12.65%
CVR
96.21%
SIGNIFICANCE
Reading time: 6 min
Key takeaway
There’s an age old saying in sales that reads; ‘The More You Tell, The More You
Sell’. This tends to ring true for most online marketing too. It’s often a great idea to provide highly visible CTAs as early in the conversion process as possible (for users with
extremely high intent who simply wish to progress as fast as possible).
However, it can also be a good idea to serve users who are slower (and more
deliberate) decision makers, or users who simply have lower intent, with all the tools they’ll need to
navigate and engage with different parts of your website. Doing so can increase information consumption,
and
the more information that users consume, the more intellectually and emotionally invested they’ll become
in
the sales process. This, in turn, will increase the likelihood that they complete the
process, as opposed to churning.
The alternative version created a uplift in terms of acquiring ‘Quote Comparisons’.
This result was totalled across all pages.
12.65%
CVR
96.21%
SIGNIFICANCE
The client
MoneyGeek, founded in 2016, is dedicated to helping its users navigate the
complications
of finance by offering advice on everything from insurance, to credit cards, loans, mortgages, and
college funding. It achieves this via an extensive list of resources curated by over 75 experts (led by
co-founders Doug Jones and Dan Scheussler), and also via several price comparison tools/calculators.
By automatically analyzing hundreds of thousands of offers, MoneyGeek is able to
direct
its users to the most affordable or cost-effective financial services.
There’s an age old saying in sales that reads:
‘The More You Tell, The More You Sell’.
In this case study our focus will be the car insurance section of the website
– which provides users with all
of the guidance they need to acquire the cheapest, best, and most highly reviewed options
for car insurance.
This is achieved by offering a comprehensive buying guide that covers the impact of car make and model on
insurance rates, as well as age, locations, and other factors.
Preliminary information:
What we liked about MoneyGeek is that it takes an education-first approach to
serving
its users, and accomplishes this so well that it generates almost all of its 1 million monthly visitors
through SEO.
Not only does this give us a large sample size to run experiments with, but it also means that from the
start
we have a large amount of data on what problems and questions are driving user intent via
search queries and keyword analysis.
Additionally, the current website is highly engaging – effectively balancing large
amounts of copy, with problem call-out headlines, and easy to understand .
Finally, MoneyGeek serves an audience that by default has high intent – as unlike
other products/services
which may attract casual attention, users generally only search for car insurance information when they’re
actively looking to get a quote so that they can progress to the buying stage.
So, the question we wanted to ask is how can we make it even easier to navigate MoneyGeek’s current
content
strategy so that users are educated more quickly and more easily, and as a result become more likely to
convert?
Research & insights:
Flow Walkthrough:
On the current website users would have the option to progress to the Quote Comparison
page via a ‘Compare Quote’ CTA in the hero section, and a ‘Compare Quote’ CTA in the sticky sidebar
block that compelled users to enter their Zip Code so that they could ‘Compare Rates and Save on Auto
Insurance’.
However, what we discovered through research is that the more pages users visited,
the more likely they were to engage with the CTA and proceed to the next stage.
Therefore, we knew that improvements to the current flow could be achieved by
encouraging users to navigate to different pages on the site and consume/engage with more of
MoneyGeek’s
resources.
Quantitative Research:
-
Search Queries
To discover which pages we should encourage users to explore, we needed to
gain
a clear idea of which
pages best matched user intents – as in, why were people searching for and arriving on MoneyGeek’s
car
insurance section in the first place?Thankfully, MoneyGeek’s SEO heavy approach to traffic made this a pretty simple
task – we could simply
look at the search queries and see which search results were most aligned with MoneyGeek’s current
resource offerings.Ranked in order of popularity, the results were as follows.
- Compound interest calculator.
- Car insurance calculator.
- Cheapest Car Insurance in California
- Most stolen cars
- MoneyGeek
- Cheap renters insurance
- Very cheap car insurance, no deposit.
