moved.
Owned A/B testing on all websites and digital campaigns — including geo tests and lift analysis — across 23 WordPress sites. Leads grew 127% and admissions 8%, with Google Ads and Google Organic as the top-performing channels. Reported CAC, ROI, and conversion rate to sales and facility leadership. See the Bradford Health work.
Monthly admissions for mental and behavioral health facilities rose 86% while web traffic grew 46% — conversion outpaced traffic. Managed marketing automation flows for conversion-based campaigns and led projects to improve marketing insights in Microsoft Dynamics 365. See the Lakeview Health work.
Improved conversion rate for CookiesByDesign.com by 4% through design A/B testing with Optimizely, and implemented the analytics tracking frameworks in Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager that made the results measurable. A 4% lift on an e-commerce checkout is real money; the habit of instrumenting before testing carried into every role since.
Doubled subscriptions in the first year, contributing to TouchNote's first profitable year. Owned end-to-end member performance — conversion, analysis, and reporting — across web and mobile app, which is where the discipline of tying every test back to subscription revenue was sharpened.
The Definition
Conversion rate optimization is the discipline of getting more admissions, inquiries, and booked consults from the visitors you already pay for.
SEO and paid search decide who arrives. CRO decides what happens next. In healthcare, that "next" is a phone call at 2am, an insurance check, or a family member filling out a form for someone else — which is why three things separate it from generic CRO.
Friction isn't an annoyance, it's a lost admission. Clarity and reassurance outperform urgency tactics every time.
Heatmaps, session recordings, and form analytics have to be configured so PHI never leaves the building.
Phone calls, chat, and CRM outcomes have to flow back into the test, or you're optimizing to the wrong number.
Below is a typical treatment landing page, the kind SEO and paid search send thousands of visitors to. Every amber marker is a friction point I see over and over in healthcare audits. Tap one to see the fix and how I'd test it.
Tap a numbered marker on the page
Form-length test with form analytics masked for PHI. Primary metric: completed submissions that become contacted leads in the CRM.
The testing playbook written for checkout pages breaks in healthcare on volume, on privacy, and on tone. HHS has published guidance on online tracking technologies used by HIPAA covered entities — parts of it were vacated by a federal court in June 2024, so testing tools get configured conservatively and reviewed by compliance counsel. Here is where the two practices split.
Most "CRO" is a redesign with a before-and-after screenshot. A test is a hypothesis, a control, a pre-registered success metric, and enough data to tell the difference between a win and noise.
A single facility with 40 inquiries a month cannot power a 10% lift test in any reasonable window. Forcing one produces false winners and a testing program nobody trusts.
In those cases I use what worked across 37 facilities at Bradford Health: geo tests and lift analysis, sequential rollouts with holdouts, and pooled tests across facilities that share a template. The rigor stays; the method changes.
And some fixes don't need a test at all. A treatment page with no phone number doesn't need statistical proof — it needs a phone number. See how this connects to the SEO scope.
Four stages, on a repeating cycle. Nothing gets tested before it gets measured, and nothing gets recommended that I can't also build.
CRO is the multiplier on everything else. A page that converts at 6% instead of 4% makes every SEO ranking and every paid click worth half again as much. It's the cheapest growth in the plan and usually the last thing anyone funds. See the paid search scope.
GA4 funnels, Hotjar heatmaps configured to mask PHI, CallRail recordings, and intake-team interviews. Where people hesitate, where they leave, and what they ask on the phone that the page failed to answer.
Every idea written as "if we change X, metric Y moves because Z," then ranked by expected impact, traffic available, and build effort. The first test is the one most likely to pay for the program.
Variants built directly in WordPress and Elementor, wired in VWO or Optimizely, QA'd on mobile first — because that's where the 2am search happens. No dev backlog between the hypothesis and the test.
Run to significance, check lead quality in HubSpot or the CRM, then roll the winner across every facility on the template. Reported in the terms leadership uses: conversion rate, cost per admission, and what to test next.
The six questions that open almost every healthcare CRO conversation — answered the way I'd answer them on a call.
Ask it directly. I'll answer plainly, including when the honest answer is that it depends.
Ask Me DirectlyLess than you'd think for the audit and the obvious fixes; more for formal split testing. Below roughly a few hundred conversions a month, I lean on geo tests, sequential rollouts, and pooled tests across facilities instead of a classic A/B — the rigor stays, the method changes.
Only if configured that way. Form fields get masked, PHI pages get excluded, and vendors sign a BAA where one is required. I'm a marketer, not an attorney, so compliance counsel reviews the setup — and I'll name the uncertainty in the current HHS guidance rather than paper over it.
In my experience: a visible 24/7 phone number, insurance clarity above the fold, a shorter intake form, and proof a real clinical team exists. Those four beat any headline test. Then it becomes about the specific facility, persona, and channel.
VWO and Optimizely for testing; Hotjar for heatmaps; GA4 and Google Tag Manager for measurement; CallRail for phone conversions; HubSpot and the CRM for lead quality. Builds happen in WordPress and Elementor. If you already have a stack, I work in it.
Audit and obvious fixes ship in the first two to three weeks. A properly powered test runs two to six weeks depending on volume. A program — a cycle of research, test, roll out — starts compounding after the first quarter.
Hourly or a flat project fee. A conversion audit is a fixed project; an ongoing testing program runs monthly. You own the tools, the data, and every variant that ships.
If you're paying for visitors who don't call, filling forms that don't become admissions, or redesigning pages on instinct, a conversation costs nothing. I'll tell you the first three things I'd test — whether or not you hire me.