An online education platform learns how to improve website messaging to increase conversion and attract the right users.
Codecademy is an online coding education platform that helps you build websites, analyze data, and write code in minutes — no matter your experience level. You can get instant feedback, apply your learnings to real-world projects, and even land your dream job. Codecademy turned to Sprig to get inside of the mind of their website visitors, so that they could craft the right messaging that aligned with user expectations and ultimately improve website conversion.
Improving conversion by understanding user goals and motivations
Codecademy wanted to improve user activation, and to do so, they knew they needed to understand what their users expected from their product when they arrived on their website. Was it to switch or advance careers, learn for fun, or something else? It was important to understand this so they could tailor messaging that would resonate and convert. The answers could help Codecademy figure out if they were the right fit, or if users were coming to them and expecting something they didn’t have or deliver on.
Targeted in‑product surveys to identify user goals and motivations
Codecademy wanted to understand what users were thinking and what mattered to them when they landed on their website. Codecademy sent a series of in-product surveys to users who signed up after 2 days because they wanted to target users as soon as possible while things were still fresh in their minds, yet not too early in the product experience where they risk distracting them from activation. Codecademy leveraged the open-ended question format to provide the opportunity to learn something new and unexpected. In addition, the open ended format helped them prevent biasing users based on the options they would’ve offered in a multiple-choice, close-ended format. With open-ended questions, Codecademy was really able to drill into the fears, uncertainties, and doubts around what users are feeling.
Changing messaging to align with user expectations and drive higher quality buyers and revenue
Codecademy sent tens of thousands of in-product surveys and generated 1,500 responses. They used open-ended questions, rather than guess and offer answer choices, and learned something they hadn’t considered before — users were uncertain about their own ability to learn how to code. They didn’t doubt that Codecademy could be effective at teaching code, they just lacked confidence in their ability to pick it up. This was more of an emotional vs. rational response, and perfectly illustrated the power of open-ended in-product surveys.
Before
After
They also learned that users who were there to learn a hobby were most concerned with language options and price, while career-oriented users wanted step-by-step guides and self-paced learning. Now that they understood the motivation behind these personas, they could craft different messaging around various parts of the product that are more targeted for each persona. They eventually realized that they were doing a better job catering to the hobbyist, yet they make more money from the career-oriented folks.
Sprig classified all of their in-product surveys into buckets, and Codecademy was able to click into each answer group to see exactly what users wrote. This gave Codecademy a lot of firepower for copy testing because they could use their users’ exact words. Because Sprig was able to automate and scale the process of analyzing open-ended responses, Codecademy didn’t just have insights, but a roadmap for how they could optimize their messaging, conversion, and product experience for each user.
Codecademy learned that they were effectively messaging to hobbyists but they could do a better job messaging to career‑oriented users, who generated most of the revenue for Codecademy.
Codecademy
Online platform offering coding courses and interactive learning.
http://www.codecademy.comIndustry
E-Learning
Company Size
201-500