How Atria used Heap to gain better insights and improve their user experience

Atria Senior Living is a leading manager of communities in more than 370 United States and Canada locations. Atria’s brands include Coterie, Atria, Holiday by Atria, and Atria Retirement Canada. 

Like many organizations, Atria relied on Google Analytics to track user interactions on their websites. But over time, the team at Atria found they couldn’t get the level of insight they needed to improve their offering and brand. Instead, they needed a comprehensive platform to deliver deeper insights into user behavior to help enhance their user experiences.

We spoke with Amie Spellman, Director of Product Development, and Holly McClurkin, Marketing Business Analyst, to discuss why Atria Senior Living switched to Heap and how the organization has experienced vast improvements. 

With Heap, we don’t have to worry about going in and tagging those specific events and only having data from the moment we tag it. We have data going back six months now.

- Holly McClurkin, Marketing Business Analyst

The problem: Why did Atria switch to Heap?

Before switching to Heap, Atria Senior Living struggled to increase website conversions. They used Google Analytics to analyze what their users were doing, but couldn’t gain the granular insight they needed to understand their behavior.  

“We could see how many people were accessing each of our pages and how many people we were getting from our different paid media, but we couldn’t see how different visitors were converting, and creating events was a manual effort,” says Holly.

To increase conversions, Atria Senior Living needed to delve deeper into different user segments to analyze how users interacted with their website. But with Google Analytics, it was next to impossible. 

“So, one of the things that we were really looking for is something where we could see that drop off,” explains Holly. “We know that X percent of people are doing that, but what are the rest of the people doing?”

Atria switched to Heap for a more robust, modern analytics platform featuring automated data capture, in-depth insights, and user-friendly features.

How did Heap help?

Heap stood out to Atria because of the level of insights it could offer.

Once you have that first nugget of ROI from improving the consumer journey, and you can see benchmarks increasing ever-so-slightly, it’s easier to get additional resources from the executive team.

- Amie Spellman, Director of Product Development

For Atria, four key selling points enabled Atria to complete their goals and improve their conversion rate and customer experience.

1. Autocapture

One of the critical issues that Atria faced with GA was having to tag different events within Google Tag Manager manually. But with Heap, things were different.

“With Heap, we don't have to worry about going in and tagging those specific events and only having data from the moment we tag it. We have data going back six months now,” explains Holly.

“Also, with manually tagging the events, you have to go in and add different trigger and tag names. Whereas with Heap, you can use data governance to say how you want all of your different events to be defined.”

2. User segmentation 

Heap allowed Atria to delve deeper when analyzing user behavior, drop-off points, and conversion funnel progress.

“If we expect more people to be completing step two, we can see where they're dropping off between step one and step two,” explains Holly. “We can then see the events that they're taking instead.”

With Heap’s help, Atria could then identify more information about their users to understand why people were doing what they were doing.

“With Heap, we could identify different accounts,” explains Holly. “So whenever people submit a form, we can go back and compare those website journeys to those that didn’t. We could also  segment people based on other information within our CRM.”

With this information, the team at Atria could pull a list of unqualified leads versus qualified leads to examine the different paths they took. They could then optimize ways to meet their users' care needs better. 

3. User journeys 

Once Atria had more insight into the different types of users visiting their website, they could set up different user journeys. The team at Atria set up separate form submission funnels to track different users, such as users who land on community pages and express interest in pricing and floor plans. 

“One of the first things you see is the pricing and floor plans button,” explains Holly. “When you get to the pricing page, you can see floor plans, which many people are interested in. From there, you can go straight to the photo gallery. So we've set up different funnels to see if people follow that cadence.”

Atria could also see how users respond to buttons that lead them away from their website, like the Get Directions button, which redirects users to Google Maps. With Heap, Holly and her team could assess if users who leave the website entirely are less likely to return and complete a form submission than those who returned to continue the conversion process. 

They found that people who click Get Directions and leave the website are 15% more likely to convert.

4. Session replay

The final piece to the puzzle was Heap’s Session Replay. With this feature, Holly and her team at Atria could watch users’ movements to identify their pain points. This was particularly interesting in showing them that users were clicking on non-clickable elements on their market pages. 

“We noticed that a lot of people were clicking on the image, but the image wasn't going anywhere,” explains Holly. “So we made the image clickable to meet our users' expectations. After making those images clickable, we saw the conversion rate to community pages increase by 9%!”

What results did Atria see?

Switching to Heap provided Atria with real, tangible wins. Not only did they gain the ability to segment users based on various criteria, but by identifying drop-off points in user funnels, the team could optimize their websites’ conversion paths and increase overall conversions. 

“We saw our overall conversion rate on our Careers website increase from 14.5% to 14.9%,” says Holly. “If that wasn’t enough, we also saw 2.59% more people make it to a job posting from our branded websites.”

Heap's insights influence decisions across the organization, from digital marketing strategies to product development, resulting in improved website performance and higher lead conversion rates. 

Amie emphasized the impact, stating, "Once you have that first nugget of ROI from improving the consumer journey, and you can see benchmarks increasing ever-so-slightly, it’s easier to get additional resources from the executive team."

Conclusion

Heap was a game-changer for Atria Senior Living, empowering them with detailed insights and enabling data-driven decision-making. The switch to Heap addressed legacy analytics solutions' limitations and provided a comprehensive view of user behavior. With support from Ragnarok, a full-service marketing solutions consultancy, Atria could quickly access those insights while maintaining governance over their most critical data.

As a result, Atria has improved the user experiences on their websites and continues to use Heap as a vital tool to enhance their digital presence and drive business success. The success of Atria's implementation of Heap showcases the power of analytics in driving meaningful improvements in user experience and business outcomes.

Interested in watching the webinar? Check it out here!