Alliance’s legacy site – while innovative and effective when first released – had run its course and no longer adequately positioned the Alliance brand. Apart from this, conversion rate had stagnated for a variety of reasons, including that the CTAs emphasized throughout the website were primarily bottom-of-funnel and the brand aesthetic was dated. Overall, the site was failing to position Alliance as a modern service provider deserving of the trust of its large, corporate prospect-base. Alliance had evolved as a business since its last website redesign and the site no longer conveyed the true identity of the company.
Our approach was heavily reliant on up-front research – we leveraged analytics data from Alliance’s legacy website combined with stakeholder and customer interviews to formulate fundamental assumptions regarding the type of information that Alliances commercial prospects most needed to see, and when they needed to see it, in order to establish a level of trust.
In doing so we were able to recommend substantial streamlining of content and navigational choices. Whereas the legacy website had intentionally created content silos for residential versus commercial prospects, an investigation into the relative value of a website-originated commercial lead versus residential lead made it clear that Alliance would be better off focusing its messaging around the commercial audience – it was also clear that demonstrating competency on the commercial front would not alienate residential prospects except those who were prone to price shopping. We leveraged a mega-menu that provided 1-click access to individual services as well as top-level divisional pages.
Old Site Navigation:
New Site Navigation (Mega Menu):
Streamlining navigation significantly reduced the number of clicks required to reach service-level pages, which removed friction from the user experience. We also worked to integrate video into the site, and produced a high-level marketing piece for each top-level divisional page. Finally, we learned that “less is more” for commercial prospects – these prospects are generally making rapid decisions around whether a vendor should be included in the bidding process. They generally speaking have a few core concerns or requirements around their vendors (e.g., related to compliance, associations, insurance and/or licenses), and we worked to position these clearly and prominently on relevant pages. Prospects are also oftentimes concerned about the professionalism and legitimacy of the vendors within Alliance’s industry, hence our decision to include formal leadership team headshots on divisional and service pages.
Example Divisional Page:
Example Video:
So the idea was to create quick, digestible pages that would suffice to convey expertise and hit the right notes in terms of key content inclusions associated with prospect pain points, and then make it easy for prospects to get in touch. To this end, we integrated live chat and embedded quick request forms on all of the service pages.
Finally, while the legacy site did include top-of-funnel resources, we wrote new content offers that were more clearly aligned with page content and associated buyer persona research. We also ensured that these content offers were more clearly emphasized on the website via placement as well as visual cues (e.g., color contrast, etc.).
For the 12-month data period leading up to the launch of the new Alliance site, the visit-to-contact rate was 1.3%. There were minor fluctuations month-over-month but it was generally static. In the nearly 2 month data period post-launch, the visit-to-contact rate is 3.3% -- which represents an effective conversion rate increase of 154%.
Conversion rate increase of 154%
Combined with the increases in organic traffic volume to the website since launch, the volume of leads has increased over 160%. And while more data is required to determine the quality of the leads and their impact on overall business in terms of revenue, Joseph McLean, the CEO of Alliance Environmental Group, has anecdotally confirmed a noticeable uptick in viable commercial opportunities and contracts out for bid.
Sounds like the future is bright for Alliance Environmental Group, and it’s good to know that we played some part in their success.