Rachel Carroll

StudySoup Buyer Experience

A process and case study in user experience and conversion rate optimization

My Role

I led the iterative design process of our purchase experience, taking each part of our customer funnel into careful consideration. I led efforts to evolve the experience, while addressing customer and business pain points related to material accessibility and our conversion funnel.

Research and Ideation

I led user outreach strategies and analyzed data to uncover insights and translate concepts into features that address customer behaviour, motivations, and business needs.

Strategy and Vision

I created user flow maps and wireframes to share the vision, strategy, and future a/b tests throughout the product team and with stakeholders.

Planning and Project Scope

I defined each project carefully with action items and metrics for success. I negotiated and prioritised projects for development and launch.

Design Execution

I created designs to support desktop, tablet and mobile experiences. I defined all required analytic tracking to ensure that we are able to track and report on project success.

Oversight and Coordination

I worked closely with a team of developers to handover and implement the defined projects. I reviewed, provided feedback to and approved development progress and completed work.

Leadership

I presented work to gain buy-in from stakeholders, and many other team members throughout the project lifecycle. I executed regular reporting and shared success metrics with stakeholders, and multiple team members.

The Challenge

Comparing data to the previous semester and year, we identified that our conversion rate and total revenue were lower than expected. A decrease in revenue can be detrimental for any business, especially so for a lean startup like StudySoup. I wasn’t sure where the project would take us just yet, but I knew we needed to find a solution quick.

The Approach

Build the best solution with the highest ROI,  in the least amount of time, at the lowest cost and risk.

In favour of speed, cost and risk; we chose to quickly test and iterate on our existing web purchase experience, across all device types. We also chose not to lower our price as a means to increase our conversion rate. Historically though we may have seen an increased conversion rate by lowering our price, we have always generated less total revenue.

Research and Ideation

My first step was to analyze what our data was telling us. I used our data analytics to drive our planning phase. These are a few key insights that defined the direction of our projects:

Vision and Strategy

Increase account creations, and data we gather from our users

An account creation allows the user to progress through our conversion funnel. By creating an account the user provides a point of contact for future interactions. Future interactions like encouraging them to revisit, and or provide more information about themselves that will allow us to showcase more relevant material to the user.

Create a buyer email strategy

Leverage the increase in account creations and additional data that we will gather from our users by implementing a buyer email strategy. The goal of this strategy will be to bring more visibility to relevant materials, increase multi session user traffic and generate conversions.

Increase multi session user traffic

If we generate the majority of our sales from users who have visited our site more than once, how can we increase our % of multi session users and how can we increase the traffic coming from this user group.

Decrease friction across all device types

An increase in mobile traffic is challenging because historically mobile has always converted at lower rates when compared to tablet and desktop. This has to do with the difference between mobile and desktop browsing behaviour, and onsite friction. We may not have allocated the budget to rebuild a mobile specific flow but we can certainly reduce friction onsite for all device types.

Better communicate the value of our higher priced subscription plan

Alongside increasing visibility to relevant materials; use UI and UX methods to better communicate the value of the StudySoup subscription, especially our higher priced subscription plans.

The vision was simple—get more students in front of more relevant materials more often, minimize any friction in the current purchase experience across all devices, and better communicate the value of our subscription; especially our plans at a higher price point.

Planning & Project Scope

Once a vision and strategy have been defined, I broke things down into smaller actionable projects. Each project defined with a clear scope and measurable metrics for success. Projects were placed in priority order based on risk, ROI and confidence to succeed; as well keeping in mind that only one A/B test should be ran at a time to reduce the risk of muddling data.

Design Execution

Now that our projects have been defined and scoped out, I started to design how our pages and flows would appear with the different edits and a/b tests applied. Designs were created using a combination of user flows, wireframes and true designs via lucidchart and sketch.

Account creation A/B Test 1
Email banner placed above content

The image below represents the design work, and how the StudySoup material page appeared to our users with our first A/B test applied. I designed a version B that includes a email input banner placed above our content viewer. The goal of this a/b test was to prove if by placing a banner above our content including an email input field readily accessible to our users; that we could encourage a higher percentage of account creations when compared to our original version A.

