Codecademy Intensives (2017)
Role: Product Marketing & Design
Codecademy had developed content for a new 8-week online intensive course but hadn’t established key components of the purchase funnel. I led design for a cohesive buying experience.
Research
Team: Design & Product
Through interviews and quantitative data, we compiled buyer profiles to highlight a typical buyer’s learning style, career goals, and demographic info. We iterated on these profiles through the first beta cohorts, then used them to guide product experience and messaging strategy.
Messaging
Team: Marketing
With the launch of its first Intensive (then called Codecademy Ready) program, the company needed to establish a narrative to communicate the value and outcome of the new experience. I wrote the initial UX writing guidelines.
Part of a “tonal spectrum” for UX writing.
Landing Page
Team: Marketing & Engineering
On our landing pages, we illustrated how the unique depth of the program, with a heightened feeling of accountability through one-on-one mentorship, brought career aspirations into arms reach for a fraction the investment of in-person bootcamps. To humanize product features, we told the stories of learners from beta cohorts, the mentors that helped them reach their goals, and the meticulous curriculum writers that made the program possible.
Using a platform called Unbounce to free up engineering time, I A/B tested landing pages. I tracked the results down the funnel using a platform called Looker and found that more clicks at the top of the funnel did not necessarily result in more enrollments. We had better end results when filtering for more qualified leads on landing pages.
Team: Marketing & Operations
The operations team and I created a template for course-related emails and managed sends in customer.io. We tested upsell emails with different segments of our user base for each stage of the purchase funnel.
Payments
Team: Engineering & Product
Codecademy’s payment system was set up for subscriptions and needed to be updated for one-time purchases. We explored edge cases and I provided designs for payment, cancellation, refund, and receipt experiences to the engineering team.
Results
The messaging strategy, emails, landing page, and payments experience were foundational for the launch and have been utilized for every subsequent program release. By the release of the third program, Intensives were generating over $165,000 per month in enrollments.