Since the last website redesign in 2015, OpenIDEO had grown substantially; we launched new offerings, expanded our user base, and added a number of new touch points to the participant journey. As a result, the website became outdated and was no longer effective in converting potential users into active participants. A leading indicator of the problem was revealed when I conducted an audit of web traffic across OpenIDEO and discovered high drop-off rates at the top of the conversion funnel. In other words, the web analytics showed that a significant number of potential users were not sticking around past the first 3 clicks of their first visit to the site.
As a team, we identified the increasing drop-off rates as a high-priority problem that was holding OpenIDEO back from growing as an online community and as a business. I conducted a series of followup user interviews, several user pain points were surfaced:
The overarching goal of the website rebuild was to help OpenIDEO grow as an online community and as a business; specifically in 3 areas:
Given the website was the most trafficked part of OpenIDEO and also the connective tissue across all offerings (Challenges, Events, Alliances, Chapters), we decided to invest in a rebuild of the entire frontend experience. In addition to solving user pain points, the rebuild was an opportunity to set the proper foundation for OpenIDEO to grow in the next couple of years. Over a 6 month effort, the scope of the project involved:
The cumulative efforts were successful in improving profile registrations by 34% and sponsorship leads by 70% within the first 6 months after launch.
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