GitLab Group Conversation, 15 Mar 2021

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From YouTube: Prospect Journey: Inbound Marketing Public Livestream

Description

Using keyword research and Google Analytics data, the Inbound Marketing team shares some key takeaways and suggested iteration ideas.

A

Hello, everyone: this is becky from the inbound marketing team, it's sunday march, 14th 2021, and I'm going to walk through an exercise that we did for prospect journey exercise uh on the marketing website. So this you're gonna see a lot of data in here that we have gotten from google analytics some educated assessments and then some ideas for how we can iterate on those things. So let me go through here again, so you're going to see, search engine results, a typical user journey that we've pulled some data from ga key takeaways and then iteration suggestions.

A

So looking at our search engine results here we pulled the top 10 keywords showing in the top three positions in google, so that is the top three spots in google when you put these in and we have broken it into branded and non-branded keywords. So I'm just going to take a moment to pause here. So you can take a look at the two of these you'll notice in the branded. It has git lab in it every time and then non-branded.

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These are um when somebody searches for this keyword and we come up in the top three positions.

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um Something interesting here is in the top three positions for asynchronous communication, which we are known for in our remote work: culture all remote work, culture. um We come in the top three positions with a search volume of fourteen thousand eight hundred. So how do we iterate on this? We, uh these all here in the deck, are linked to our epics and issues that we have within git lab.

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So we want to improve the site health overall, we want to create content for our top devops keywords that we want to target with seo copy targeted at those, and we want to update and create a system for internal link architecture to um increase the health of our seo.

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I'm going to go into the journeys a little bit. So what we're going to see here is we're going to see some google analytics data and then it's going to be pieced together, based on some things that we know key takeaways and then how we can iterate on that.

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So this is just a quick overview of the last 12 months. This was done um march, 10th to march 10 march 10 2020 to march 10 2021, and the first question we asked is: how did they get here? So this is the channel that uh the default channel grouping over here. So we have organic search, direct referral, display social paid, social branded, paid search, email, generic paid, search, other or paid search. um But what's interesting when you look at this, is the top two channels for returning prospects or organic search and referral.

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So going back here. If you look at the returning users as opposed to the original user amount, organic search and referral have the closest proportion there and returning users. Users for organic search, far outweighs everything else, so the average person looks at about two pages per session. So what we can learn from that is that we have two pages to solve a visitor's pain point. Really. We have one to get them interested in knowing that we can solve it until they go to the next one.

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Three paid search has a much lower bounce rate and higher pages per session than display, and then four, the volume of return prospects gets here through organic search first, so that's interesting to know is that they've come to gitlab at some point and then they've thought of git lab for something that they want to learn and they've put that in to google to search for it. So how can we iterate so a possibility?

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Is we can reallocate some resources from display to paid search and then we can invest important, iterations and testing on top pages from organic search to solve a problem in that one page so really focus in on there, because we know that there are things that our prospects want and they would likely want an answer very quickly.

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So where did they land uh when we're looking at all users? Here? These are the pages that they landed on. So if you look, about.getlab.com is by far the highest one and then at the bottom we have some docs. So this is again. Most of these people are coming from organic search that you saw on the page before so. The key takeaway here is that returning users go to our home page more often than any other page to restart their journey when you're looking at this here.

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These are new users, and these are returning users, and this is the home page. So, although someone might get referred into get lab, they are most likely going to come back in through the home page, so we need to make the journey very clear from the home page wherever those prospects want to go.

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So there's just one quick second here, so a quick light bulb open moment for returning users. If the highest proportion of returning users come from organic search and referral, we can hypothesize, they have something very specific in mind.

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They will search for what they want and what they need or go to the home page first to find it because they're not sure- and this is what they need. This is based on the keyword, research that we have so git lab, get lab, ci, get lab pricing. What is git lab and git lab versus github?

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Now we want to know: where did they go so when we pull the data for uh the home page and we go in and we look at the referring page? The number this. This is the highest volume there's plenty of these here, but we just picked the highest volume go to free trial, install pricing, demo stages, devops, ci and enterprise. So that means that these pages were referred from the home page, more than other pages from the home page.

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So we are doing a good job of getting them to inquiry capture pages.

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uh The second key takeaway is the home page has not only uh serve as the place for visitors to solve their problems, but we need to use it to send them on the most strategic journey for us and how do we iterate on this? uh The first is we provide what they need quickly by improving navigation, and we have a link there to some of the testing that we're doing um and iterations on our navigation. The second is: we can improve the experience to our top value inquiry. Inquiry capture, which is free trial.

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Free trial is a great inquiry capture because you have to validate your email address, so we are and to log in again, so we are going to get a valid email address from there. In addition, we are going to let everybody try all of the features within gitlab uh for 30 days, so when we talk to them about gitlab they're, going to be able to experience it themselves. So this is the best inquiry capture that we have right now and three. We need to explain the value of our product on the homepage more effectively.

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Again. This is because the average of two pages per session we want to make sure that we are explaining why gitlab is valuable to you when you come here within that home page enough. So if you need a bit more information, you can continue on your journey. What we don't want to have happen, is you land and think this is not for me.

