Boosting Conversions by 300%: A Case Study on Brand24's Strategic Changes

• Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

• Product Research & Development
• Sales & Marketing

• Behavior & Emotion Tracking
• Leakage & Flood Monitoring

Brand24, a popular social listening platform, was facing a significant challenge with its conversion rates. The company's CEO, Mike Sadowski, noticed that the conversion rates were considerably lower than the industry standard. The primary issue was a high bounce rate on the sign-up form for Brand24’s free trial. The bounce rate was much larger than anticipated, indicating a leaky funnel. Two main culprits were identified as causing the high bounce rate. Firstly, a promo code field was confusing users, leading to a high abandonment rate. Secondly, the sign-up form had too many distractions, causing users to click around chaotically, visiting the blog, looking into pricing again, and hovering over links.

Brand24 is a social listening platform that allows users to monitor their brands online. It is used by large companies like Twitch and Uber, as well as medium-sized businesses. The platform relies on product-led growth and encourages users to sign up for a free trial to test drive their software. The company's CEO, Mike Sadowski, is proactive in identifying and addressing issues that affect the company's growth and customer experience. He was instrumental in identifying the issues with the sign-up form and implementing the changes that led to a significant increase in conversion rates.

To address the high bounce rate and low conversion rate, Mike and his team redesigned the sign-up form. They stripped it down to include only two fields: a business email and a password. They also removed unnecessary distractions by eliminating the header, footer, and sidebar. To add credibility to the form, they showcased the number of sign-ups over the past 30 days. Furthermore, they used Hotjar's Recordings to watch people as they tried to use the sign-up form, which helped them understand why people were bouncing from the site. They also created separate sign-up forms for various blog posts—around 30 in total—that each use slightly different language depending on the topic of the blog post.

• The changes implemented by Brand24 led to significant operational results. The redesigned sign-up form was an instant success, leading to a nearly 300% increase in conversions. This, in turn, tripled the company's sales. The use of Hotjar's Recordings provided valuable insights into user behavior, helping the company understand why people were bouncing from the site and what was stopping them from converting. The creation of separate sign-up forms for various blog posts also helped to increase conversions by ensuring that users did not feel a disconnect between what they just read on Brand24’s blog and what they were signing up for. Overall, the changes led to a more streamlined and user-friendly sign-up process, resulting in a significant boost in conversions and sales.

• Conversions increased from 2.56% to 7.42%, a nearly 300% increase

• The increase in conversions tripled sales

• Creating separate sign-up forms for specific articles increased conversions by roughly 20%