Capital Investment Microsite

A prominent global investment management company has an ambitious CPA target on Google PPC campaigns for their Australian Self Managed Superannuation Fund Suite of product pages.

Project Overview

After the initial one-month experimentation with Google Adwords, the results reflected UX concerns and the lack of emphasis on conversion points. I was brought into the project team to assist in investigating performance and provide recommendations to support conversion.

Challenges

Starting work on month two of a tight three-month experimentation deadline
Limited budget provided little resource to conduct usability testing
Resistance and inability to recognise gains from UX
Client organisation treats all information as highly sensitive, which restricted our visibility in monitoring key performance metrics

UX Deliverables

Problem identification
Heat maps and scroll maps
User recordings
A/B experiment

Process

Like many clients who had never embarked on a UX project, proving the value UX methodology was a major challenge. I had a tight budget and even tighter deadline. With this in mind, I drew up a project approach that I thought would allow me to glean insights as quickly as possible. Using Hotjar as my chosen tool, I set out in an attempt to glean qualitative insights to prove worth in UX.

Problem Identification

I had my suspicions about visual and content design decisions having an impact on usability that had been introduced unknowingly. I was also wary about the risk of drowning in data-overload especially with the amount of user recordings I had set up to gather.

In order to manage data-overload, I wrote down my hypotheses after an initial assessment of the microsite. This would allow me to focus the areas of concern I wanted to investigate while interpreting the data Hotjar would provide.

Some examples of items I wanted to validate were:

Buttons that were joined to graphical elements reduce visibility
Links to news articles and additional downloads were distracting users from converting on product pages

Heat maps and scroll maps

I opted to implement tracking with anonymous user recordings on all key pages within the SMSF micro site. The basic quantitative data I had set out to find was starting to take shape.

I begun to see a pattern on product pages – the FAQs accordion had high interaction, however this section fell below the conversion “ask” and only 40% of users had scrolled down far enough to see it. This helped form the assumption that a large percentage of first-time users didn’t feel they had their burning questions answered before encountering the conversion, therefore resulting in more abandonment on product pages.

It was promising, but with this example and others, I knew we needed more validation before recommending a change.

User Recordings

I collected over 2000 user recordings during the course of 2 weeks. In order to wrap activities up on time, I revisited the hypotheses from the beginning of the project.

I struck gold when I found more than one user recording showing users reading content carefully on a product pages. After clicking on the “apply now” button taking them to the beginning of an application portal, they returned back to check the FAQs and downloading the product statement before exiting.

I knew now that in order to increase conversions on product pages, I couldn’t just remove the temptations like exit links to news articles, I also had to give users the answers to their basic burning questions.

A/B Experiment

My client had already begun working on a more conversion-focused landing page design for their product pages. I worked with my client to input a couple of assumptions for testing. Some of the changes included the removal of distractions such as alternate downloads and changing the conversion button in order to increase visibility.

We ran a short A/B experiment on the new layout structure of a product page. Through this experiment, I was able to show an increase in conversion that supported some of my hypothesis. This gave me further ammunition to report on, to hopefully support the benefits in increasing UX activities.

Reporting and consultation

I was able to identify and validate many of my assumptions through this light UX investigation. My findings were delivered back to the client by walking them through the report with recommendations to implement.

Working together with our client’s third-party development supplier to make the changes, I had to be on top of my communication game. Consistent communication was extremely crucial in seeing this project to the finish line.

Outcomes

This project demonstrated to their wider organisation the value of UX, which opened opportunities for more work
Client is reporting positive influence on conversion rates with no attribution awarded to any other marketing activity
Communicating frequently with all parties resulted in a smooth working relationship between the client and their third party development provider

I am usually a very vocal advocate for including users into any proposed UX project. There is such a focus on CRO and the assumption that since you’ve been doing this for awhile, you should already know what to fix as an “expert”. I’m constantly facing pressure to propose project plans that cut out user research or interaction.

UX – U = X (where ‘X’ means do not do) is still alive and well.

My takeaways from this project was in seeing the value of doing the absolute bare minimum of user research and the uplift we could achieve. This project was about the slow evangelisation of an organisation that is transfixed with numbers and percentages. Seeing the excitement one user recording video I shared could ignite, I’m positive at the prospect of increased awareness of the value in UX.

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