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It can't solve my problems, so I'm going to go through the pages after that, so you've gone from the home page to the free trial page and the top referring pages from here are back to the home page. The trial form fill contact sales and the case study for goldman sachs. So a quick note here on the trial form fill. We only have the self-managed trial form fill information available in ga, and that is because the sas trial goes into the product.

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Now we know the percentage of how often someone takes a sas trial versus a self-managed trial. So we can estimate from there that the trial form fill for sas will be greater than what's installed and install is listed as the second so likely the sas one may be above the home page. We just don't have the data for that, but it's close.

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So the key takeaways here are that a prospect is either ready to start the trial there. They are ready to talk to sales or they need to have more proof. Git lab is valuable before beginning the process of a free trial. So how do we iterate on this one? We improve the page to explain the value of the trial, two provide ways to quickly get into a trial post content when they are likely more prepared.

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So this is offering the free trial at the end of ebooks, anything where you have had a chance to look through the value of a specific feature of git lab or a specific stage in devops, and why gitlab can help you and make the trial available there and three improve the nurture through free trial. So we do have um uh some emails that go out through free trial right now, but they haven't been updated. So we have an okr this quarter to update those the next one is pricing.

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So from pricing we have a top list here which is much higher. So the way we did this is we looked at the referring pages and then we looked at the top grouping of them. So if it re, if one page was referred from pricing, we didn't put that on the list. But if there were thousands, we left those up there. So we have install stages, devops lifecycle, free trial, enterprise, ci, small business partners and resources.

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So some of the key takeaways here are: they might not be ready to buy and want to see what git lab can do for them or their company as a whole. Individual features may not be as important. This is because we have features available on uh pricing or you can search for them, and people do not seem to go to that at the highest rate and two unlike free trial. They do not go back to the home page as a top next step, meaning they have.

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They may have more intention at this step at this stage. So how do we iterate? We a b test, removing install and pairing down the navigation bar on the pricing page.

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If we can assume that somebody on the pricing page has uh more intention they're further down their journey, they will probably like uh need more things that are more relevant to that than we would offer on the home page two nurture prospects who install so if we have install on there and we want to be able to provide the value of git lab and why someone should go from the community edition to what is considered the enterprise edition. uh It's just a licensed name: it's not for enterprises.

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We, uh we should nurture them through the emails from getting their information when they install and three. We should improve the nurture through free trial. Again, uh when I talked about in the last slide, so the next page is top pages from install. So here we have pricing home, page free trial, install ce or ee, that is community edition or enterprise edition stages. Devops lifecycle, update or upgrade so the key takeaway here is the top neck pages on this. One are ones that perform a number of functions in the next stage of a prospect journey.

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We need more data to make informed decisions, and so how do we iterate this um uh iterate? On this? We perform testing to see what the most likely desired. Next stages are for prospects, uh and another suggestion I have here is we more accurate accurately describe what are the differences between community edition and enterprise edition?

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Next is demo, so this is an interesting one, so the demo goes. The only page really that has a higher volume is the home page.

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This is interesting, so there are no ctas on the post gate, demo, page or navigation, so there's nowhere for a visitor to go but back to the home page. So when you put in your information the demo, there is no navigation. uh The demo is playing a video and there is no cta.

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The demo is also slightly out of date, we're working on a new one right now, and the demo is the best opportunity for a shareable quick overview in other languages of the product. So how do we iterate on this? We create a path forward after the demo, by adding ctas for key next steps, I.e free trial. If you've seen the demo- and you think it's interesting to you- we want to be able to offer you a free trial right then, and there two update the video.

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So it has the latest features and can explain the value of the product as accurately as possible and three we want to translate that demo, video for anybody that doesn't speak english, because the video itself will go through the product at the appropriate level with the features and the value, and we can make that easily into other languages to share.

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So if you are a developer in another country, and you want to bring git lab on, but you're not quite sure how to explain to your boss the value of it, you can share this demo with them.

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The next page is the enterprise page. So then, here we have free trial. Interestingly, small business, install and stages of the devops life cycle, so some key takeaways here are. uh The prospect may uh need to understand why we separate the team sizes in the offer like if the offers are different and which category they fall in install likely confuses.

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Why buy when I can. Just install the product and they want to know what a full platform means or what solutions we offer and how to iterate on this is we can improve the product solutions user journey two. We can improve case study pages to help prospects quickly, see real life. Examples of similar companies being successful with gitlab and three make it more clear, create a more clear way for prospects to understand what install, trying and buying all mean the next and last page is ci.

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So here this takes you to the ebook single, app ci, cd pricing, the ci cd demo install and free trial. So some of these things are ctas that we offer on this page. So that's um not unexpected that these would come in, but the key takeaways that we can have on here is that the prospects here seem to be in another part of their journey and are looking specifically for more information on using gitlab for ci. A top search is for gitlab ci, so returning prospects are interested in it.

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We have the opportunity to show the value of our platform beyond just ci. So how do we iterate we'd like to hear from you? We have some ideas on here.

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One of the ideas we have is testing to see how much deeper information on ci we should put on this page or if somebody needs to try it uh gitlab, to understand the value of it, and that will be a b testing that we would do on the page. Thank you very much and please uh share all of your thoughts with us in the document and danielle will answer all your questions. Thank.

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