Buyer email strategy and implimentation

Unlike the project above, the design work required for our buyer email strategy and implementation didn’t require any onsite UI design. I first created a user flow via lucidchart that referenced all of the current actions, pages and flows that our potential buyers experience. From this user flow I was able to visually identify opportunities where we could be sending emails to our users. Now that I’ve identified when our new emails will be sent, I created an email send timeline that visually communicates when individual emails and emails within drip campaigns will be sent. Through this process I was able to identify the best opportunities to send emails to our potential buyers, to ensure that we aren’t sending similar or conflicting emails at the same time, and allowed me visual tools to better communicate the strategy to stakeholders and developers.

Alongside designing our potential buyer email strategy I also designed and built each email template, including the set up of send domains and UTM’s to ensure that we can easily monitor and report on performance. I launched and monitored multiple email A/B tests to determine the most effective subjects, language, template style, and call to actions that encouraged the highest open, click and conversion rates.

Account creation A/B test 2
Email overlay on page load

Account creations are critical to the success of our potential buyers, and the business. Now that we have implemented a buyer email strategy, I wanted to test a more aggressive approach to increasing account creations. The goal of this test was to determine if version b, an email modal on page load, would increase % of account creations when compared to version a. The UI design work required for this project was to design an email modal on page load, as well all google analytic events associated to the a/b test and interacting with the modal; to ensure that we can easily monitor and report on performance.

Purchase flow UI edits
across all device types

Now that we’ve made iterations to encourage more account creations, it’s time to improve our logged in user experience. Our data suggested that fewer logged in users than expected were moving from our material details pages to our subscription page; our next step in our purchasing funnel. We made a number of UI improvements to encourage users to move forward. Three key improvements included adding a sticky header on scroll that included a large call to action button, adding a banner above our content viewer for logged in users that included a large call to action button, and finally reducing navigational links from our footer and header navigation on our details pages. I was required to design how these edits would appear to our users, as well all google analytic tracking required to ensure that we can easily monitor and report on performance.

Subscription value add A/B test

Now that we have implemented a number of tests and edits to encourage more account creations and to direct more traffic to our subscription page, we wanted to leverage this increase in traffic and try to communicate more value towards our annual subscription; with the goal to increase our average order value, total revenue and customer lifetime value. The design work required for this was to create how this test would visually appear to our users, as well define all google analytic events and test requirements.

Oversight & Coordination

Throughout the design and development process for all projects, I worked closely with a team of developers to handover projects, follow up on and review progress to ensure that all requirements are understood and being fulfilled. Prior to and post deployment I walk through all development work to ensure that all bugs are caught prior to our users interacting with the iterations. Once a new feature or iteration is deployed, I montiter and regularly report on the performance of the project throughout the product team and amongst stakeholders. If our data begins to suggest that an iteration is performing better or worse than expected I have the authority to confidently select a winner (if referring to an a/b test) or bring a project to close while considering next steps to move forward.

Key Results

Once our projects were completed and deployed, I was able to closely monitor each project and report on results. We saw movement and change in a number of different metrics, below are the most impactful results:

The new buyer email strategy has been incredibly successful. In our case, emails were used as a way to bring visibility to the most relevant materials to our buyers, as well generate more multi session user traffic to our site and our conversion funnel. We have been able to generate 150k+ in revenue from our new buyer emails over the past 6 months , which far surpassed our expectations.

Our value add a/b test was surprisingly very successful. Through this test we were able to dramatically increase our average order value, total revenue and customer lifetime value.

Overall our efforts to increase conversion rate were incredibly successful. Through our efforts we were able to increase conversion rate by 30%.

Through our A/B testing we were able to drastically increase account creations from what was roughly 15% to nearly 40%. Our A/B testing focused specifically on direct and referral traffic, as these are the sources where we generate the majority of our revenue from.

Key Learnings

Emails are excellent way to increase visibility to relevant materials, increase on site % of multi session users, increase conversions and generate new revenue. I feel I only scratched the surface with this opportunity, with deeper analysis and more testing I’m sure even more opportunity could be uncovered with potential buyer emails.

Students are willing to pay more for our subscription if we can communicate value. Value can be communicated without lowering price. A pattern was also identified that students will pay most at the beginning of the semester, the value of a subscription service becomes harder to communicate as the semester and school year continues. Our opportunity to generate the highest average order value will always be at the beginning of every semester.

By aggressively encouraging account creation, removing on page and navigational distractions, and communicating more value with our subscription we are able to significantly increase our overall e-commerce conversion rate and new revenue generated.