National Fostering Group, the UK’s largest independent fostering agency, had seen success via an aggressive performance marketing strategy, bringing in a large volume of lead generation through paid advertising channels. With this success came a new question: how now to best mine the quality from this volume, as what is quality without quantity? For this, it required an element of going back to basics. What were the key qualities we were looking for in a potential foster carer, and what were they looking to demonstrate? Most importantly, could we use those answers for pre-qualification?
National Fostering Group
How pre-qualification ‘Can I Foster?’ tool revolutionised lead quality and engagement
- Design
- UX
- CRO
The Challenge
The Approach
Throughout our six-year relationship with National Fostering group, Door4 has always worked to enhance both the experience of the website user with the operational needs of the group as a business. This is put into practice through our holistic multi-channel approach, underpinned by an ethos of test and learn. This is never more appropriate than through our Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) program. With the above challenge in mind, we elected to introduce a pre-qualification journey into the website, as an alternative to the main enquiry form. Yet, rather than simply introducing this into the website cold, this tool was introduced via a test methodology, which we’ve been iterating and improving consistently in the years since its introduction.
The Execution
The Success Criteria
“Can I Foster?” remains a persistent reminder of how important constant website evolution and iteration remains for any client. The market, and our target market within it, is constantly changing, and continued CRO testing allows us to remain attuned to their requirements. Originally introduced as a fallback option, the pre-qualification form now serves as the main enquiry point on the website, speaking to a changing audience which now finds softer validation a key step on their user journey. If we had simply launched the tool or the website, and left it at that, we’d never even be aware of this changing mindset. As user intent has changed over the years, “Can I Foster?” has become more relevant than ever to our users.
Beyond the obvious user experience enhancements, the tool has also transformed the amount of data available to the internal marketing team, allowing them to better manage leads in addition to the increased quality that prequalification brings. Increasing enquiry volume and quality through better UX, while providing a greater level of information for the internal client team, has been a driving force for unlocking efficiencies across the board.
The Conclusion
A website can never truly be considered complete. There are always areas to improve, to iterate, and to improve upon. Conversion Rate Optimisation, particularly when underpinning a strong multi-service approach, provides an ongoing evaluation of the strategies being employed, a website’s real estate in the mind of a user, and surfaces ideas that can potentially be transformative.
“Can I Foster?” began life as a backup option on an intent-led website yet, through years of optimisation through a changing landscape in the market, has grown to be the main focal enquiry point and overhauled how leads are viewed with the business.