The million dollar tweak: How a tiny change helped Collarts get to seven figures

A lot of organisations and businesses give up on digital campaigns in frustration when traffic and leads fail to generate, but the Australian College of the Arts increased its submissions rate by 222 per cent by tweaking one function on its website

During COVID, many businesses have scrambled to recoup lost revenue, traffic and customers. The Australian College of the Arts (Collarts) was no exception. Severely impacted by the pandemic Collarts was looking for ways to drive new applications.  

Time to call in the experts

With overseas students prohibited from entering the country, the situation looked dire. Fortunately there were experts at hand. Digital agency, Hamma.Digital identified improvements that could be made to streamline the college’s virtual experience to simplify the application process. According to Ian Hammond Managing Director of Hamma.Digital examining the user experience is something all businesses should do

“Analysing a customers’ online experience can be transformative, particularly now that everything is going digital,” Hammond said.

“We used a platform called FullStory initially to gain insights and analytics to determine where our attention needed to be. It became clear the online application process was deterring customers and they were losing vital data.” 

“We spent 18 months testing, designing and developing Collarts’ application process to make it cleaner and intuitive, ensuring it captured the right information, at the right time.” 

Futureproofing your brand

By spending time exploring and tweaking the customer experience on the site, Collarts was better prepared when the pandemic struck.

“By tweaking the application process, we’ve been able to increase the submission rate by 222per cent since going live in February 2021, which could lead to a projected revenue increase in the millions, over a 12 month period.” 

Focus on nuturing

Jason Hawking, marketing manager at Collarts said that they’re blown away by what these enhancements have already achieved.  

“Our strategic approach up to that point had focused on finding new customers, but we realised more could be done to nurture and address the prospective customers already visiting our website.” 

“By tweaking our online application process and more effectively remarketing to those prospective leads, we were able to more effectively communicate with abandoned applications.” Jason added. 

While a strong online presence is more important than ever it needs to be backed by well-practised and efficient features.

“Taking the time to look within, even at seemingly minor features in your business or digital strategy, can lead to massive financial wins,” said Hammond.  

“It’s not just a matter of set and forget, you need to keep on top of all of your businesses touchpoints to make sure you’re not bleeding prospective customers.”

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