CASE STUDY #3
Amplifying User Signups for Kissflow Project with Blog Optimization
Setting the Premise
Kissflow Project (our Project Management Software) had its web page launched a year ago. When we started receiving traffic, I began optimization activities for it. This case study talks about how I helped increase our CTA clicks and sign-ups on its blog pages.
Challenges I Faced
The webpage for Kissflow Project was new and it was dynamic. There was a high volume of traffic and it made it a little difficult to identify the gaps and problems in real time and decide the iterations/ solutions for it. I had to identify them quickly and efficiently to optimize the sign ups through the blog page.
Who I worked with
Hema Dass, SEO Specialist
Aashik, SEO Specialist
Rohan, Content Writer
What I did
Identifying problems | Redesigning| Discovering and ideating| User research| Prototyping| Data Analysis and Evaluation
Probe & Learn
Planning
There were 50+ Project blogs, the SEO team and I had to set a plan on how we are planning on kick starting this. The SEO team wanted to start with first optimizing the top high traffic investigational and transactional articles. After which we’ll move towards informational articles.
How I planned the next steps:
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Google Sheets to add the blog pages, data pointers, deck link etc
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Compile insights and data pointers for each blog in a Google Slide deck
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Hema and Aashik would update the changes made and the dates (so that I could go back and track data from that date)
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I would monitor, and we would make a continuous iteration of the articles.
Ask Questions
For every article that I worked on, I had a set of predefined questions for the SEO team. Some of which were:
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Who’s are target audience for this blog
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Why do we have this blog page?
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What is the end goal of this page?
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What are the top keywords for this page?
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How much monthly traffic do we receive for this page?
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What was the intent of the page
Analytics Review
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I began by digging into our historical data, surfacing user pain points and barriers in searching for information.
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Using Google Analytics I had to look at basic information, for instance, visitors by channel, device, region, gender, age, new vs returning visitors etc.
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On event-based tools, where I had already defined a set of reports and events to track such as a number of CTA clicks, signup flow, path analysis, conversion page, interlink clicks, CTA click breakup (for instance clicks on inpost, side banners).
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I also used insights from heatmaps, to dig into the quantitative part for those insights.
Heatmaps and Session Recordings
Attention maps and scroll maps are my best buddies. With the help of attention and scroll maps I found insights on:
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Which section seems most relevant
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Where should I place our CTA banners
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How could we reorder information
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How to identify information that isn’t relevant to the goal or purpose of the blog.
With Click map I could identify which interlinks are performing (get a sense of direction, using this find out the accurate numbers using event-based tools). Session recording gave further insights as to, are people speed scrolling often, or people skimming/scanning information etc.
Problem Identified
Based on the insights collected from Core Research I was able to compile the set of problems in our blog pages. I listed down a few common problems we had.
Problems that we prioritized:
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CTA banners weren’t placed in relevant places.
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Generic CTA banners - they had the same copy and CTA label for most of the blogs.
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Critical information presented in irrelevant order in the blog pages.
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Poor content hierarchy.
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Blogs without visuals.
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Certain articles had irrelevant content.
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Conversion paths weren’t defined clearly.
Collaboration & Awareness
The organic team had a quarterly objective to increase the number of CTA clicks in their organic blog pages and improve the sign-up rates. For which, they collaborated with me to identify the current issues, and how we could achieve their goals.
Increase the number of people clicking on the CTA and improve the conversion rates.
Hypothesis
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We could increase CTA clicks by placing them in relevant places, contextual content, and visuals.
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Ensuring the blog content is relevant to the audience could motivate people to take the next action.
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Building a better conversion path would increase the number of people converting.
Primary Metric
Iterations were driven by measurable primary goals and supplemented by unique one-off goals.
Primary Metric: CTA clicks and signups
Ideate & Build
Competitive Analysis & Inspiration Gathering
Once the page analysis was completed, I had to research other brands that have written their blogs for the same keyword. For instance, we had a blog page for the keyword “Project Planning” that had a search volume of around 4400. I had to research what type of information they shared, how they presented the information, how their visuals were aiding in conveying the concept etc.
Once this was compiled, I had to revisit our blog page, and identify what we were missing and what needs to improve. I had to collaborate with the SEO and content team on why we had certain pieces of content and what purpose they served. After which I had to kick off with the improvement plan:
Planning for Improvements
For the improvement step, I didn’t want to heap the changes on Hema and Aashik all at once. We also wanted to learn which change impacted us how much, so that we could learn and apply that in other blog pages and share these insights with other product squads.
CTA banners
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Placing banners in relevant places with relevant copy and CTA labels.
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Experimenting banners with a visual cue, colour, animation/gif, social proof, copy and CTA.
Content
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Reordering content based on scroll and attention maps.
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Removing content that is not relevant. (Hema and Aashik would monitor the article after this change, so that their ranking doesn’t drop)
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Adding relevant content information.
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Better content hierarchy. (for this we required the support of the brand designer)
Visuals
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For sections on the page that have poor attention, add relevant visuals.
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In a long-form blog page, add visuals in the section that is important so that people could easily comprehend the message we are trying to communicate.
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Remove irrelevant images, especially generic stock image.
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Use images to convey important information. For instance, on the Project Tools page, showcasing reviews or testimonials of Kissflow as visuals rather than content.
Other optimization methods
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Building Exit strategy
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CTA Side Banner after specific scroll rate
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Onscroll navigation experiment (where we have a CTA banner during onscroll)
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Chatbots, Videos, Bottom scroll CTA etc.
How Research was Compiled and Shared
Using Google Slidedeck, I had compiled all relevant data pointers from heatmaps, session recordings and analytical reviews. In addition to this, the improvement for each article page. As mentioned earlier we started off with CTA banners followed by the rest. This was shared with Aashik/Hema after which they would make the changes and I would monitor the respective.
Observe & Implement
KPI Performance
I had already defined a set of reports to find out no. of CTA banner clicks, signups, conversion path, CTA banner clicks breakup by which banner received maximum clicks and conversion, were people converting more within a blog page or better by navigating to a landing page. These reports were tracked once the changes were made, we had to monitor these insights either after 2 weeks or based on the traffic size.
Visuals
Heatmaps, Session Recordings
Once the changes were made both the SEO and UX team would monitor session recordings and heatmaps to see how people are interacting with the banners, what are they doing after that, if they are closing the sign-up box immediately or spending a few seconds doing so. This information was very easily paired with quantitative data and used to prioritize the most important items for the next iteration.
The Payoff
Conversion Rate
150% increase in conversion rate
CTA
84% increase in CTA clicks
CASE STUDY #4