Case Study Series: How Data Insights and a Simple Experiment Unlocked 11% Growth for Lendio

Gathering user insights and constructing a simple experiment lead to an 11% increase in leads

Feb 01, 2024

Overview

Lendio, a digital marketplace that connects SMBs to financing, hired me as an Experimentation Strategist tasked with improving acquisition efforts for paid and organic channels while also optimizing the marketing website and mobile app. I spent my time working with the growth, product and marketing teams to accomplish these goals.

I wanted to hit the ground running and get results quick. In order to find the best places to optimize and drive impact I needed to get a better grasp on the current available data.

So I dove in and started exploring website traffic, conversion data and user journeys.

One area that stood out during my initial evaluation was the organic traffic conversion specifically from blog posts.

I identified that there were only four blog posts that were leading to conversion. I also noted that most blog readers only viewed one page per session, meaning they were getting the info they needed, then leaving.

This is what led me to the prime area of opportunity.

The Problem

Most of the blog was getting significant traffic, but the users were leaving without any engagement and without viewing any of the other valuable content Lendio offered. There were 4 blog posts that were converting, but those were lower trafficked pages compared to the other pages that weren’t converting but had a lot of traffic.

The Experiment

I decided to try to solve this problem with a unique test. Here was the hypothesis:

If I increase the number of blog pageviews per session then the blog pages will convert more users into leads.

The plan was to add a CTA to the top of the highly trafficked blog posts which linked to one of the high converting posts. This way I would be increasing two metrics at the same time, pageviews/session and leads generated.

The control would have no changes, aka, no CTA at the top of the blog posts.

I also created another variant that had a CTA on top but instead of directing people to the high converting blog post it directed them right to the lead form.

Doing this would validate that just sending users to the form wasn’t the right answer, but that users who view more blog content were actually more likely to become leads.

I implemented and launched this experiment to interesting results.

The test ran for about a month in order to get statistically significant traffic into each test cell. In my experience getting enough traffic into a test from organic channels takes a little more time than from other channels, hence the longer time frame. I was shooting for 1,000 - 2,000 unique visitors per cell.

Lessons Learned

By adding a CTA to the top of blog posts I saw an increase in pageviews/session.
1. This result makes sense to me. One of the truths I’ve learned through testing is if you put a button in front of users, they will click it.
When the test CTA took users directly to the lead form I saw a statistically significant worse conversion rate, a 7% loss in leads.
When adding the test CTA that took users to the high converting blog post I saw a statistically significant 11% increase in conversions.
1. This result made it clear that by adding a CTA to the top of blog posts I increased pages viewed and leads, a resounding success.

Conclusion

This test had a 11% increase in leads, a huge uptick for the organic channel all from a relatively simple experiment predicated on improving the user experience by getting them to read more of Lendio’s well written blog content.

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