Website Strategy: Examples of localization as a growth strategy, CRO techniques, and a content strategy shift for buyer intent

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Quick Case Study #1: How collaboration tool’s localized content grew their traffic by 800,000 visits per month

Creately is a diagramming and visual collaboration tool that relies heavily on organic traffic.

BEFORE – Main English language keywords already ranking

Creately’s growth was stagnating because their main keywords were already ranking well. They also noticed emerging competition from niche players who were heavily competing for English keywords by creating new landing pages for targeted keywords.

Creative Sample #1: English language ‘flowcharts’ landing page

AFTER – Localizing landing pages and blog posts

The team identified an opportunity for growth by noticing an interest in the product in non-English speaking countries. They decided the best way to reach these customers is to localize the product and were hoping for much easier and quicker rankings gains because of the low competition in these languages.

The team localized their landing pages and blog posts through a four-step process:

Step #1: Identify languages

“For this we looked at our Google Analytics data and identified countries that are already sending us traffic but where the primary language is not English,” said Nishadha Silva, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Creately.

Then the team looked at populations, disposable income and other factors that would help them identify countries/languages that are more likely to purchase. Spanish (ES) emerged as the clear winner from this research with Portuguese and French coming in second and third place.

Step #2: Discover keywords

It would make sense to think that what converts for English converts for Spanish as well. “We exported our target keywords for English, translated them to Spanish with the help of a freelancer, and performed keyword analysis to get search volumes, keyword difficulty and other related data using Ahrefs,” Silva said.

Step #3: Ready the Product

No point getting traffic in other languages if the product can't support that language. The team added app-level support for Spanish and 17 other languages.

Step #4: Create the content

Individually hiring freelancers and getting them to translate hundreds of landing pages was going to be a tedious task. “So we decided to go with Memsource (now Phrase),” Silva said. This allowed them to upload all their English landing pages and get them all translated in different languages within one project interface.

“Once the files were translated we hired freelancers via Upwork and got them proofread and slightly edited them to match local context and search intent,” Silva said.

The team created 300 landing pages in non-English languages.

Creative Sample #2: Spanish language ‘flowcharts’ landing page

RESULTS – 85% increase in registrations

The team got 800,000 visits per month from these new pages within six months of publishing, along with an 85% increase in registrations and 40% increase in purchases.

“If you have an online product that caters to a global audience then localization is one of the best ways to reach new audiences and generate more revenue with much lesser competition,” he advised.

Quick Case Study #2: How focusing on buyer intent articles grew affiliate earnings 83% for archery blog

ImproveYourArchery.com is a weblog that provides helpful information to beginner and experienced archers.

BEFORE – Focused on generic articles

Initially, the articles published on the blog were helpful guides with low buyer intent. “Within those articles, I have Amazon affiliate links, and I have ads via Ezoic,” said Tim van Rooijen, Owner, ImproveYourArchery.com.

Although these articles together attracted 25,000 page views per month, the ROI per visitor was very low. The readers were simply not clicking on any of the affiliate links or the advertising.

“Initially, I was hesitant to change the strategy. We got a lot of great feedback from our readers, but financially we were not achieving our goals. During this process, I have learned that the preference of our readers is different from what I thought,” he said.

Since it was clear that the current strategy was not a reliable way to monetize the blog, the team decided to experiment with changing the focus of the website. The website already had a few buyer guides where products were recommended, but even on those articles, the number of clicks on affiliate links was extremely low.

Creative Sample #3: Informational content, recommended products were integrated but not the focus (arrow shows affiliate link)

AFTER – Focus on articles with purchase intent

The team decided to shift the focus from buyer guides to articles with a ‘top products’ format, featuring between three and seven products. Instead of providing a lot of information, the article would be focused on the products the team recommended. Below the recommendations, they added more information and explained why they believed the selected products were the best in their class.

Creative Sample #4: Article focused on product recommendations

The articles were relatively easy to write for the team. With a deep knowledge of the hobby, they could easily browse the catalogs and write their recommendations.

RESULTS – Affiliate earnings increased

The team considers the current results to be extremely promising, especially since most of the articles are still in the old format. “My earnings on Amazon affiliates have nearly doubled even with the recent Google algorithm update that hit my website hard,” van Rooijen said.

