After completing a winning A/B test with our Landing Pages, our management team decided it was time to launch a redesign of the home page. A lot of work went into producing the ideas that came out of the brainstorming meetings about the page, and we honestly made some great improvements over the original design.
We started to think more about what the customer might want more so than in the past and designed it around a few personas. We focused on those personas and designed the page to cater to them, just like our previous home pages. However, we did not test it (because we were confident in the fresh design being an improvement over-all), nor did we have a way to measure the success of those personas through the process.
New Control Page:
Once we launched the untested page, we worked with MECLABS to come up with yet another new design, but this time to test against the new control page. The results were stunning. Our eyes were opened to more ways we could improve our internal processes AND our messaging to site visitors.
Step 1 – The Goal of the User
We first identified who we were trying to target, and what they were like. We even had personas from the UX team to help us with this process. Even though we targeted the three personas we were interested in with the control page, we did not consider if they cared about the messaging we provided them at the time we provide it for them, or if the message would be more useful at a later point in the sales process. I learned that these questions were not addressed, and therefore have more work to do to address these in later tests.
Step 2 – The Goal of the Company
We wanted to improve 4 different things.
- Click Through to the Contact Us Page
- Bounce Rate
- Click Through to Landing Pages and Other Key Pages
- Lead Capture
Treatment Page:
We increased Click Through to the Contact Us Page by 205.178% Changes included some contact us options becoming more prominent which was likely the biggest contributing factor to this increase.
Our Bounce Rate dropped 6.639% which is fantastic when the page in question is a portal page and you want people to interact with your site because they understand and believe what they see on the page.
Click Through to Landing Pages and Other Key Pages was another great increase of 130.653%. More of our website visitors are now actually using our home (portal) page as it was intended and reaching further into the sales funnel.
Leads Captured increased by 170.629%. Who doesn’t want more qualified leads? The changes between the control and treatment were minimal, so why did it have such a large impact?
Step 3 – The Decision-making Process
There were two primary changes from the control to the treatment. The value proposition statement at the top of the page, and the second section of the page. In short, we found that adding clarity to the conversation allowed more people to get further in the funnel and ultimately convert to leads.
If we designed by committee, we would have diluted the reason for the pages existence and ended up with certain elements being in certain places because that is where certain people want it. The less we design by committee and design by a methodical thought sequence, the more we will identify key learnings and key successes that allow our business to grow.
The reason we were able to make decisions that impacted the page in this way was due to the perspective used in creating the treatment; which minimized the wants of the organization and maximized the motivation of the user.
I am not advocating forgetting the needs of the organization you are working for, but rather, reduce the amount of time and thought put into what the organization wants in favor of what the user wants. There are already plenty of people in your organization thinking about the needs of the organization, so add some perspective, consider the needs of your visitors, and add more qualified leads.
P.S.
I believe this is more difficult than we sometimes think it should be. We won’t be able to think this way just because we decide it’s important. Just as a muscle needs exercise, we need to exercise this way of thinking, if we want to get good at it. So go get your exercise in for the day and think about what everyone else wants and how you can help them get it; because in the end thinking of what the user wants IS thinking about the needs of your business. Your business needs users/customers, so deliver THEIR wants and they will return the favor.
Scientific Web Optimization 