Incline Marketing provides digital marketing solutions for Cedars Housing, a student-housing apartment complex in Rexburg, Idaho near the BYU-Idaho campus.
Cedars Housing was facing a challenging environment when trying to target local university students. Previous digital marketing efforts provided average results, which were not enough to consistently fill the available rooms with tenants for upcoming semesters. Incline Marketing performed an audit of the existing site and concluded that the 3rd-party online application process which Cedars used was too lengthy and did not capture potential tenants information until near completion. Because of this bottle neck, Cedars was losing out on information for potential leads at an efficient rate. In addition, the website was bland, which did not match the look and feel of the actual apartments. This could have been effecting the bounce rate of students who were not in the immediate area to schedule a tour, or new students who were unfamiliar with available living options.
Incline Marketing conducted a full website redesign using a color scheme that matched the environment of the housing complex. Using fresh photography and iconography, the new Cedars website felt like a student housing complex a prospective freshman would want to live at. Using behavior flow tracking, Incline Marketing was able to address the application bottle neck issue by implementing a form fill-out instead of a button to get to the application. Much of the content on the site was rewritten to match the style of college students and communicate more effectively.
Based on Incline Marketing's approach, Cedars Housing experienced superior results. Conversion rate optimization changes lead to a 300%+ increase in leads received without an increase in traffic to the site. Bounce rate on direct traffic decreased 15.24% in one month post-redesign. Most importantly, Cedars is projecting to 100% fill both men's and women's complexes for the Fall 2019 semester.
Conclusion
The results speak for themselves: Incline Marketing's comprehensive website redesign and conversion rate optimization strategy led to remarkable growth. By addressing key issues like the lengthy application process and outdated design, Cedars Housing saw a 300% increase in student housing applications without the need for additional traffic. The improved user experience not only boosted lead generation but also reduced bounce rates. Thanks to this approach, Cedars Housing is now on track to fully occupy both men's and women's complexes for the upcoming semester, ensuring a successful leasing season.
