UX & Conversion Rate Optimization:
Kenzie Academy Microsite for Digital Marketing
Role: Director of UX & CRO, UX/UI Design, Creative Direction, Wireframing
Overview
Kenzie Academy is a campus-based and online school that is designed and taught by industry practitioners. It is a unique community that equips [students] with necessary skills and support to launch [their] career in tech."
Problem
Kenzie Academy needed to increase their qualified online leads and meet their enrollment goals. As the Director of UX and CRO with Statwax, I worked with Kenzie Academy to create a new set of landing pages to compliment their digital marketing efforts.
Process
Requirements
Kenzie's new landing pages needed to fill three fundamental roles: explain what Kenzie Academy is, provide just enough information to sell it to future students, and collect qualified leads, while continuing to adhere to their brand standards. The most basic landing page design should have an enticing headline & subheadline (that matches the user's search terms) and most importantly, a lead generation form. Beyond those basic requirements, our task was to discover what information was top priority to provide for users in order for them to commit to completing the lead gen form.
Solution
By using design thinking methodologies and combining Google Analytics data with additudinal and behavioral research, our team created a highly converting microsite for Kenzie Academy. After its launch, we continued to study and refine the site to further optimize its effectiveness and continue to help reach and exceed Kenzie's goals.
Click the frame below to view the microsite.
Behind the Scenes
.01 Investigation: Data Collection and Data Filtering
We began by defining main segments and analyzing Kenzie's current conversion funnel, looking for implementation errors and examining Google Analytics data.
We then consolodated the data for readability and future analysis by creating a client dashboard using Google's Data Studio and Google Sites.
.02 Research
In order to learn as much as possible about Kenzie and its online activities, our team needed to clearly define Kenzie's business objectives and website goals (qualified leads and increased enrollments) and website KPIs (completed lead gen forms).
After understanding this information, the Statwax ads and data teams developed audience segments while the CRO team created appropriate personas to reference during design.
The conversion funnel was built into Google Analytics, where we were able to compare behaviors for the main segments. For Kenzie's previous landing pages and website traffic, we compared segments that performed poorly versus those that performed well, where and when dropoffs were occurring, and KPI conversion funnel metrics.
The insights we learned through this data analysis process were aggregated into a set of goals, requirements, and opportunities for the design phase of the new microsite.
.03 Design & Optimization
To diversify our design decisions, I invited the entire team into the design thinking process.
The graphic designer, developer, ads and data teams all participated in brainstorming, user journey mapping, prioritizing page content, and copy editing to ensure each segment would be delivered the information they most desired to see on the microsite and complete the lead gen form. This allowed us to collectively hypothesize ways in which to solve pain points (derived from the data analysis) and calculate the expected outcome. This process also provided each team with the information they would need to monitor the changes and conversion funnel in Google Analytics.
Afterwards, a smaller group consisting of a designer, developer, ads team member, and myself created wireframes, began user testing, and finally created the microsite pages. I organized the workload using a Kanban board and we worked within a one-week design sprint.
The Optimization Plan
After the site was published via Instapage and the lead gen forms were reporting attribution correctly to Kenzie's Google Analytics account, I created a plan to continually optimize the site (conversion rate optimization).
The CRO team met weekly with representatives from the ads and data teams to review the incoming data from the live microsite and develop hypotheses for improvements. For example:
If we change the title copy from UX Engineering to UX Design, our conversion rate will increase because "UX Design" is a higher rated search term and users are more likely to identify with that language.
Implementation
I prioritized our list of opportunities (hypotheses) and ranked them by their estimated effort and impact.
- High impact/low effort items were done first and without testing.
- Medium impact and low effort, high impact and medium effort.
- Low impact and low effort, medium impact and medium effort, high impact and high effort.
- Low impact and medium effort, and medium impact and high effort.
- Low impact and low effort.
A/B & Multivariate Testing, Click Stream & Scroll Analysis
Google Optimize and LuckyOrange were used to set up and analyze the A/B & Multivariate tests, Click Stream Analysis, Scroll Analysis, and lead gen form performance metrics, while the ads and data team tracked changes in Google Analytics and by using the client's personal dashboard that we created with Google Sites and Data Studio.
Reporting & Iteration
Biweekly meetings with the stakeholders were used to present testing and analysis findings and brainstorm further solutions.