+55.7%
CVR
+95%
Confidence
+98%
Power
Reading time: 8 min
Increase the conversion rate for educational services by improving the clarity and usability of the “Book a Call” page
Key takeaway
Offering a free call can be a great value-add, but the ‘ask’ still needs to be presented and sold correctly. So what does a great ‘Book a Call’ page look like? First – familiarity breeds ease of use – so consider sticking with popular software like Calendy.
Secondly, value propositions, risk-reversals, and expectations need to be set clearly. Even if previous stages of the funnel explain exactly what the call is about, it still needs to be re-stated on the Calendar page so that users remain fully motivated and progress.
The client
GrantMe is a Canadian online education consulting platform founded by Madison Guy in 2017. The company aims to get students into universities and reduce graduate debt, and achieves this by offering users the resources needed to navigate scholarship & bursary opportunities, strengthen university applications, and map out progression for their dream education and career.
Initial evaluation
We liked that despite being an education platform offering information, consulting, and webinar services, GrantMe’s value proposition could still be told with direct numbers – the site would give you a clear $ amount quote of how much funding you’ll be eligible for – and consequently, how much funding the site can help you access. This was always calculated according to personal information that the user entered, creating tailored customer journeys.
However, even the strongest value proposition will fail to convert when delivered incorrectly. In the case of GrantMe, their ‘Book a Call’ page seemed to fall short when it came to privacy and clarity.
The GrantMe ‘Book a Call’ funnel was split into two trees – one for users who were parents representing their student/child, and another for students who were representing themselves. (Parents proceed through their branch of the funnel at over twice the rate as students.)
Despite that, we felt that earlier parts of the funnel had done the heavy lifting, and progression for both trees was underwhelming at the most crucial ‘Book a Call’ CTA stages.
From initial observations the most obvious root cause would be that this is the first stage where users would have to enter truly sensitive/personally identifying information to progress – therefore we can naturally expect friction to be higher.
However, those who are within the target demographic age-range should be relatively used to handing out their sensitive details to online platforms – so clearly there must be another issue that was pushing users towards churn.
This opinion was later further reinforced when we realized that parents (who typically present as the audience most concerned about data and privacy) were progressing to the next stage more frequently than students
Because of this, instead of just privacy & safety, there had to be some issue with clarity that was making it difficult for users to connect their needs with the free call that was offered – and so we asked our first question:
“What flaws exist in GrantMe’s Book a Call Page?”
Empathizing
First, we sought to put ourselves in the shoes of a typical user. As we walked our way through the funnel and arrived at the booking page, we noticed a common error – the CTA was simply too low. You had to scroll to reach it, and what’s worse, is that it was easy to scroll all the way past.
Friction — layout issues like that are bound to cause people to churn out of frustration – so we deducted our first point.
Next, we noticed an even bigger mistake. Even though the call was labeled as ‘FREE’ earlier on in the funnel, on this Booking Page the ‘free’ part wasn’t emphasized. In fact, it hadn’t been stated anywhere at all.
More friction — always clearly restate your offer in the most attractive way possible when making the close. Minus points.
Additionally, the ‘Book a Call’ UI felt clunky, and when we interacted with it from different devices we found that the dropdown boxes used by the UI could be frustrating to navigate though. This is because available call slots were displayed as a dropdown list – and there was no suborganization. Instead of selecting the day, and then the time, dates & times were listed together as one package. This meant that you might have to scroll for a significant amount of time just to get a slot a week later at a specific time. All-in-all we found it to be an awkward and eyebrow raising experience.
UX Friction — your CTA should always be as smooth as possible. Minus points.
Finally, we noticed that the call section didn’t include an actual contact number. Instead, you had to do it through the platform. We took a moment to really get into our roleplay here – and as we imagined ourselves as busy (and potentially technological-phobic) parents, we took immediate issue. The desire to pick up the phone and call directly, instead of being scheduled into an online call, simply wasn’t being met.
Minus points.
