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Career Karma

user needs research | wireframe + prototype design  | conversion rate optimization 

Role 

CRO Designer

Landing Page Designer 

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Tools Used 

Figma

Unbounce

JavaScript

Miro

Google Analytics

Hotjar

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Career Karma is an education tech start up that helps users switch careers into the tech industry by providing career support and matching them to reskilling programs such as online courses and bootcamps


A large part of Career Karma’s business model involves lead acquisition through channels like paid media and organic search. In order to optimize its lead generation model, the business requires a smooth and intuitive process from the user entrance to its onboarding funnel all the way to the point of conversion on a lead form.​

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As a freelancer for Career Karma, I was tasked with optimizing landing pages to increase conversion rate and improve general user experience. 

Stakeholder Goals
Stakeholder Interview 

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Through conversations with my manager, the product director, and the COO of Career Karma, we created a list of stakeholder goals:

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  1. Increase conversion rate on landing page

  2. Reduce bounce rate

  3. Reduce page scroll length

  4. Improve content readability

  5. Maintain the current look of the page to remain consistent with the other parts of the website

Marketing Insight

 

From an acquisition marketing lens, I know that users want an adequate amount of information before committing to conversion and giving away their information. 

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Therefore, an important piece of design is to incorporate just enough information to persuade users to convert, but not too much to distract.

Problem Statement

How might we refocus information that the bootcamp rankings and program pages offer so that users feel compelled to be matched to the programs? 
Original Page Design
[original] Rankings.gif

  • Rankings page includes key details for bootcamp programs 

  • "Get Matched" CTA leads to a pop-up lead form fill

  • Scrolling banner on the side also leads to a form fill pop-up

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[original] overview.gif

  • "Learn More CTA" leads to a program-specific page

  • A massive "overview" tab includes reviews, outcomes, courses, etc

  • Tab for Reviews is text-heavy and extremely long

[original] outcomes and courses.gif

  • Tab for Courses include text-heavy descriptions

  • Tab for Outcomes includes incomplete data visualizations

  • No call to action for "Get Matched" anywhere 

User Journey Research

To understand issues with the current page design, I interviewed users who have had experience researching and applying for bootcamps or higher education programs in the past two years. 

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I split the interview into two parts:

 

First, I asked behavioral questions about their experiences and preferences when searching for information on bootcamp and higher education programs. I focused on pain points and helpful aspects that they encountered during their search. 

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Then, I asked users to share their screen and walk me through their thoughts towards the current Career Karma conversion flow. This gave me user data on what works and what doesn't work with the current design.

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I gathered my user testing notes into a user journey map (based on Nielsen Norman Group's model) that helped me to understand the main pain points and areas of improvement: 

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Affinity Board 

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I also organized user feedback on the information search process into an affinity board. This helped me to see patterns in what types of information are most valued by users, and what kind of experience would be most persuasive for conversion. 

Interview questions 

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  • Tell me about a time you were looking at rankings for a bootcamp or school program 

  • Where did you go to conduct information search?

  • What makes the information search difficult?

  • How much do you trust these rankings?

Career Karma.jpg
User Interview Key Findings

  1. Data like length of program, employment rate, tuition cost, and curriculum content are the most important information for those interested in bootcamps

  2. Word of mouth and honest, unaffiliated reviews are highly relied upon to gauge quality of bootcamp compared to corporate website content

  3. There is an overwhelming number of bootcamp options available, and it is often difficult to find their differentiation

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Market & Competitive Research

Understanding the market trends of the bootcamp and reskilling industry will also help me to better understand what types of needs users have, and what types of information will be most relevant to them. 

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Sources:

Finding 1

Demand for e-learning has increased across the globe due to the convenient and affordable nature of e-learning. 

Finding 2

Around 66% of coding bootcamp students use some form of financing to pay for their education.

Finding 3

The major market drivers include rising demand for coding skills, increasing flexibility, rapid changes in coding technology, and availability of financing options.

Competitive Research
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Conducting competitive research on similar rankings websites with a goal of form fill conversion helped to provide comparisons for how other successful sites organize their user journey and experience. It also helped us to get a sense of what users are expecting to see upon opening a rankings page. 

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Commonalities between many competitor landing pages included: 

  • Methodology for program rankings to establish credibility

  • Alternatives to bootcamps explained

  • Focus on alumni reviews and financing options

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Other Research
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Users mentioned functions from e-commerce retailers that they found very useful when using product reviews for information search. I looked to Amazon's product page to take inspiration from how reviews are organized for user's information search and how comparison charts can help differentiate similar products. 

