New Persona-driven Website Increases Engagement and Leads
The Impact
MTS is a leading global manufacturer of high-performance test and simulation systems. Before 2020, its website user experience (UX) was not fully developed and lacked compelling content and optimized conversion paths. As a result, MTS was seeing high bounce rates, short visit sessions and low conversion rates. In fact, the UX was so difficult that many MTS salespeople preferred to use a competitor’s website to look up industry standard testing requirements.
The MTS marketing team partnered with The Mx Group to create a customer-focused strategy that would complement its website optimization and digital transformation. With optimized conversion paths, persona-driven site architecture and an enhanced web presence, we helped MTS achieve the following:
455%
Increase in lead gen conversion as a percentage of all visits
50%
Decrease in site bounce rates
60%
Decrease in homepage bounce rates
205%
Increase in time spent on the site
If you’re looking for results like these from your website, get in touch and let’s get started.
Connect with usThe Need
After an exploratory discussion with our team, it was clear to the MTS marketing team that they needed not just a look and feel upgrade to the site, but a holistic, strategic, customer-focused rethinking of their entire web presence. In parallel with the website update, the MTS team began a digital transformation initiative to move from manual, complex and fragmented marketing processes and platforms to more automation between martech systems.
The Solution
We began with a discovery process that included discussions with major stakeholders in all the MTS business units. As a dominant and long-tenured player in its industry, MTS has a broad and deep set of product types, industries and market areas under its solutions umbrella. We started by getting a clearer understanding of the structure of its solutions, buying audiences, and the overarching marketing and sales goals aligned to each. We realized there were differences in the sales cycle and maturity across business units that would need to be considered, but we needed to take a deeper dive in to fully understand how this would impact the buying audience.
This led us to recommend starting with buyer persona research to help us pinpoint buyer pain points and needs, as well as determining the type of content current and prospective customers were seeking. Speaking to prospects and customers through one-on-one interviews across every business unit and in the major market regions of focus led us to keen persona insights that directly impacted the site architecture, content, messaging, user experience and optimized conversion paths — all of which were then tied together with a cohesive visual design. This research became a key and foundational element in the strategic planning process; it helped us understand the connection between job titles and buying roles as well as the criteria each persona used to search for solutions.
For the technology implementation, we worked with the MTS team to help select a new content management system (CMS) and marketing automation platform (MAP) based on their business and marketing goals. Ultimately, they chose Sitecore for their CMS, which would allow them to easily update content and centralize the translation process for global markets. They selected Pardot for their MAP, enabling seamless connectivity between Salesforce and Charket, a Salesforce app that supports robust WeChat marketing activities, which are extremely important to support international business.
The Results
Since the initial launch in 2020, the site’s KPIs have seen a huge boost. MTS reported excellent lead generation, with a 455% increase in lead gen conversion as a percentage of all visits. MTS also saw a decrease in site bounce rates by nearly 50%, as well as a 60% decrease in homepage bounce rates. There was also a 205% increase in time spent on the site.
Post-launch Technical Support and Strategy
After the launch, we created the site for their China presence, including a revamp of their utilization of WeChat. We also worked on helping them roll out to seven additional regions.
While we’ve helped support site updates, ultimately our goal was to provide the MTS marketing team with a nimble, user-friendly admin within their Sitecore CMS, so they can continue to develop and implement content on the site on an ongoing basis. With a number of robust, flexible modules and page templates, the MTS marketing team can do just that.
“Changes in the system used to take days,” said Andrea Juhl, marketing communications manager for MTS. “Now we can make changes on our own in minutes due to the flexibility of the design.”
We’re ready. Are you?
If you’re ready to tackle your digital transformation goals, let’s talk.
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