Since February 2021, New Republique has partnered with the prestige brand Lexus Hong Kong, part of international independent automotive distributor Inchcape, to create a culture that is excited by fast data and experimentation. Our experimentation program is to create a streamlined user journey to position Lexus Hong Kong as an aspirational brand, increase interest in its range of vehicles, and improve engagement with the brand.
INFO
| Client: | Lexus |
| Category: | Automotive |
| Services: | CRO, UX, Personalisation |
The research
Our initial research suggested that Lexus Hong Kong’s homepage was underperforming. The data showed that there was a significant exit rate (more than 36%, representing 8K visitors per month) and a sizeable bounce rate (almost 27%, representing 3.4K visitors per month) from the home page.
According to Google Analytics, clickthroughs from calls to action were also very low. More than 57% of visitors did not visit a model page, a behaviour that usually indicates interest, nor did they show interest in purchasing a car, test driving a car or signing up for Lexus’ email newsletter. The figures were worse for mobile compared to desktop.
Buy now CTA: desktop 7.65%; mobile 0.12%
Test drive CTA: desktop 1.43%; mobile 0%
Subscribe CTA: desktop 0.78%; mobile 0%
In the automotive industry, cultivating warm leads in this manner are often precursors to a sale, so it is important that the first step of this process be as easy and seamless as possible.
Currently, there is little information about the car range made available on the Lexus homepage for visitors to proceed with an action that would indicate positive sentiment. The original home page presented like a ‘Rolodex’ flip card; during user research, we observed that 100% of users struggled with the scroll mechanic. We diagnosed that this style made it difficult for visitors to perceive and then proceed to further information on the brand’s car range, offers, awards and showroom locations although 100% of users wanted more information. This meant users missed out on signing up for email news and the different methods to learn more about Lexus Hong Kong and its cars, including getting in touch with a brand representative.
When instructed to find out more information, 66% of users we observed clicked through to the test drive form by mistake, indicating that the page was badly designed.
Once we understood that the home page was underperforming, our objective was to increase conversions from the home page to model pages and other sections of the website that would give visitors a better understanding of the brand to increase engagement.
The strategy
We began with the hypothesis: if we redesign the home page to better present Lexus and its model options, then traffic is more likely to flow deeper into the site because users have a better understanding of what Lexus Hong Kong has to offer them and want to find out more.
It is, therefore, necessary for the home page to adequately entice each visitor to discover more about Lexus models and available offers. In this experiment we redesigned the homepage to ensure a clear pathway to the following results:
- Sell the brand and inspire users through aspirational imagery.
- Promote the vehicle range with a curated selection of popular and award-winning models.
- Present model features and key selling points by showcasing vehicles and specific details, including enabling users to access all model pages without opening navigation.
- Prompt model selection by making it easy for visitors to identify the car that best suits them with needs-based labelling such as ‘Best for Business’, ‘Best for Family’, ‘Best for Outdoor’ and so on.
- Encourage user actions such as ‘build a car’ to encourage visitors to engage in the configuration process and increase their commitment to the brand.
- Showcase online exclusives to affirm their presence on the website.
- Inspire users to ‘book a test drive’ and ‘download a brochure’, which are key indicators that a customer is ready to buy, particularly if they are returning visitors.
Other avenues that we saw as valuable were to be mobile-first and to capture newsletter data that would give Lexus Hong Kong warm leads.
The results
The home page redesign resulted in a higher call to action engagement, an increase of 22%, largely from mobile users:
22.3
increase in CTA engagement
13.4
lift in model page views
By making call-to-actions clearer and more enticing on the Lexus Hong Kong home page, we were able to achieve a substantial lift in engagement because visitors have a better understanding of the Lexus car range.
