We’re used to big clients with big goals, so when our client — a leading brand in the business formation industry — came to us with a big idea to increase revenue by 30% in 2023, we got to work on a plan. But, like most things, it wasn’t smooth sailing right off the bat.
The Problem: Traffic’s Up, Revenue’s Down
Over the previous year, we boosted the client’s web traffic by 25%, from 3.3M to 4.3M sessions. That included a 37% increase in organic search traffic and a 47% increase in new user organic sessions. But in spite of those successes, the conversion rate was lagging and revenue wasn’t reflecting the uptick in web visits.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. Revenue was still up 23% YoY, but the increase just wasn’t in line with the results we saw from traffic. We knew we could do better.
The Fix: Our Process for Improving Conversions
We realized that if we could improve the conversion rate on targeted high-performing pages, we’d see the impact we wanted. After some careful strategic planning, we opted for a two-pronged approach: short-term wins gained by delivering unique micro experiences tailored to user behavior, combined with long-term systemic improvements based on the data collected.
In the here and now, the solution that eventually rose to the top was Pathmonk, an AI data analysis tool. We committed to a three-month experiment and set the following parameters:
- Analyze 12 of the client’s most impactful pages with the highest combined traffic and sessions.
- Grant Pathmonk access to those pages and the site for one week to gather data on user behavior.
- Provide Pathmonk with a variety of marketing assets (micro experiences) curated for different positions in the buyer’s journey.
- Review and track progress in order to make adjustments to micro experiences as needed.
With the insights gathered by Pathmonk during their week-long analysis, we were able to deliver a range of micro experiences that suited the stages of the buyer’s journey. Pathmonk’s AI determined the stage and then served up a custom experience based on the user’s actions. For instance, at the awareness stage, users were shown a welcome video, while those in the consideration stage received a micro experience that dug deeper via a “How it Works” page. At the bottom of the funnel, visitors received a micro experience that urged them to place an order.
Buyer’s Journey Insights
One non-tangible but extremely valuable benefit from our Pathmonk experiment was the insights and data it delivered on our buyer’s journey. We learned where most users went from the home page, the path they took, and where they ultimately ended up.
We also learned that most of our visitors were in the awareness stage of the journey. While they made up the majority, they were also the least likely to engage with one of our micro experiences. While we had a much lower percentage of visitors in the decision stage, they were over three times as likely to see and engage with a micro experience. At this point in the journey, the visitors who are ready to make a purchase decision are much more open to taking the desired action on the site.
Armed with this information, we were able to adjust the micro experiences that leveraged the user’s stage in the buyer’s journey and presented CTAs that were appropriate to where they were and what their needs were. In this way, we paved a path to conversion that made sense for the user.
Results: Month One
It didn’t take long to see the difference made by zeroing in on conversion rate improvement. In just four weeks of having the micro experiences live on the targeted pages, we saw 302K visits (35% of total site traffic), and then, the headline-making numbers: $1.5M in influenced revenue, 7,666 orders placed from the experiment group (micro experiences drove 3,958 of those orders), and a 58% improvement in conversion rate, from 1.6% baseline to 2.53% on targeted pages.
ROI was also off the charts (quite literally). The monthly cost for Pathmonk was $1,900, which is nothing to sneeze at, but when you compare that to the $236,293 in sales generated directly from Pathmonk, you get an ROI of 12,436%. That’s JUST for the orders placed via the micro experiences and doesn’t reflect the total $1.5M revenue influenced by the website improvements — meaning the actual ROI is most likely even higher.
Next Steps
Our three-month experiment is still ongoing, and we’re thrilled with the results so far — but we know there’s more work to do. Ahead, we’ll take a closer look at our micro experiences to glean which are the most effective so we’re able to focus our efforts on maximizing their impact.
We’ll use heatmaps to discover where visitors are when they’re served a micro experience and analyze their actions to learn more about them. We also feel confident that the insights we gather from this experiment will be transferable to the website as a whole and can be used to improve the experience for all visitors.
Ultimately, when you know your traffic is booming and you’ve got eyes on your site, but your sales just can’t keep up — you’ve got a problem. Taking a closer look at your conversion rate and looking at ways to improve is a quick and efficient step toward rectifying the issue, and Pathmonk is a tool we highly recommend to achieve those goals.
