GitLab Digital Experience, 19 Nov 2020

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From YouTube: Michael & Danielle Riff on Next Opportunities to Improve the Website

Description

about.gitlab.com

A

Danielle, I'm here with michael. I never cannot wait until it says it's being recorded, but um just gonna give michael a little brain dump of an opportunity, I'm seeing on our website uh in case it's something that the web team wants to explore more um so michael first, I thought I'd show you something cool!

A

I'm gonna change the dates here, but this is our google analytics of traffic. This is filtered by just the free trial index page and all it's a little variant cool. um Let me update this.

A

So, just for context for anybody watching, we made a major change to the website and um not only the front page being beautiful, but we also made it so that the free trial cta is much more dominant in the upper right corner. We knew that was going to have a big impact based on the av test results, and so this is just trying to show how much lift we've generated in terms of traffic to that page.

A

So you can see that michael right.

B

Absolutely I like seeing those big humps yeah.

A

That's like that's what we want to see right around the successful experiment, implement something and then- and the funny thing is, that jump was mostly from the experiment running, um because we only get site-wide, I think maybe a week and a half ago. So um november is already you know, we're a little past mid month and we're trending so november will probably be about flat with october.

A

um So that's really awesome and and great, and I mean the fact that we've got over uh over 75 000 unique visitors to our trial. Signup page, that's like just awesome intent.

A

However, when I go and I have this little spreadsheet and I look at the trials that are getting created uh in october, I see that we have a pretty significant drop-off, um which I would say is probably more than I would expect.

A

um Definitely gonna have some drop-off, but I think when I look at the trial page experience, I think we've talked about this before there's still um some work. I think we can do here, probably some hanging fruit, just to make this a little bit more directed for users and the biggest one is. It's just got two calls to action.

A

So one thing I've been wondering about a couple things. One is just well this overlays the call to action, chat box, so probably um there's a lot of text to read on the page, but like I've already clicked to get free trials. So I'm assuming like my intent, is pretty strong at that point right when I enter this page.

A

um So maybe thinking about you know flipping the order a little bit like pushing these actions to the top and maybe making free trial the dominant one. And then maybe this is this box says like maybe it's blue and it says download now or something so they're, just like more differentiated. So it's much more clear like which thing I'm doing that's kind of like the simplest opportunity that I'm seeing the other is just.

A

I think it is good to have this like hey if you're still, not convinced, we'll tell you a few more things, um but I think this isn't very.

A

It feels weird, like it kind of feels I don't think reading. This is necessarily going to achieve anything for the user, because people don't necessarily know what these things are, um and I also noticed that we worked at contact sales link. I don't know how that got added in here, but this is the free trial conversion page. So it really should only like. Let you do one thing which is convert to the trial and the last thing um is these: are all uh customer links, so you could click off the page.

A

um I think we should be trying really hard to capture people here and really like the only thing you can do is convert, um so I don't think you have to act on all those things and maybe something else that I'm not even thinking of would be better, but I think the thing I was just thinking is man we're driving a lot more traffic here. I don't think. We've really like worked on making conversion better on this page.

A

So are there some just low hanging fruit, whether it's like an a b test, or maybe you just have some opinions and you want to just run with it like? I don't think anybody would mind, and this page is just like so important. So that's my brain dump, hi michael, I love.

B

It no, I love it. I see I see so many opportunities just for like pre-existing design patterns like that when you clicked from our new homepage, which to be fair, I've been looking at for two weeks because we've been in design of it, so I'm so familiar with it. Then we went to that experience. I almost felt like I was like in the middle of an ocean like, and I'd been treading water for about 35 minutes, and I'm like it's been a long time like. Where do I? What can I grab onto?

B

I think, just like increasing legibility and like you're, saying like thinking about what the customer is looking for? It's no no-brainer.

A

I think, maybe even to take it a step further back, I'm pulling up an organic search, I'm just going to go. Look at like some really common keywords that we that we get, and so let me share my screen again with you.

A

So one interesting thing is that our inbound search is still extremely dominated by git lab terms, so we have an incredibly strong brand search. So when people do land on the front page of our website, it's very likely they actually searched for git lab, but it's fun. It's also. I love seeing the variants like the ways people but like here's, a good example get lab runner.

