As a business that’s driven by lead generation, Everest aims to provide a best-in-class digital experience to align with its “fit the best” brand claim and create differentiation from direct competitors. With a focus on appointment form conversion rate, site speed and appointments booked, Everest needed to ensure its website was technically perfect in order to attract and serve potential customers.
Google provided Everest with a custom user experience and technical site speed audit that included recommendations for a user experience testing pipeline as well as suggested site performance optimisations. These included ways to reduce site load times and enhancements to forms, galleries and visuals.
As well as continuous improvement and testing, Everest’s digital strategy now includes a mobile-first development approach. “We’ve placed the impact on speed as a critical success measure in deciding if a development is delivered”, says Anthony Threlfall, Head of Digital Marketing. “If it’s going to slow the site we won’t let it go live.”
"The conversion rate has improved by over 40% since the new user experience optimisations were initiated"
– Anthony Threlfall, Head of Digital Marketing, Everest UK
Although it’s difficult to isolate the impact of sales promotions on performance, the conversion rate has improved by over 40% since the new user experience optimisations were initiated. “We’ve seen improvements across all metrics and know we are constantly improving site performance”, Anthony says.
The focus on page load times down has helped create a more user-friendly online environment. “It has also made us challenge every third-party tag we have and how we incorporate new functionality”. Thanks to new page load logic, the customer experience is notably better. For instance, pages now load from the top down rather than bottom up so consumers can start accessing relevant information with minimal delay.
Going forward, the Everest team plans to continue the partnership with Google to identify new site changes and maintain site quality. As part of this work, they’re working to rationalise all third-party products over to Google tools to remove unnecessary tags from the site and drive further speed improvements.
