How might we increase conversion rates on sap.com?

SAP is a B2B multinational company that sells enterprise software solutions to manage business operations and customer relations. SAP has 6 major software product offerings one of which is SAP Analytics Cloud. Analysis of web traffic on main website (via the Analytics Cloud landing page) had average conversion rates (5.23%). I ran multivariate or A/B testing experiments to find the most effective way to increase conversion rates on sap.com.

Image Source: SAP

PROJECT DURATION

2 WEEKS

MY ROLE

Data Analyst

UX Researcher

Project Manager

TEAM

Data Analyst

Lead Data Analyst

TOOLS & METHODS

A/B Testing

Web Analytics

SAP Marketing Cloud

Adobe Analytics

THE PROBLEM

Digital marketing activities bring traffic via various channels to the main website (sap.com) which showcases all SAP products e.g SAP Analytics Cloud.

Analysis of web traffic on main website (via Analytics Cloud landing page) had average conversion rates (5.23%). This was the first touchpoint many of our customers had with SAP via various paid marketing efforts that cost the company up to millions of dollars.

 

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

Understand the following through A/B testing of headlines & hero images, CTA labelling and positioning: 

  • Where and why are our conversion rates faltering?

  • What data indicates that this may be impactful?

Hypotheses:

From my analyses, historically SAP’s:  

  • landing pages positioned call-to-action near the footer of a page.

  • landing page designs provided too many exit points. 

A/B TESTING

  • A/B Testing 2 variants of the landing page helped identify which variant to increase clicks,  reduce bounce rates thereby increasing conversion rates.

    • Variant A: main CTA below fold

    • Variant B: main CTA above fold

  • I also ran A/B Testing on other elements of the landing page e.g. hero images. For the purpose of brevity, I’ll discuss one of the experiments on positioning of CTAs.

  • Variant A

    This variant has the main CTA below fold.

  • Variant B

    This variant has the main CTA above the fold.

FINDINGS

  • Variant B had higher conversion rates (6.45% vs 5.23% of A) based on reduced bounce rates and increased click-through rates (CTR)

Validating Findings using Behavioural Analytics

  • To validate these higher conversion rates, I looked at heat maps + scroll maps on both variants of the SAP Analytics Cloud landing page.

  • In addition, I evaluate this landing page’s performance in comparison to industry averages of landing pages for B2B software companies similar to SAP. It was on par with top performing pages.

Heat Maps

To validate these higher conversion rates:

I looked at heat maps on both variants of the SAP Analytics Cloud landing page, I found that users were having trouble finding the CTA on Variant A.

Variant A

Variant B

Scrollmaps

To validate these higher conversion rates:

I looked at scrollmaps on both variants of the SAP Analytics Cloud landing page, I found that users users never reached the middle of the page, towards the end where the main CTA (i.e ‘Buy Now’) was on Variant A. 

Variant B

Communicating Recommendations

I then presented my insights from this A/B testing to marketing executives of SAP, across the globe. My main recommendations included:

  • Keep the CTA above the fold. 

  • Reduce the amount of secondary content offerings on the landing page above the fold.

Impact of Research & Analysis

  • The final redesigned landing page conversion rate increased from ~5.23% (average conversion rate) to ~6.45%  (above the benchmark for the top 25% B2B companies).

  • These slight design changes and increase in conversion rates saved SAP +$700k in paid marketing for this campaign alone, in one market unit, ~$1mil globally.

  • I formalised my recommendations for landing page optimisation that are used as guidelines at SAP today.

CRITICAL REFLECTION

  • Combining web and user behavioural analytics: A/B testing is a good way to test usability of landing page designs and results can be validated further with: 

    • web analytics

    • observing user behaviour on the page.

    • comparison to industry benchmarks