Dharma Merchant Services

Dharma has been working with Mightybytes in various capacities for nearly 10 years – first, for a complete web redesign, then for hosting, then for monthly maintenance as well as for search engine optimization. We have such trust in their team and in their guidance that it has been a great comfort to work with them. And – we were able to consolidate four vendors into one – how’s that for efficiency? We highly recommend!
Jeff Marcous | Chief Evolutionary Officer | Dharma Merchant Services

Supporting our fellow B Corps in building a more inclusive and regenerative economy that works for everyone is critical to Mightybytes’ mission. Here’s how we’re helping a fellow B Corp increase qualified leads, improve their website, and drive year-over-year sales so they—and their stakeholders—can thrive.

Dharma Merchant Services is a Certified B Corporation, committed to the practices of compassion, sustainability, and transparency in credit card processing. The company’s content-heavy website wasn’t effectively communicating these practices nor did it serve as an effective or impactful sales tool.

In 2013, Dharma contracted Mightybytes for a complete website redesign. We have helped them improve its role as a valuable business tool ever since.

dharma_solution — *New page designs and an improved user experience tell Dharma’s story in a visually compelling manner.*

A Website Redesign

For the redesign, we focused on telling a visual story about Dharma’s unique values in the marketplace rather than relying solely on written content. In early discovery workshops, we learned that most new customers apply online, so we spent a lot of time designing and testing user-friendly signup pages that were optimized to convert visitors to customers.

dharma_approach — Almost every high-fidelity wireframe starts as a sketch.

To ease the difficulty of editing content while simultaneously migrating it to a new design, we wrote optimized copy and created design elements for ten of Dharma’s most important site pages. These served as templates for the Dharma team to use when migrating content. During this process, we worked with them to pare down content, select new images, and write important button and form copy that would increase conversion rates.

Mapping and Improving the Application Process

User testing and post-launch site data led us to facilitate several conversion rate optimization workshops with the Dharma team. In these workshops, we more clearly identified barriers to completing the sales process.

We mapped out application process improvements that would more effectively filter out unqualified applicants while quickly gathering important upfront information from qualified leads. We improved tracking on these forms to better understand where users abandoned them.

Over time, this data helped us further improve the application process user experience, which generated significant results (see below).

Dharma CRO Remote Workshop — *Facilitating a remote conversion rate optimization (CRO) workshop with the Dharma team.*

Continuous Improvement

Since the website launch in 2015, we have worked with Dharma’s team to improve their website’s role as a valuable lead generation tool critical for company success. This includes:

A WordPress upgrade that includes the Gutenberg block editor
Auditing, configuring, and customizing Google Analytics, Tag Manager, and Search Console to track relevant conversions and drive performance improvement over time
Integrating website forms with Salesforce for better business intelligence
Better form tracking to identify drop-offs and make them easier to complete
Ongoing keyword research and search engine optimization for priority landing pages
Redesigning landing pages to improve conversions and make calls-to-action more clear
Ongoing A/B testing to learn which page content drives more conversions
Monthly reporting with recommendations to improve performance over time

Dharma statistical improvement graphic — *Significant conversion rate improvements: a 680% increase in lead referrals and 89% form increase.*

Results

Shortly after launching the new site, Dharma saw a 131% improvement in traffic coming from organic search and increased conversions from referral traffic. Since then, we have worked with their team to incorporate data-informed decision-making into monthly digital marketing efforts. These efforts have helped Dharma consistently meet, and often exceed, their monthly sales targets.

According to COO Nick Bencivenga:

We’re seeing far higher conversions on our main forms, up to 4x previous rates and we’re able to much more cleanly track the path of any given user/lead. This gives us more insight into what channels perform best, and what response methods/timeframes are most successful.

SEO Improvements

The SEO efforts alone have generated significant improvements with several landing pages featured on page one of search engine results for key terms. Some of these pages have seen as much as a 30% increase in organic traffic.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Optimizing and redesigning the website’s forms and landing pages based on existing user data helped improve form completions by 135% over a single quarter. Goal conversion rates improved 89% during this same time period. Through a coordinated push with one of their referral partners, Dharma was able to increase qualified sales leads by 680% as well.

Because of these ongoing efforts, Dharma’s website continues to generate hundreds of customer leads every month. We are excited to help this fellow B Corp, committed to using business as a force for good in the world, find such great success.