Search-Driven Web Experience for the National Business Institute

The National Business Institute is a professional association providing continuing legal education (CLE) for attorneys and paralegals for over 35 years and delivering over 18,000 in-person and on-demand resources.

The Challenge

While NBI’s live seminars and OnDemand resources lead the industry, their website and subscriber experience were trailing behind. NBI partnered with Sandstorm—to create a personalized, user-centric (and most importantly, revenue-driving) experience for existing subscribers, transactional customers, and prospects.

The Solution

Sandstorm began with user research that identified the motivations and expectations of each type of customer. Then, we crafted a myriad of user flows based on user groups, extensive site map, navigation, wireframes and creative to align each step in the purchase process with those expectations.

By conducting usability testing, we uncovered user needs, expectations, and insights, including:

• The use of key statistical information vs. the use of customer testimonials on the homepage was much more impactful to key audiences.
• Including specialty credit details in the search results, since this is a key identifier in the selection of a course and purchase process for users.
• Users wanted stronger use of colors throughout the experience, but still honoring the blue that NBI was well-known for.

Because findability and conversion were primary goals, we needed to determine how to best integrate a robust search throughout the experience. The final site includes multiple layers of search exposed within the experience to ensure users can quickly and easily find desired courses and find them in the format they wish to consume them.

Personalization was also key. Sandstorm worked closely with NBI’s development team to build in targeted courses based on a users’ geolocation and schedule (recommended courses, happening soon, and best sellers).

As NBI was shifting its business model to more emphasis on a subscription model vs. one-off courses, the conversion path to becoming a subscriber needed to be clear and slightly varied experience from an individual visiting the site for the first time.

And, knowing the mobile experience was critical to these users, we crafted and deployed a fully responsive designed experience, including personalization based on returning users vs. new users to the site.

Finally, we extended the user experience and creative via front-end development and collaborated closely with NBI’s in-house development team to ensure the experience seamlessly integrated with NBI’s back-end CMS, technology and complex e-commerce systems.

The Results

The Hermes Creative Awards honored the National Business Institute and Sandstorm with a Gold award for the agency’s redesign of the NBI website.

The 2019 award winners were announced by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP), which administers the annual Hermes Creative Awards international competition.

In addition, the website has experienced significant improvement, including:

• Organic SEO positioning has increased by 20%
• Conversion rates are up 12% year over year
• Experienced higher search and filtering traffic that converts at a much higher rate than the prior site experience
• Received extremely positive feedback from its subscription-based customers via the streamlined and much-improved checkout flow

“Thank you for your help. The site looks great and we couldn’t be happier with what you did for us.”

Jim Embke - Managing Director, National Business Institute