Why Box Hill Institute turned to games to boost conversion

Box Hill Institute, in downtown Melbourne, relaunched its website, but after an initial surge in interest soon found conversion wasn’t what it had expected. And with the global pandemic seeing people rely on websites more than ever for researching and choosing between educational providers, a call was made to deploy some additional tools.

Box Hill Institute executive manager of marketing, Anika Hewett, told CMO the vocational educatino provider tapped Convincely to build an array of gaming features onto the site to build engagement and conversion. It launched its new gamified website experience, all while under stage four restrictions, and saw an immediate spike in conversions within the first weeks.

Hewett said the pandemic has had a considerable impact on the institute’s digital presence. “We’ve seen consideration for education increase during COVID and this is reflected in our website traffic,” she noted.

Hewett said the decision to tap Convincely of boosting conversion was an extension of its work designing its tailored, personalised onsite experience for its audience. To date, this has increased onsite conversion by 80 per cent. 

“The Convincely solution also integrates seamlessly with our CRM and we went live within six weeks of project launch. We consider ourselves at the cutting edge when it comes to digital marketing initiatives within the education sector, working with Convincely has definitely assisted us to maintain this lead,” she said.

With sales moving away from the storefront and into the online space, local startup Convincely has been working with businesses in some of the hardest-hit sectors, including education, health and retail, to convert browsing to sales using a software platform, created with the help of gamers, to boost personalisation and add challenges, rewards and positive feedback across sites to feed into engagement, conversion and sales. 

Hewett said Box Hill Institute's overarching marketing strategy is to achieve long-term customer growth and build its reputation. And that’s where this website and tools like this come into play.

“A critical element of our marketing strategy is delivering a personalised experience for our audience through the use of digital technologies. The solution we have implemented with Convincely has aligned particularly well with this strategy,” she said.

As for next steps, this will see the organisation deploying the gaming solution across all course pages and eventually across its entire website. “It’s continuing to optimise and personalise the entire experience,” Hewett added.

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