7 Quick Wins with Lasting Impact: VWFS's Journey to a Better User Experience

To gain deeper insights into user behavior and validate specific assumptions about their website performance, VWFS partnered with CUX for an expert audit.

This collaboration provided actionable data and recommendations, which enabled VWFS to implement changes, optimizations, and ongoing monitoring. Through advanced behavioral analytics, CUX identified areas for improvement and helped optimize the calculator's functionality. These data-driven enhancements led to significant increases in user engagement and conversion rates, demonstrating the power of a customer-centric approach.

Approach

We employed a structured, data-driven approach to optimize VWFS's user experience:

1. Goal-oriented analytics: The process began by defining specific objectives, such as improving user engagement and conversion rates. These goals were then used to filter and segment user behaviors, allowing us to focus on the most relevant interactions.
2. Visit recording analysis: In the next phase, we utilized visit recordings to gain deep insights into behavior patterns within the identified segments. This phase revealed critical issues such as user confusion, drop-offs, and inefficient navigation paths, providing a clear view of the challenges users faced.
3. Heatmap visualization: Finally, CUX generated heatmaps to visualize user interactions across the entire website traffic. This step confirmed whether the observed behavior patterns and issues were consistent with the broader traffic, ensuring that recommendations would be both targeted and widely applicable.

Findings and Outcomes

During the audit, we spotted key areas that were holding back user engagement and conversions. These insights highlighted exactly where improvements were needed, paving the way for quick, impactful changes (that we call Quick Wins) that made a real difference.

1. Visibility of financing options

• Identified Issue: Users had difficulty finding and noticing financing options, particularly because they were not prominently displayed above the fold.
• CUX Recommendation: Improve the visibility of financing options, ensuring key financial products appear above the fold.
• Action Taken: VWFS restructured the layout by reducing the number of car rows from two to one, making financial product names more visible. They also aligned buttons at the bottom of the tiles for a cleaner visual layout.
• Result: This change led to a 7% increase in visits to the calculator in May 2024, with a further increase to 9% by June 2024 (and it’s still increasing!), and an 8% reduction in drop-offs.

2. Engagement improvement

• Identified Issue: Users were not engaging deeply with the content, especially on pages with long lists of car models.
• CUX Recommendation: Enhance user engagement by managing the amount of content displayed and making navigation easier.
• Action Taken: VWFS implemented a "Show More" button, initially displaying 30 car models and allowing users to load more as needed.
• Result: This adjustment made it easier for users to explore the car models and allowed VWFS to generate heatmaps effectively. 1 in 5 users used the "Show More" button to view additional models.

3. Visibility of additional financing options

• Identified Issue: On the mobile version of the website, users were often unaware that additional financing options were available beyond what was initially visible on the screen.
• CUX Recommendation: Adjust the design to make it clear to users that more financing options are available off-screen, ensuring that they realize there are additional choices.
• Action Taken: VWFS modified the width of the financing option tiles on the mobile site so that the second tile was partially visible, providing a visual cue that more options could be accessed by swiping or scrolling.
• Result: This design change led to a 34% increase in clicks on the "Go to calculator" button on mobile devices, significantly improving user engagement with the financing options.

4. Providing desired financing information

• Identified Issue: The "Learn about financing" button led users to a generic list of vehicles, rather than providing the specific financing information they were seeking.
• CUX Recommendation: Ensure that users receive the expected information when clicking on financing-related buttons.
• Action Taken: VWFS added a slide-out module within the calculator that provides financing information directly, keeping users on the conversion path.
• Result: Users now receive specific financing information, improving their experience and allowing further analysis of user behavior.

5. Improvement of contact forms

• Identified Issue: Users experienced technical issues with contact forms, leading to failed submissions and frustration. Additionally, required fields were not clearly marked.
• CUX Recommendation: Address technical issues with contact forms and improve usability by clearly marking required fields.
• Action Taken: VWFS added asterisks to required fields and provided clear messages when forms were incomplete. The changes included a red highlight for uncompleted fields.
• Result: After removing marketing consents and implementing these form improvements, the conversion rate increased by 30% to an average of 0,9%.

While putting CUX’s recommendations into action, VWFS also spotted and tackled two more challenges on their own using our platform. This shows just how valuable continuous analytics is and highlights how our platform empowers clients to keep optimizing and improving over time.

6. Targeting business users

• Identified Issue: The website was not effectively catering to the majority user group, which consisted of business users.
• Recommendation: Adjust the website to better serve business users, who make up the majority of the user base.
• Action Taken: VWFS introduced tabs for "Client" and "Business" above the calculator, defaulting to the business option. This change tailored the content to suit the user's selection.
• Result: This led to an 87% increase in the number of users exploring business offerings, with a 100% increase in conversion rates for business users.

7. Price range functionality

• Identified Issue: Changes in the price range were not clearly reflected in the user interface, leading to user confusion and frustration.
• Recommendation: Ensure that changes in the price range are clearly reflected in the user interface.
• Action Taken: VWFS restructured the sorting of vehicles from most to least expensive within the selected range, requiring intentional user interaction.
• Result: These changes increased the number of calculations by 8% and leads by 45%

Impact

The collaboration between Volkswagen Financial Services and CUX led to rapid, impactful improvements across key performance indicators. Leveraging behavioral analytics, VWFS implemented changes that were easy to execute, saving both time and resources while delivering significant results. These strategic changes, guided by CUX’s blend of qualitative and quantitative insights, underscore the value of a customer-centric approach.

The VWFS experience shows that partnering with specialists like CUX can provide the guidance and tools necessary to transform user insights into tangible business outcomes, often through quick wins that deliver immediate impact. The end result is enhanced customer satisfaction and business growth, all achieved without lengthy or resource-heavy overhauls.

Future Plans

Looking ahead, VWFS plans to continue refining their digital offerings by embracing a culture of continuous analytics. They plan to further utilize CUX’s digital experience analytics platform to monitor user behavior, uncover new opportunities for optimization, and stay ahead of evolving customer needs.

Client's Quote

Partnering with CUX has been a game-changer for us. Their expertise in behavioral analytics allowed us to make quick, impactful changes that not only enhanced our user experience but also significantly boosted our key performance metrics. The ongoing mentorship and support from the CUX team have been instrumental in fostering a culture of continuous analytics and improvement within our organization. Their guidance has not only enhanced our customer experience but has also equipped our team with the tools and knowledge to keep optimizing our digital presence. This collaboration has reinforced our commitment to putting the customer at the center of everything we do, and we look forward to continuing this journey of analytics optimization and growth

Alina Kačanovskaja-Godzik, Digital Marketing Expert at Volkswagen Financial Services