A

So I would assume there's a very significant amount of traffic where, like they know that we exist and they want to take action so like, and we could do the click path to see like you know. Where did the free trial people come from? But if we go here and make this la this list a little longer, let's find something: that's not just get gitlab just so we can talk about it to go pretty far down, but you see things like get lab. Docker get lab download so like, for example, with gitlab download.

A

Another opportunity that we have is, we could say if you come in with the get lab download keyword, we're not going to even take you to the normal front page we're going to take you directly to the trial sign up page for managed.

A

Now I actually see that we're so far down the long tail that this is not a lot of traffic. So I'm not sure that effort would be worth it, but I guess what I'm kind of thinking about you know. Maybe that's not the right example, because this is not enough traffic to justify it, but no.

B

But I get I get the point like it's like.

A

They're already trying to do something like we got to get out of their way.

B

Yeah, like hey, can I buy this yeah sure? Do you want to buy this yeah? Can I buy this? You should buy this. No, no! No.

A

I'm ready to buy this yeah yeah and I think another big one. um You know in that same vein, and I know that this is something that's todd. You know talks about too and I know we're working on it, um but I've been given a lot of carte blanche, basically like we can change this page. This pricing page.

B

That's the next page we're going after yeah.

A

I assume you probably are very excited.

B

We're we're we're just being crazy and a dash audacious like home page and then pricing page like who does that we do we're gonna we're gonna.

C

A

B

I think that um I'm really glad you brought this up, because I think the pricing page and the free trial page there's a lot of like familiarity, and I can imagine that being a very common part of someone's journey. Yeah.

C

B

I'm gonna take this to recommend to our team um like let's consider these both at the same time, and even if we don't like for our next sprint, we're focusing on some refactoring and probably the ui um in ux design of this page and then the sprint after we'll deliver it. But.

A

B

This next sprint, like, let's, let's pull in our thoughts on on the sign up flow too, because these are going to be highly related. Yep.

A

I think you're also going to be able to get data much more quickly now, since we're driving more traffic to these pages. So you know a b tests that used to have to run for like four weeks to get results. We can get results in two now, and so um I just think your experimentation framework here could could be big. But there's like a lot of things that to me I'm like. Oh, my gosh, the chat box is over the buttons like things like that.

A

Like so we're I mean I want to be beautiful and I love what you do with the website, but I also think there's a need to just be like okay, a busy person is, you know, for a minute carved out their attention, because somebody told them about gitlab, and I just want to make sure we're capturing that, because when I see 75 000 people on that trial page and only six or seven thousand trials, I'm just like well, I'm sure some chunk of the people that visited the page meant to get a trial yeah. They.

B

Just said what yeah say, your point like it could just be that busy person who's like no, I clicked free trial. I don't have time to figure this page out next, yeah.

A

I mean it almost kind of feels like when you click it and it doesn't take you to a form it almost feels like. Oh did, I make a mistake.

B

True yeah good point so.

A

Anyway, I know that probably user testing would be a better way to go about it, not just like my opinion, but I don't think the things I'm saying are crazy, so I wanted to just share them with you. No.

B

I appreciate that I think, there's like I think, there's a sequence towards proper delivery. Like there's hey, what are we we're all professionals and we all have experience. What does normal and good look like to us, let's, let's land, that let's start to work on that? Well, that's in production!

B

Now, let's do some user testing to figure out the next one and let's work our way to being customer obsessed all the while delivering improvements to the business. Absolutely.

A

Well, thanks for letting me bend your ear and I'll put this on. Thank.

C

A

You're, like oh, I was talking to danielle and yada yada. You have this yeah.

B

She said a thing.

A

I can't remember, but I think the thing is too: I bet you there's other people.

A

I wonder who else has fresh eyes for this. You know like. I almost feel too close to it, because I tolerated I mean I hadn't changed the page I could have made an mr. I wonder if there are like, I wonder if we could um pick off some new get lab employees who've recently joined and be like before you get really familiar with things here like tell us what you think of some of these pages.

B

A

That's the truth, yeah so cool I'll. Stop the recording.