How Contentsquare and Merkle helped Charles Sturt University achieve a $6.7M revenue boost

The company

Charles Sturt University is Australia’s largest regional university, with 6 main campuses in New South Wales, specialist campuses in Canberra, Goulburn, Manly, and Parramatta, and study centres in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.

As Australia’s online university of choice, more students choose to study online with Charles Sturt University than any other university in Australia.

The challenge

Charles Sturt University faced a critical challenge in improving its visitor-to-application complete conversion rate, the key metric for gauging success in its student enrollment process. 

A significant portion of prospective students begin their application process on mobile devices. However, many of these mobile-based applicants were failing to complete the process.

To identify and fix the hidden causes of friction in the application process, Charles Sturt University needed to make use of Contentsquare’s all-in-one experience intelligence platform—with the help of its long-time technology partner: Merkle Australia.

The partnership

Charles Sturt University has partnered with Merkle Australia (a leading technology consultant and Contentsquare partner) for more than 7 years to manage digital advertising, search, and conversion rate optimization (CRO) initiatives. 

Merkle’s extensive experience with Contentsquare has allowed them to seamlessly integrate Contentsquare’s capabilities and features into the university’s workflow, enhancing the university’s capacity to identify problematic areas of its website experience and execute effective solutions.

“We’ve conducted around 60 A/B tests for Charles Sturt University over the years,” explains Lachlan Jacob, Optimization Executive at Merkle Australia. “And we’re always progressively refining our approach to tackle low-performing pages and focus on high-impact personalization efforts.” 

The partnership continues to evolve, leveraging data and testing to adapt to emerging trends and user behaviors.

The solution

Working closely with Merkle, Charles Sturt University leveraged Contentsquare’s advanced analytics capabilities to identify and address pain points in the online application process. 

Using Contentsquare's Journey Analysis and Heatmaps capabilities, they uncovered hidden user behaviors, such as looping patterns, which showed where users were getting stuck, frustrated, or exiting the application funnel.

The most critical insight: many users were experiencing friction on the application login page, as this was where nearly 30% of users had exited the site.

Contentsquare's Journey Analysis visualization of the application login page

We work hard and spend a lot of time, effort, and money getting people to the application login page, and then to see nearly a third of traffic just disappearing, it was clear there is a frustration point there for users and something that we needed to fix.

Vaughan Files

Digital Customer Experience Manager at Charles Sturt University

Merkle’s analysis revealed that frustration on the application login page was being fuelled by poor design and usability issues, particularly on mobile. 

Key issues included: 

• Hidden call-to-action (CTA) buttons

• Excessive text clutter

• An unintuitive layout 

These shortcomings not only hindered the user experience but also led to a substantial loss of potential applicants and, consequently, a negative impact on revenue.

The evidence for some of these issues can be seen in the screenshots below, which show the exposure rate (the percentage of users who see a page element) and tap rate (the percentage of users who tap a tappable page element) of the application login page on mobile.

The exposure rate revealed

• Only 54% of users scrolled down far enough to view the ‘Register’ CTA button

• Only 1.27% of users scrolled far enough to view the ‘Login’ CTA button

The tap rate revealed that before the changes,

• Only 7.4% of users who saw the ‘Register’ CTA button tapped it 

• Only 15.8% of users who saw the ‘Login’ CTA button tapped it

Armed with these insights, the team completely overhauled the application login page. They adopted a mobile-first approach, prioritizing clarity and simplicity. 

Key changes included:

• CTA buttons: relocating and redesigning CTA buttons to make them prominent and easily accessible, especially on mobile

• Content simplification: reducing text volume and presenting information in a concise, user-friendly format

• Visual design: adjusting color schemes, headlines, and button labels to create a more welcoming and action-oriented experience. For example, the button text was changed from 'Register' to 'Create an Account', offering clearer guidance.

Using Contentsquare’s Heatmaps and Impact Quantification capabilities, the team was able to make confident, evidence-backed improvements. 

The redesign was implemented and tested through A/B experiments to ensure measurable improvements before rolling out the changes across the site.

The redesign created a seamless, mobile-first experience for users. By simplifying the page and ensuring CTAs were prominent, users could easily log in or create accounts across devices. 

The results

The redesigned login page provided immediate and measurable benefits, including

• Enhanced user experience: the simplified design, particularly on mobile devices, allowed users to quickly understand and navigate the application process

• Increased accessibility: the repositioning of CTAs ensured users could perform desired actions without unnecessary scrolling or confusion

Vaughan Files, Digital Customer Experience Manager at Charles Sturt University, highlighted how removing friction from the user journey had a profound impact, noting that "finding these friction points for users is critical in improving the customer experience and it doesn't always need to be a major design change to get the results.” 

The changes drove significant improvements in:

• Application metrics: application starts and completes saw significant uplifts, with a +58% increase in login success and a +10.6% improvement in 'Create Account' clicks on mobile

• Revenue growth: the projected annual revenue increase from these improvements is estimated at $6.7 million AUD, demonstrating the redesign's substantial business impact 

The outcomes we’ve seen have validated our efforts. Knowing that nearly every user who logs in proceeds to complete their application highlights how vital these changes were. And the projected massive revenue lift that comes with the redesign demonstrates the importance of focusing on user experience.

Vaughan Files

Digital Customer Experience Manager at Charles Sturt University

Contentsquare played a pivotal role in this project, offering insights unavailable through traditional analytics tools. Specific capabilities that drove success included:

• Journeys Analysis, which mapped user interactions, revealing looping behaviors and high-exit points, enabling targeted interventions

• Impact Quantification, which identified specific elements on the login page causing friction and prioritized fixes based on their conversion impact

• Heatmaps, which provided visual insights into how users interacted with page elements, guiding the redesign of CTAs and mobile layouts

While traditional analytics provides valuable data, Contentsquare goes further by helping us understand not just what’s happening, but why it’s happening. This depth of insight has been transformative for us.

Vaughan Files

Digital Customer Experience Manager at Charles Sturt University

What’s next

The success of this initiative has set the stage for continued collaboration and optimization. Key future plans include:

• Extending personalisation efforts: leveraging Contentsquare to create tailored user journeys for specific audience segments

• Ongoing conversion rate optimization (CRO) initiatives: scaling A/B testing across more pages to ensure consistent improvements in conversion rates

• Advanced mobile optimisation: building on the mobile-first strategy, the team aims to further enhance the mobile experience to cater to the growing number of users accessing the site on handheld devices

With Contentsquare, we’re not just improving the current experience; we’re building a strategy to meet the evolving needs of our users. Contentsquare has become an integral part of our toolkit. The insights we’ve gained are just the beginning. We’re excited to push the boundaries further and unlock even greater results.

Vaughan Files

Digital Customer Experience Manager at Charles Sturt University