Blacknova.com.au Case Study
The Task
In January 2014, Black Nova Digital launched a redesign of their website. It was modern, bold and fresh, with the aim of generating inbound calls and emails from potential clients who landed on the page. However as the months went by, the website just wasn’t performing as expected. This was when I was given the task to investigate and make changes to improve business.
The Research
In my research, I found the lack of any clear calls to action on the homepage quite interesting. Rather than engaging users in a kind of interactive dialogue, it felt as if users were just sitting through a show and tell. This probably explained why the site's bounce rate was hovering around the 42-45% mark because it left users feeling uncertain about what to do or where they were supposed to go, which resulted in them opting out of the site altogether (with many leaving within 10 seconds). More importantly, this meant that the majority of users didn’t even make it to the Contact Us page (shown below), which reduced the chances of them making calls or emails to the company. But even when a user does arrive on the Contact Us page, the contact form is situated at the bottom of the page. It can be easily missed due to not scrolling down far enough or at least given the impression that it’s not important.
Overall, since the main goal for this site was to have users contact the business, this perhaps wasn’t being communicated clearly and consistently enough to the user throughout their time on the site.
The Approach and Results
A new variation of the site was created and incoming traffic was split 50-50 between that and the original site to test effectiveness (using Optimizely). The new variation focused on:
1. Clearer calls to action on the homepage and header
By prompting 2 simple buttons for the user to contact Black Nova as soon as they land on the homepage, it creates a sense of urgency and intention. This also demands a subconscious reaction from the user, to either commit or to find out more.
By using Mouseflow and Google Analytics, I was able to observe that users were going deeper into the new site (reducing bounce rate by 11.1%) and staying longer (increasing user engagement by 20.7%). However, though the buttons were directed to the Contact Us page, what was unexpected was that traffic going to other pages also increased by over 50%, probably as a result of them deciding to find out more before committing to contact.
2. More engaging Contact Us page
The old contact form was replaced by one that was much more interactive and approachable made by Typeform. It was also repositioned so that it now sits at the top of the Contact Us page, demanding immediate attention.