Post-Click Optimization (Growth Design Monthly)

September 2021

Dear Readers,Growth design is my side hustle. By day, I work as a product designer for VirTrial, a platform for distributed clinical trials. I love the complex, systems-level thinking I get to do there. However, it leaves an unscratched itch for more experimental work tied to business impact realized in a financial quarter rather than over the multi-year timelines that are the norm in the medical sector. I decided the best way to develop as a growth designer was to have a few freelance e-commerce clients and focus on low-risk, high-reward product areas.With my freelance clients, I’m looking for quick wins while maximizing learning. I don’t have the headspace or paid hours to get too into the weeds. I will tell you about a landing pages test series I did for photo book startup Qeepsake that delivered results within my constraints using post-click optimization.Everyday I'm hustlin'William QuezadaGrowthDesigners.co Facilitator

Qeepsake's marketing landing pages were inconsistent and differed from the paid social ads. When people clicked on social ads, they dropped off quickly from the general landing pages. 

Hypothesis

We will see increased sales leads and signups if we alter our landing page hero image and messaging to match the paid ads.

Post-Click Optimization

Paid advertising is the earliest step in the user experience. Strangely, most budgets focus more on the ads themselves and not on the landing page and onboarding experiences that follow afterward. A/B testing and personalization experiments from paid ads to “top-of-funnel” user journeys like landing pages and onboarding is a consistent winner and often neglected by both marketing and product teams.

Results

This experiment went surprisingly well with the various ads that we were running at the time. My results led to a 6.1% increase in sign-up leads and a reduced bounce rate too. The average landing page conversion rate is 2.35%. So our landing pages were now performing exceptionally well against our baseline and industry benchmarks. 

Tools

I used URL strings to manually redirect ads to the right landing pages. I then created variants of the landing pages in Google Optimize. I only had less than ten ads and landing page sets. However, you can use no-code options platforms such as Unbounce or Instapage to manage post-click optimization at a much larger scale.

Concluding Thoughts

This experiment created a quick business impact with little effort. It gave me the credibility to propose more experiments independently meaning that I’m learning the most from the side hustle possible.

About the Author

William Quezada is a Growth Designer with a background in product management and UX Design. Currently at Signant Health building clinical trial software VirTrial. 

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