The problem with conversion rate optimization is that it seems all marketers and web developers have their own working definition of it. While everyone can agree that conversion rate optimization is all about ensuring that your landing pages or squeeze pages produce more sales or capture more leads (in the case of squeeze pages), there's quite a huge variation among specialists as to how to go about getting such results. There are two broad camps of optimization the 'art' crowd and the 'science' crowd. The 'art' school of optimization focuses on a 'holistic' and experience-based approach to conversion. A lot of the action turns on how experienced and creative the specialist involved is. There's a lot of 'I'll know it when I see it' kind of reasoning involved in this school of thought. Don't get me wrong, the 'art' crowd also uses rational tools like statistics packages and user behavior tracking software. However, all this data is fed through a highly personalized and subjective process centered on the mind of the specialist. As you can probably already tell, this subjective approach can produce results that can vary widely. It all depends on how experienced, creative, meticulous, and resourceful the specialist is.