This project is our third with the Organization for Bat Conservation (OBC).  OBC has been a great organization for our students to work with:

•  OBC derives only 15% of its revenue from grants. The remaining 85% comes from program fees (40-45%) and the sale over the Web of unique bat conservation equipment OBC has developed (40-45%).
• In Fall 2008, students built out a $10,000 per month advertising spend largely focused on bat conservation equipment sales (specifically bat houses) and general information about bats.
• In Winter 2009, students worked with OBC to dramatically increase conversions of pay per click visitors seeking to purchase a bat house.
• The past year our students have worked with OBC has been its best revenue year to date.

This term, as described in the presentation linked at the top of this post, students worked with OBC to optimize the experience of visitors seeking general information about bats. As with Dance Marathon at University of Michigan, this work consisted of:

• Analyzing visitors' intent based on search terms they used and ads they responded to.
• Determining with OBC what the organization's end goals for this visitor segment were. OBC determined that they wanted visitors to engage with the "Bat Zone", an area that contains much information about bats as well as opportunities to participate in OBC's programs.
  
• Developing alternative landing pages designed to maximize the likelihood that visitors would visit the Bat Zone.
• The best student-developed alternative landing page increased the likelihood that a pay per click visitor would proceed to the Bat Zone from just under 10% to over 50%, an increase of over 400%.

Our students will continue to work with OBC in Winter 2010 to further investigate ways the organization can increase pay per click visitor engagement with its offerings.

The student team for Fall 2009 consisted of:

• Akshat Akshat
• Meghan Shipley
• Sean Gray