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Market Research Key Findings

  1. Data like length of program, employment rate, tuition cost, and curriculum content are the most important information for those interested in bootcamps

  2. Word of mouth and honest, unaffiliated reviews are highly relied upon to gauge quality of bootcamp compared to corporate website content

  3. There is an overwhelming number of bootcamp options available, and it is often difficult to find their differentiation

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Triangulated Insights & Solutions
Stakeholder Interview    +   User Journey Research   +    Market/Competitor Research
=   Triangulated Insights

Combining all three research pieces helped me to arrive at insights that would inform the most important changes and additions that I should make the the landing page. The most relevant discoveries were: 

Cost of program, content, and outcomes are highly valued by potential students, many of whom will rely on aid to finance this large investment

Unbiased, impartial reviews and ranking methodologies are important factors of consideration when signing up for bootcamp information.

Unintuitive formatting and organization of information hinders readability and accessibility, and detracts from the call to action.

From Insights to Solutions

To address these issues, main solutions that I will focus on incorporating into the new designs are: 

Prioritize cost, curriculum, and career statistics in the main real estate of the page and optimize navigation to this information.

Include ranking methodologies and allow flexible view of reviews to optimize user information search within the reviews. 

Remove large blocks of text and non-relevant information. Include call-to-action form fill in more prominent areas of the page.

Wireframe
Low-Fidelity Wireframes

I created wireframes and layouts on Figma, incorporating features that users found important in research. Developing ideas on low fidelity allowed me more flexibility to go back to research and make adjustments to different functions and organizations before finalizing them in the final prototype. 

Rankings Page
[lofi] Rankings 1.png
Program Courses
[lofi] School Page - Programs (1).png
High Fidelity Prototype
hi-fi-rankings.gif
Step 1: Rankings Page

Insight from research 

Users lack transparency in the ranking methodology and the "Match Me" call-to-action 

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Insight from research 

There are many different bootcamp programs with mostly similar offerings, making it difficult to differentiate

Design decision

"Get Matched" is explained in a brief paragraph at the top, and a pop-up now explains details of how algorithm ranks the different programs

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Design decision

I added a comparison search bar, where users can input another bootcamp and compare details and offerings

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Step 2: Program Page

Insight from research 

The order of content that showed programs reviews before the offerings and details of the program was confusing and not logically intuitive

Design decision

"Programs" tab with an overview of all different courses offered is placed first. The massive Overviews tab with Reviews is removed

Insight from research 

Pop-ups that constantly showed are not effective for conversion and made user feel surprised and annoyed.

Design decision

Pop-ups are replaced with the conversion form fill at the bottom of every page to remove the surprise element for the users but keeps the form's presence on the page. 

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Step 3: Program Reviews

Insight from research 

Unbiased reviews are important in decision-making before conversion, but current formatting makes it difficult to glean information without reading through everything

Design decision

I added in filtering and sorting functions for reviews to allow users to find reviews most relevant to the topics, time frame, or courses that they're looking for

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Step 4: Program Outcomes

Insight from research 

Many students are relying on the program to land higher-income jobs. Outcomes of the program, including careers and skills earned, are an important aspect of consideration.

Design decision

I removed large bulleted lists and overly complex graphs, and replaced them with large, easily readable icons and data visualizations that can be customized based on career interest.

Testing

The client team has yet to consider or implement these proposed new designs. However, there are many methods of tracking success based on the metrics that the clients are focused on. 

Conversion Metrics - Unbounce

I will split the traffic 50-50 between the old page and the new page, then analyze the conversion results using Unbounce, the site on which the clients' landing pages are built, to see if there are significant differences between the rates of conversion, volume of conversions, and places on the page where users converted. 

Page Analytics - Hotjar & Google Analytics

To better understand the lower funnel conversion results, I will analyze the page engagement metrics to provide context and explanations. 

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To track how effective the new design is for readability and comprehension, I plan to use conduct A/B tests between the two designs and use heatmaps in Hotjar to see how much of the program details users spend time looking at in either version. 

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I will also use Google Analytics to look for significances in bounce rate, page/session duration, and user behavior flow to track to gauge how engaged users are with the formatting and design of the new page, and how the different design affects how they navigate in their information search. 

Reflection

A business focus 

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  • Due to the business-focused nature of this project, I spent more time doing market and competitive research and looking into the types of products that the clients wanted. I learned to balance user experience priorities with the standards of the market and client expectations from this project. 

  • The marketing goals also meant a different focus and different metrics when testing. I learned to integrate user experience with customer experience analytics like Google Analytics. 

 

What I would do differently 

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  • In the future, I'd like to have the opportunity to interview more stakeholders on the client side to understand their pain points and perspectives on this customer flow. Unfortunately due to time and bandwidth constraints, much of my research came from market research and only a small number of client conversations. 

© 2023 by Tingwei Hsu

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