Optimizing Marketing Landing Pages

Background & Objectives

Chegg decided to have a major re-brand and product refresh, with the intent of addressing some of the tech debt and design debt that incurred over several years of rapid growth and acquisitions. While some aspects of the initial rebrand were a success, the marketing landing pages were initially experiencing an alarming dip in performance.

• -30% conversion rate compared to the original page  

Research questions

• How do users interpret our landing pages?

• What information do users need to answer their questions about our services?

• What are common pain points and areas of opportunities for the landing page?

Business objectives

• Improve the conversion rate (CVR) of website

• Generate incremental revenue from our subscription services

My Contributions

I led all project planning phases including: Drafting the study plan; securing stakeholder buy-in; led cross-functional discussions; packaged actionable insights into clear deliverable that was communicated to all stakeholders in an iterative process.

Methods

I conducted three rounds of user interviews with 5 participants per session over a 6-week period to gain exploratory insights into user behavior & quickly iterate and fix problems on our landing pages. These interviews allowed me to understand what users are understanding about the page, what information are they looking for, and what we’re missing.

Along with user interviews, I conducted A/B experiments to evaluate our hypotheses and design recommendations, as well as providing immediate results to our stakeholders. The A/B testing compared our design with the rebranded landing page iterations.

Participants

• Recruited for undergraduate students in the United States who: 

  • Never purchased a textbook from Chegg

  • Has not subscribed to any of Chegg’s subscription plans

• Utilized live moderated sessions through Usertesting.com. 

Analysis

I chose codebook analysis to analyze during the 6 week period. I required my main stakeholders, which were two designer and a PM, to join each session. They were prompted to take notes on anything that perked their ears for the initial stage of coding. From there, I utilized Usertesting.com time stamped notes and transcripts to code the data. The nice thing about the iterative testing methods is that if we can’t fix it in the first iteration, we can catch it on the next one! 

Outcomes

The research resulted in a list of actionable recommendations that our checkout experience should follow to enhance Chegg’s checkout experience. The list included small fixes with large impact on the consumer side. 

Lack of awareness

Users struggle to identify how Chegg will benefit their personal educational experience 

• Need info like price, tools, and what they can do with their tools

• Users didn’t know that Chegg was a subscription

Attitude

Most users skimmed through the landing pages and did not retain any information 

• First hero provided most impact

• Image sizes causing scroll fatigue (82%)

• Images and content did not match

Missed Expectations

User expectation are not met with the various CTAs 

• “Learn more” CTA causes friction

• Repeated sign-up/price led users to believe that Chegg does not have any free products

Impact

My research findings directly impacted our business goals:

• Improved CVR by over 2X compared to the rebranded landing page

• Reduced bounce rate and frustration clicking

• Generated millions of dollars in annual incremental revenue from subscription services

• Created a guide for designers when creating additional landing pages