The Client
Arxan Technologies is an American technology company specializing in application attack prevention and self-protection solution for IoT, Mobile, and other applications.
The Situation
Arxan needed to rebuilt the credibility and usability of the corporate website to improve lead quality, to increase rate of lead capture and to drive web-sourced pipeline.
The Challenge
From a strategic perspective – informed by digital user behavior, as well market research, competitive analysis, and customer interviews – the company needed to reposition from targeting developers and security practitioners with a fear-based (“dark and hacky”) brand and message to an aspirational, enterprise-grade application security partner targeting executive-level sponsors and decision makers.
The digital challenge was to update the look and feel of the website (and ultimately the company brand) in order to gain credibility with a new, higher-level audience. The “dark and hacky” website experience drove very few, poor quality leads, and there had been no web-sourced deals in the 12 months prior to project kickoff.
Additionally, the website had a poor user experience. The website was confusing to navigate, difficult for information discovery and poorly captured leads. The prior web development team released an unstable and buggy website using Wordpress, hosted by GoDaddy. The website loaded slowly and lead capture frequently broke resulting in a frustrating user experience and lost opportunity for the company.
Finally, and importantly, the security of the old website did not meet the requirements of a cybersecurity company. This was critical from a risk perspective of being hacked and defaced and damaging to the marketing message that the employees of Arxan are cybersecurity experts.
The Solution
With so many challenges to tackle at once, the best approach was to invest upfront in a complete overhaul and relaunch the website with a new brand, new design, new CMS and hew hosting.
Arxan’s agency partner, East Coast Catalyst (ECC), recommended migrating to Acquia for enterprise-grade hosting and security capabilities, 24/7 monitoring and customer support. ECC also recommended building the website with Drupal 8 to leverage ECC’s proprietary Flexible Component System, which enables marketers to quickly update existing web pages and publish new ones that are on-brand and high-performance without requiring additional development and design investment.
Acquia Cloud’s enterprise-grade security capabilities, with 24/7 monitoring and documented incident communications and response protocols to meet the requirements of a cybersecurity company. The Acquia Ready team’s support and partnership also contributed to a successful project launch.
The Results
The impact on return on investment was threefold: increased quality and quantity of leads and pipeline, revenue contribution that has more than covered the cost of the project, and ongoing “faster-time-launch” for the marketing team.
Three months post-launch, Arxan saw a significant improvement in the quantity of leads, doubling the website conversion rate, and in the quality of leads, including representatives from some of the largest companies in their industries. This resulted in more than doubling the pipeline sourced from the website and a 50 percent increase in average web-sourced deal size
Only four months after launch, a web-sourced deal closed with a contract value that covered the cost of the overhaul and website maintenance for the year. Multiple web-sourced deals have closed, up from none the year prior.
Using the custom-built Flex Component System, the marketing team can launch campaigns and publish new content faster, without the time delays and additional investment.
A testament to the partnership with the Acquia Ready team, and thoroughness of the developers at Radiant Llama and AG Prime, there were no follow up items after Acquia conducted the pre-launch audit. This preparedness kept the relaunch on budget and on schedule and meant critical security requirements were implemented in time for launch. The website launched with all the key security requirements, passing a penetration test conducted by Arxan’s chief scientist and vice president of research.