The challenge
Background
I helped the financial services company Paymentsense acquire more inbound monthly leads through optimising landing pages and display adverts. Paymentsense provides card payment devices to small businesses. The marketing teams responsibility at the time was to create inbound leads for the sales team to close over the phone. The majority of leads were acquired through Google Ad campaigns connected to landing pages.
My role mostly involved optimising landing pages to boost the monthly lead volume, working alongside a PPC manager and copywriter. I helped lead an initiative that opened up a new lead generation channel from display adverts.
Business goals
We aimed to increase lead generation on average by 3% to 5% month on month
Results
✅ Helped increase lead generation on mobile devices by +23% for two consecutive months. This steadied to around a 15% improvement.
✅ Helped generate 5% more leads for three consecutive months through supporting new display advertising campaigns.
✅ We increased lead generation by +6% through targeted customer segment landing pages. For example, we ran campaigns focussed on taxi drivers. Previously we had a generic approach.
✅ Speeded up the delivery of campaigns through developing standardised landing page components for the design team and developers.
Key learnings
Save time with reusable components - We could run four different landing pages per month instead of two. I helped create standards for design and web components so designers and developers could work more efficiently from shared libraries.
Target customer segments for more effective lead generation - When we had a more tailored approach on landing page messaging, we converted more leads.
Test using customer quotes - Although we noticed improvements in lead generation, after time, it proved difficult to know how we could boost this. When speaking to a few customers, I realised we could test using their quotes and need statements to try and improve lead generation.
Try and understand why users don’t convert - I would like to have tested a feedback pop-up widget on landing pages to try and gather reasons why users didn’t convert. For example, if they were to press the back button, we could have triggered a pop-up saying something like “Why didn’t you want a quote today?”. If we’d noticed themes in feedback we could have tested new messaging around those themes.
Project breakdown
Understanding mobile landing page opportunities
We wanted to make sure our efforts were focused on driving the most leads for the sales team. The PPC manager and I analysed Google Analytics to figure out where we might find the potential impact on landing pages. We noticed 35% of landing page traffic came from mobile devices and there was a high bounce rate. The landing pages up until that point were not mobile-ready.
Key decisions - We believed we would convert around +20% more leads if we optimised our top performing landing page for mobile devices. To do this, I collaborated closely with the web developer to see what was feasible within a week to run the first test. We decided that adding a page breakpoint, optimising images for mobile devices and grouping text in accordions would be good enough to run the test.
Helping designers and developers become more efficient
I was part of a design team of three and at first, we mostly worked in photoshop. We would send remote developers large PSD files and they would usually create landing page sections from scratch. This meant we could usually get two or three landing pages ready for marketing campaigns per month. We were guilty of trying to reinvent the wheel and over-design the basic components. Landing page conversion rates fluctuate most when we changed the messaging, not necessarily the design styling.
Key decisions - I introduced the design team and developers to symbols and libraries in Adobe illustrator. I built a mini design system for landing pages which developers could use as a source of truth and designers could share. As a result, we doubled our capacity to launch landing page campaigns. We would show the developer which section we wanted instead of getting them to create new sections each time.
Key learning - Although this was an improvement, we would have been more effective if we’d used landing page template software such as Unbounce that had drag and drop functionality. We wouldn’t have needed as much development resources. The marketing team would have had more control to quickly launch campaigns across channels.
Getting more leads with display advertising
After running lots of landing page tests we hit a lull and struggled to drive more leads. The PPC manager had the idea of testing display adverts that would follow people on the web after visiting the landing pages. The head of marketing was keen to try this but felt there was no resource as me and the other designer were working on other projects. I suggested I could source and manage remote designers as I’d done so before.
Key decisions - We didn’t know how display adverts would perform but the team were happy to give it a try. I sourced a remote designer on freelancer.com, wrote the brief and had our first display advert test running within 3 days. The most successful display advert we ran showed a price, card machine and an animated red cross showing the price had dropped. This drove users to the landing page at around 5%.