FEATURED PROJECT
Earning an A+ in ROI
How I used my entire digital skillset to boost Advancement Courses ROI and grow teachers’ salaries
Project Overview
K-12 teachers are under-appreciated and under-paid. Since 1988, Advancement Courses (AC) has been trying to change that. As a leading provider of professional development courses, Advancement Courses has helped thousands of teachers renew their certificates, increase their salaries and advance their careers.
During my stint as Associate Director of Online Marketing for The Learning House, I had the pleasure of working with Advancement Courses on numerous web development and SEO projects, a blog redesign, A/B experimentation, and on-going content marketing.
* Advancement Courses was acquired by Wiley in 2018, and later acquired by The Teaching Channel in 2023
CLIENT
Advancement Courses
EMPLOYER:
The Learning House / Wiley
SERVICES
Website Redesign, Conversion Rate Optimization, Ecommerce, Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Content Marketing
BigCommerce to WordPress
Blog Redesign
The team at Advancement Courses believed in content marketing and had been producing high-quality blog content for years. Attracting over 200,000 sessions a year, it was surprising to learn that the blog only generated a measly $16,000 in revenue.
It was clear that the lackluster performance was due to the limited publishing options that their ecommerce provider, BigCommerce, made available to them. I saw huge potential to grow conversion rates and revenue by redesigning the blog. We started by transitioning the blog to WordPress.
Inspired by sites like Consumer Reports, my team took a publisher’s perspective to the redesign, creating unique components that we knew could benefit the overall content experience. All 193 articles received a facelift and on-page SEO.
With a focus on conversion rate optimization, each article was tweaked to include the newly designed CTA components that could promote related courses, promotions and the AC newsletter.
Explore the Differences
Drag the arrow up and down to transition between the old and new blog layout
After just one year, traffic from the blog saw these improvements to performance:
($) YoY Revenue Growth
YoY Conversion Rate Growth
($) Total Annual Revenue
Total Ecommerce Transactions
Redesigned blog entrances compared YOY
Conversion Rate Optimization
UX Frustrations
Using session replay, user questionnaires, heatmaps, and other digital analytics tools, I dissected the checkout experience to identify opportunities to improve conversion rates. My investigation revealed several insights and critical frustrations that teachers encountered while shopping for a professional development course.
Concerns About Money
Cost was the #1 most significant factor preventing teachers from purchasing a course.
Approval Uncertainty
Most teachers needed approval from their state and district administrators before purchasing a course.
Menu Confusion
Browsing for a course was confusing and inefficient due to menu and filtering options.
Returning vs. New
Returning visitors converted at a rate that was 4.5x the rate of first-time visitors.
Mobile UX
Mobile traffic converted at a significantly lower rate than desktop and tablet.
Checkout UX
The process of adding a product to the cart featured several strange user experience issues.
A/B Experiments
After creating hypotheses and formulating a test plan, we engaged in months of testing and experimentation to solve the UX and ecommerce issues that our investigations uncovered. Below are just a small sample of some of the experiments my team executed.
Experiment #1
Slashed Prices
Teachers are extremely price-conscious. According to our Hot Jar survey, 52% of respondents self-reported cost, price, or the size of the discount as the primary factor preventing them from purchasing a course. Therefore it’s not surprising that the vast majority of sales on the site occurred during a seasonal promotion.
When teachers applied a discount code at checkout, Advancement Courses website would update their shopping cart with the discounted price. While this behavior helped reduce cart abandonments, I felt that this was too late in the shoppers’ journey.
HYPOTHESIS:
By prompting users to apply a coupon code as soon they landed on the site, we could visually update the prices to show the discounted price, alongside the original price. We felt that slashing out the original price could help reinforce the savings that teachers could realize by purchasing courses during the sale period.
RESULTS:
I sadly didn’t save the results of this experiment, but it won overwhelmingly. Immediately following this discovery, we implemented the slashed prices permanently on the site.
Experiment #2
Where AC Counts
All teachers require continuing education courses to maintain their teaching certificates and increases their salaries. However, depending on the state and school district that teachers work, the requirements vary. AC maintained relationships with several school districts to offer pre-approved courses, but most teachers browsed the catalog of AC courses unaware of what their state’s requirements were.
HYPOTHESIS:
By including state requirement information as a standalone page and within tabs on course pages, we could reduce the risk of teachers exiting from the site to research that information, thereby improving conversion rates.
RESULTS:
Once again, I didn’t have the foresight to document the results of this experiment, but it ended with our hypothesis being confirmed. Event tracking showed that teachers were frequently engaging with the state requirements content before adding products to their cart.
Experiment #3
Menu & Filtering Changes
The main menu and course catalog offered very limited options for browsing Advancement Courses 280+ courses. We knew that location was very important, but teachers were also very interested in finding a course that aligned with the subject they taught or skills they wished to develop.
HYPOTHESIS:
By creating a mega menu and additional filters for subject areas and location we could help teachers find their course faster.
RESULTS:
Using session replay tools, we were able to watch as teachers made great use of the new menu and filtering options. The experiment ended as a winner, and the the mega menu menu and filters were added permanently to the site.