From this, we could see that the most popular unique search queries were “insurance
calculator”, “cheap insurance”, “no deposit”. -
Page Performance
Following this, we decided to look directly at which pages were producing the best results in terms
of
getting users to progress to the “Compare Quotes” stage. The results pointed us to
the fact that 3 pages outperformed all others:- “How much car insurance do you need”
- “Car insurance estimate calculator”
- “How to reduce your car insurance costs”
From this we could see a clear link – not only was the calculator the most desired page in terms of
search query ranking, it also was one of the highest performers in terms of generating quotes.Car insurance estimate calculator
Additionally, any information centered on reducing car insurance costs or acquiring
insurance without a deposit would clearly be quite popular in terms of both traffic and conversion rates.Finally, users were clearly motivated by knowing exactly how much car insurance they
needed, which in a way, is the inverse of questioning “what’s the minimum (or cheapest) car insurance
policy
I can get away with?”So, to summarize, the biggest drivers were getting a clear picture of affordability and
cost-effectiveness. Therefore, when encouraging users to explore the website, it would make sense to
prioritize pages that explored these topics, over pages such as customer satisfaction or positive reviews.
Hypothesis
Based on the user intents we discovered in our research phase, we developed the
following hypothesis:
- If we add a block to the sidebar called ‘Car Insurance Toolbox’ (so that this
additional element stays on brand), we will be able to increase the average number of pages viewed by
users. This increase in engagement and interaction will produce an uplift in the total conversion rate
across all car insurance pages. - Additionally, if we make it so that the ‘Car Insurance Toolbox’ links to the
most
attractive and highest converting pages, we’ll increase the likelihood of users converting by quickly
matching them with the content they need. - Finally, if we move the current sticky ‘Compare Quotes’ CTA in the left hand
sidebar into a bottom-of-the-page sticky banner, we’ll be able to free up page space for the toolbox –
providing a clutter-free UX.
Control variation
Alternative variation
Control variation
Alternative variation
Frictionless Navigation – The easier it is for users to
navigate between different pages, the more likely they are to explore.
- We expect to encourage users to explore the website by introducing a sticky ‘Car
Insurance Toolbox’
into the sidebar. This ‘toolbox’ feature will allow them to navigate to high priority pages with
ease, increasing the likelihood of them exploring the site. The more pages they visit, the more likely
they become to convert. - You always want navigation to be as easy and intuitive as possible. All things
naturally follow the path of least resistance, so eliminate wasted effort whenever possible. - We expect that by making the ‘Car Insurance Toolbox’ sticky, we can make it
easier for users to
progress to different pages as they scroll. Instead of having to scroll to a different part of the page,
navigation options will instead always be immediately accessible. This will increase average page views
and overall conversion rate. - We expect that by placing the ‘Car Insurance Toolbox’ into the sidebar, we’ll
increase its
visibility by making it a standout element of the UI, and therefore increase the likelihood of users
interacting with it.
Matching Intent For Engagement – Navigation options
that clearly reflect user intents are more likely to be explored, leading to higher engagement.
- We expect to attract users to the ‘Car Insurance Toolbox’ by having it list
some of the most desirable pages (according to the search queries). This will increase user desire to
interact with the toolbox and increase their average page views, as it will be offering an action that
matches their intent.
Redistributed CTAs The more visible a CTA, the more likely users are to click it.
- We expect that by moving the ‘Compare Quotes’ sticky CTA from the sidebar to a
bottom-of-the-page bar, we’ll see a decrease in conversion rate from the stick CTA, but an increase in
conversion rate from the hero section CTA and the CTAs further down the page.
Results:
The alternative version created a 12.65% uplift in terms of acquiring ‘Quote
Comparisons’. This result was
totalled across all pages. This uplift can be broken down into two streams – firstly, users who arrived on
the
page and immediately converted. Secondly, users who arrived on a page, interacted with the toolbox, and
converted from another page.
The sticky banner became less effective at converting users (because it was moved from a more prominent
side-bar position to the bottom of the page), however, in turn,
the Hero section and another CTA lower down on
the page
acquired far more conversions.
The alternative version created a 12.65% uplift in terms of acquiring ‘Quote
Comparisons’.
Additionally, the 3.2% of users who interacted with the toolbox became 45% more likely to convert than
users
who did not.
Finally, there was an increase in session time, +2.4%, and the number of users who
clicked on a link
(internal or external) increased by 18.8%. This indicates that the changes likely produced an SEO traffic
uplift too.
However, the flipside is that the bounce rate increased by 5.4%
Overall, we can conclude that this experiment was a success.Not only did we manage
to convert more users to the ‘Compare Quotes’ stage, we also managed to improve session time and internal
link metrics that can contribute to SEO score and organic traffic.