Tacking onto that final point, we felt that the Call UI could be bigger, so we turned towards our trusty tech disruptor buddy – Calendly. We’ll be promoting them in this case study so much that you’ll think that they’re sponsoring us. (They should be, but unfortunately, they’re not.)
Insights
Having thought things through ourselves, it was now time to turn towards our users and get them to do the thinking for us.
So we decided to question our users on what they liked about the page, and what they feel could be improved upon.
Key user responses:
- Users struggled to understand how the page calculated the funding amount they could receive as an exact $ amount. What was the formula & criteria? Was it 100% accurate or just a rough estimate?
- Users had the same issue we had – price. Was it free or was there actually some kind of hidden cost? The page wasn’t clear enough.
- Users were unsure of what they should expect from the call. They were being asked to commit 30 minutes of their time, but they did not have a clear idea of what would occur during those 30 minutes. (This information was provided earlier in the funnel, but naturally some users skipped past it so it would need to be restated clearly.)
- Users that were parents took issue with being asked about their child’s personal information. They were fine with handing over their information – but naturally protective of their children’s information.
- Lastly, users felt that there simply weren’t enough free time slots. They needed more agency to pick, choose, and decide when the call would happen.
Hypothesis
From our research we formed our hypothesis: If we switch to the Calendy’s Calendar UI, add copy that reverses risk and clearly outlines what users can expect from the call, and place a CTA on the first-screen fold, then we’ll increase customer engagement with the booking form and the overall # of booked calls.
- By switching to Calendly’s UI we expect to increase CVR rate by creating a more frictionless experience – this will be done by piggybacking off the popularity of Calendy’s UI to offer users an experience that feels familiar and that they can navigate more intuitively. From this, users should feel more comfortable in selecting a call time.
- By offering an option to call in directly via a dedicated phone number we expect to reduce the churn rate for users who operate with high urgency (or can’t find a call-slot that suits them) – and want to call immediately/on their own time, instead of waiting to schedule, and users who are technologically adverse.
- By highlighting that the booking call is free and including a scroll-progression CTA on the first screen we expect to capitalize on users who are highly interested and wish for immediate progression, while also raising the temperature of those who are less warm by reminding them that the call is completely free and value-packed.
- By adding an explanation that gives a breakdown on how the amount of $ funding that the user can receive is calculated and adding user reviews & news outlet social proof, we expect to overturn any confusion or resistance that users may have around transparency. Instead of suspecting that the page is a hollow promise designed to get them onto a call, users will clearly be able to see that the entire process is a legitimate offer that has been designed by experts to help them and deliver value.
- By highlighting what the user will get on-call, and post-call, we can make users more comfortable with the entire process, and allow them to enter the process feeling sufficiently prepared, instead of confused about how everything will work. From this, we expect to significantly increase CVR.
- By removing the step that asks parents for their child’s sensitive information we expect to significantly reduce their privacy concerns. By doing so we can avoid triggering their desire to protect their child (fear) and instead push them towards the gain (scholarship and university support), thereby increasing progression for this step on the parent’s funnel.
Results:
Interestingly, the visual customer engagement rate with the Calendar decreased by (-15%) – likely because we moved the calendar slightly further down the page to make room for more pre-calendar content. However, even though the initial engagement rate with the calendar decreased, our users propensity to progress to the next stage significantly increased. (+55.7%).
Progression from date and time increased by 27.1% just based on our UI and copy changes. Meanwhile, by removing the page that asked parents for information about their child, we improved progression for that step by 50%.
Before
After
Further considerations:
These changes also improved scroll-depth – this is likely a result of the fact that we’ve re-arranged the information architecture and visual hierarchy of the page to create an experience that is overall more compelling. As the saying goes – structure, form, and language – with structure listed first (as often it’s the most important).
While the control variation had a better user flow progression in the initial stages, the alternative version provided greater information and expectation setting before introducing the calendar. This meant that even though less users progressed to the calendar, those who did progress were far more motivated as their objections and barriers to conversion had been fully addressed by pre-qualifying content. From this we can see the importance of looking at things holistically – leading to a 27% progression during the call booking date and time selection stage, and a 55.7% increase in overall conversion rate.
