How we doubled the leads generated for Courier Exchange and Haulage Exchange

The challenges with converting the traffic of a market leader

More than 8,000 businesses actively use the Exchanges these days. The brand is well-known in the courier & freight niches. People “in the know” make up the vast majority of the traffic to landing pages and money pages. To get more MQLs for the Exchanges, we had to solve two problems.

1. Optimising the user journey for qualified traffic

Multiple audiences are always a hot topic when it comes to website messaging and the user journey. In this instance, the issue was at a much higher level. The competing audiences weren’t split between different personas. Instead, the websites were aligned to be friendly for people who haven’t heard of the Exchanges before.

Using analytics, session recordings, and user tests, we observed that the majority of the audience is well aware of CX and HX. We suspected this was partially due to the strong, 25-year-old brand, but also because of the incredible work of the PPC and marketing teams. Their campaigns primed visitors for quick conversion, and that’s what we noticed in the data.

Especially on landing pages, people often convert without even scrolling the page one bit. We didn’t have to do much to increase conversions there – small usability tweaks to the top of PPC landing pages did the job.

On “money pages”, or for people visiting organically through branded search, there was a much bigger issue. They were faced with a long, multi-page user journey. The website was tailored to someone who’s exploring the Exchanges for the first time – but those people were a minority. We worked with the marketing team to drastically simplify the user journey. In the end, we were able to reach a 10%+ conversion rate with just 3-4 pages per session – that’s including the Sign Up and Thank You pages!

2. Assisting the content team with generating organic traffic

Even though we specialise in converting traffic brought to the site by marketing teams, we’re constantly helping the content and SEO team with technical improvements. Their efforts resulted in a 3.5x increase in impressions and 1.75x more clicks YoY.

Our contribution focused on optimising website performance, but also tackling one of the weak points of highly editable websites – managing debt. In this instance, the main problem was that the website had dozens of older landing pages. Some were saved for future use, but we needed to clean them up. This covered internal links and errors, deleting obsolete assets, and optimising images that slipped through the cracks unoptimised.

Our contribution focused on optimising website performance, but also tackling one of the weak points of highly editable websites – managing debt. In this instance, the main problem was that the website had dozens of older landing pages. Some were saved for future use, but we needed to clean them up. This covered internal links and errors, deleting obsolete assets, and optimising images that slipped through the cracks unoptimised.

The process we used to optimise the CX and HX websites

Working with the Exchanges team since 2018, our process has evolved over the years. Our most recent and most impactful work involved the 6-week cycles we use to optimise existing websites. The cycles allow us to strike a balance between a larger roadmap and quick releases. None of the features in the cycle are blocked for the full six weeks! They often launch within days.

Here’s an example of our first major cycle for the Exchanges.

1. Briefing on short user journeys

We found that people converted early into their visit to the websites. Sometimes it was the first screen they saw, and it rarely took more than 3-4 pages. Briefing the team about this finding was crucial for everything we were about to do because without alignment, we wouldn’t be able to get buy-in for major changes.

2. Pitching improvements with detailed hypotheses

The process we use for pitching includes sharing lots of data and detailed hypotheses. We avoid bias by not introducing detailed solution concepts – the goal of pitches is once again alignment. By pitching, we seek alignment and any extra input that we might’ve missed.

Since we involve as many stakeholders as possible in this process, an example of the team’s contribution could be that someone from Sales flags that over the last 3 months, lead quality is down. This would be an important thing to note, because shortening user journeys can affect the entire business.

3. Implementing shorter user journeys and new navigation

This is where we fully take over the process and keep the team informed about the progress. The work starts the moment we approve ideas for the next cycle.

One of our deliverables for this cycle included a full redesign of the navigation. We went for a megamenu with persona-driven pages. They feature a ton of informative links, but to the point of shorter user journeys – all key information lives on just four pages, one per each ICP.

The navigation went through several rounds of user tests with an audience resembling the visitors of the Exchanges. We first launched it in an uneditable state to get real-world data as soon as possible. Once we confirmed it was worth the investment, we made it fully editable for the team.