Digital Optimization Assistant

A Digital Optimization Assistant helps make a company's website, app or online shop work better - more visitors completing a purchase, signing up, or finding what they need. The job involves running experiments (such as A/B tests, where two versions of a page are shown to different visitors to see which performs better), pulling data out of analytics tools, and feeding findings back to marketing, design and development teams. It usually sits within a digital marketing, e-commerce or product team, either in-house at a retailer, bank or media company, or at an agency working across multiple clients.

Starting salary: £22k–£28k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: Direct application to an assistant, executive or junior analyst…
They usually ask for: A degree is usually expected but the subject often does not…

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £22,000–£28,000 to start, though this varies widely - London and larger in-house teams at the upper end or above it, smaller regional agencies at the lower end. Some roles include a performance bonus linked to commercial targets.

What you'd actually do

Pulling reports from web analytics tools (most commonly Google Analytics 4, sometimes Adobe Analytics) to show how pages are performing - traffic, drop-off points, conversion rates - and summarising what changed week to week
Helping set up and monitor A/B or multivariate tests in testing platforms such as Optimizely, VWO or AB Tasty: checking the test is running correctly, that the right audiences are being split, and that nothing is broken
Watching session recordings and heatmaps (tools like Hotjar or Contentsquare that show where users click, scroll and hesitate) and writing up patterns worth investigating
Writing up test results into a short readable summary - what was tested, what happened, whether the difference was meaningful, what to do next - for marketers or stakeholders who are not analysts

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Checking tracking is working: making sure buttons, forms and checkout steps are firing the right data, often using Google Tag Manager and browser developer tools, and flagging broken tracking to developers
Maintaining a backlog or roadmap of test ideas and research findings, and chasing designers, copywriters or developers for the assets needed to get a test live
Doing smaller supporting tasks - competitor page reviews, basic usability checks, updating dashboards in Looker Studio or Power BI, proofreading page copy before a test goes live

How graduates get in

Direct application to an assistant, executive or junior analyst role - this is by far the most common route, as very few employers run a dedicated graduate scheme specifically for conversion rate optimisation (CRO, the discipline of improving the percentage of visitors who take a desired action)
Via a broader digital marketing or e-commerce graduate scheme at a large retailer, bank, travel company or telecoms firm, then specialising into optimisation after a rotation
Starting at a digital or performance marketing agency in a general digital executive role and moving into the agency's CRO or analytics team - agencies hire at junior level more readily than in-house teams
A placement year or summer internship in digital marketing, e-commerce or analytics, which often converts directly into a graduate offer

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Sideways from a related junior role - paid search, email marketing, merchandising, customer service analytics - once you have shown you can work with data
Self-taught entry with a portfolio: free Google Analytics certification, a personal site you have tested on, or a small freelance project. Unusual on its own, but it genuinely helps a non-obvious degree get shortlisted

What employers ask for

A degree is usually expected but the subject often does not matter much. Marketing, business, economics, psychology, statistics, maths and computer science all appear frequently; psychology and behavioural science are quietly well regarded because the work is about understanding user behaviour
Most employers ask for a 2:1, though plenty of agencies and smaller in-house teams will take a 2:2 with relevant experience or a strong grasp of analytics. This varies a lot by employer size
Comfort with numbers and spreadsheets is near-universal - expect to be tested on Excel or Google Sheets at interview, and sometimes asked to interpret a set of results
Some exposure to analytics tools, usually Google Analytics. Free certifications (Google Analytics, Google Ads) are cheap signals that you are serious and are often listed as 'desirable'

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Basic HTML and CSS understanding is commonly asked for as a nice-to-have rather than essential - you need to read a page's structure, not build one. JavaScript knowledge is a genuine differentiator but rarely required at assistant level
Some understanding of statistical significance (whether a difference between two test versions is real or just noise) is increasingly asked for, though many employers expect to teach this on the job

Skills that matter

Reading data sceptically

A lot of the job is resisting the temptation to call a test a winner too early or read meaning into a small, random fluctuation.

Analytics tool fluency (GA4, Tag Manager)

You will be asked ad-hoc questions daily - 'why did mobile checkout drop last Tuesday?' - and need to find the answer yourself rather than queueing behind a data team.

Writing clearly for non-technical readers

A test result only creates value if a marketing manager or head of e-commerce understands it well enough to act, so plain summaries beat dense spreadsheets.

Attention to detail in test setup

A mis-targeted audience or a broken tracking tag can invalidate weeks of testing, and nobody notices until the data looks strange.

Basic understanding of user experience and persuasion

Good test ideas come from spotting where a user gets confused or hesitates, not from randomly changing button colours.

Stakeholder patience and chasing

Tests depend on designers, copywriters and developers who have their own priorities, so a lot of progress comes from politely keeping things moving.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Assistant or executive level: supporting other people's tests, learning the tools, owning reporting. Typically a year or two, though this varies widely and agency progression tends to be faster than in-house.
CRO Analyst / Optimisation Executive: owning your own tests end to end, including forming the hypothesis, agreeing success measures and presenting results.
CRO Manager / Senior Optimisation Analyst: setting the testing roadmap, managing junior staff or an agency relationship, and arguing for budget and developer time.
From here the path forks. Some move into digital analytics or data analysis, picking up SQL and visualisation tools. Some move into product management or UX research, where the user-behaviour understanding transfers well. Some move up into Head of E-commerce or Head of Digital roles with broader commercial responsibility.
Experienced practitioners also commonly go freelance or consultant, since CRO is a discrete, outcome-measurable specialism that companies will buy in. Timelines for all of this vary enormously by sector and company size.

What people get wrong

“It's about making things look nicer - a design or creative job.”

It is much closer to applied statistics and commercial analysis. Aesthetic opinions carry very little weight; what counts is whether a measurable number moved and whether that movement was real.

“Most of your tests will win and you'll be constantly improving things.”

A large share of tests show no meaningful difference or lose, and that is normal and expected. A good part of the job is being comfortable reporting 'nothing happened' without treating it as failure, and extracting learning from it anyway.

“You need to be able to code.”

At assistant level you usually need to read HTML and understand what a tag or script does, not write production code. Many testing platforms have visual editors. That said, picking up JavaScript and later SQL is the single most reliable way to progress.

“'Optimization' with a z means it's an American role or an American company.”

The spelling is just a common variant in digital marketing job titles in the UK. You will see 'Optimisation Executive', 'CRO Analyst' and 'Conversion Analyst' used for broadly the same work.

Where this varies

The job differs a lot depending on where you sit. At an agency you will juggle several clients, work faster, present more, and see a wide range of websites - good for learning, often more pressured. In-house you go deeper on one site, get closer to the commercial decisions, and spend more time negotiating internally for developer resource. Sector matters too: in e-commerce and travel the metric is usually revenue or bookings, in financial services it is applications completed, in media it is subscriptions or engagement - and regulated sectors add compliance sign-off that slows testing down considerably. Team size also varies: at a large retailer you may be one of many specialists, while at a smaller firm 'optimisation' may be one part of a general digital marketing job that also includes email, paid search and social.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.