Two months after publishing the first articles in the new format, the following statistics improved:

• The number of clicks on affiliate links increased by 61%
• Affiliate earnings increased by 83%
• The revenue per visitor increased by 150% – from $20 to $50 per 1,000 visitors

The team has decided to continue with this strategy and focus more on product recommendations. Initially, there were worries that the articles would be seen as too commercial, but the readers were extremely positive.

The writers learned that their readers were not necessarily looking for information on how to choose a certain product. They wanted the writers to do the selection work for them and provide them with some great product recommendations.

Quick Case Study #3: How POS tech increased clicks-to-call by 2,626%

Founded in 2011, Epos Now serves customers at 64,000 locations worldwide and has a marketing team of 15 specialists, with all marketing and PR activities managed and delivered in-house.

BEFORE – Phone number in website navigation

The payment and point-of-sale (POS) technology provider had its phone number in the navigation of its website. For example, the below screenshot shows the UK version of the company’s website, with a British ‘0800’ number hyperlinked in the upper right.

Creative Sample #5: Layout with phone number in nav

There was also a ‘Get Offer’ button that led to a form. The overall rate of submitted forms from visitors was 1.88%.

“I noticed on heatmaps that many people focus on the navigation bar and upper menu. My research also concluded that people click more on a button rather than on a hyperlink or on a phone number from a desktop. It's like giving a bubblegum to a kid without teeth,” said Hana Banacka, CRO Manager, Epos Now.

That’s when the team identified the space within the upper menu as a potential point of interest to improve conversion rates whilst maintaining the current UX strategy.

 AFTER – Double CTAs in the upper menu

In March 2023, the team tested changing the appearance of the hyperlinked phone number in the upper right of the nav to a ‘Contact Sales’ button while keeping the ‘Get Offer’ CTA button the same.

Creative Sample #6: Layout with contact button in nav

The UX stayed the same – after clicking on ‘Contact Sales’ from both desktop and mobile it dials the phone number. The reason the user experience stayed the same – and team even sent desktop users to a phone dialer – was because of concern about what affect this change would have on inbound calls in addition to be able to attribute test results to a single factor.

“Removing the phone number from the navigation bar caused initial anxiety, [so] we first sought data to confirm the assumption that the nav bar was a potential conversion magnet. Only then did we proceed with changing the entire experience,” Banacka said.

“Highly visible changes, especially in critical placements, require careful consideration. Learning to make compromises, documenting each step, and making informed decisions are crucial. While replacing the entire experience might save time and yield similar results, testing multiple changes simultaneously—like altering design and UX on mobile and desktop—can lead to misattributions. For instance, what truly drove the higher conversion rate? The button change or the final experience?” she said.

RESULTS – More clicks-to-call plus more form submissions

After four days of the test being live, clicks-to-call radically increased. And having multiple calls to action did not reduce clicks on the other CTA button – ‘Get Offer.’ In fact, they increased as well (albeit at a lower level of confidence).

The team saw:

• Form submission success CR: 12.07% improvement compared to the previous layout, 76% probability to beat the baseline
• Clicks on the element CR: 2,626.39% improvement compared to the previous layout, 100% probability to beat the baseline. “In human language, it's two clicks vs 72 on the ‘Contact Sales’ CTA,” she said.

But I asked her if the test might have had a detrimental effect on inbound call volume. Without the phone number in the header, maybe people didn’t call as much?

“Inbound calls are probably the most important KPI we have as a business with the highest lead-to-customer rate, which obviously created some concerns for the business,” she told me. “Our inbound call average per day over the last 30 days since the test's been live saw an increase of over 75%. So the test hasn’t been detrimental to our inbound call volume.” Inbound calls primarily originated from other locations, like the contact page or a phone number in a pop-up form.

From this strategy experiment, the team saw that an eye-catching CTA in the sticky menu drove the attention to the desired action – calling the company – no matter which page a potential lead is on.

“We would like to implement the change in other locales. For desktop visitors, we replaced the destination URL from the phone number with the signup form. This change was made via VWO deployment,” Banacka said. While desktop users not get a contact form pop-up after clicking (where the phone number is also displayed), mobile users are able to dial immediately after clicking.

She also cautioned that this was the first round of testing for this strategy, and that the team planned more phases of testing during the implementation of this new strategy.

Related resources

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