Success Story

RMIT Online uses split URL testing to improve lead conversions on mobile

7.78% lead conversion

About RMIT Online

RMIT Online is a digital education platform backed by RMIT University, specializing in career-focused courses and degrees across business, design, and technology. Their programs are developed in collaboration with industry leaders and experts to deliver structured, flexible education that builds practical, work-ready skills.

Using innovative digital tools and interactive learning technologies, RMIT Online provides flexible education tailored to the evolving needs of the modern workforce. Their mission centers on building a thriving community of lifelong learners equipped for future career success.

Why VWO

We use VWO to launch split URL tests. It was a seamless experience to segment and target our audience with a quick turnaround of just 14 days. We use it to do A/B tests and direct web rollout as well, for when we find winning variants, and we are still focusing on other development projects. This allows us to be agile in testing our hypotheses and implementing better versions of the website. It’s been a great collaborative effort across the team.

Kevin Mugianto
Product Owner ‑ Website

Goals

The RMIT Online team observed a significant shift in their traffic patterns. Since 2022, mobile traffic has grown substantially from 30% to 65%, overtaking desktop and underscoring how central mobile has become to users’ course discovery and decision-making journeys.

In light of this shift, the team set out to strengthen the mobile experience by improving navigation so users could more easily discover courses and move seamlessly toward individual course pages and lead conversion.

The team identified an opportunity to redesign the mobile navigation to provide faster, more intuitive access to course categories.

Observations

Within this mobile-first reality, insights from earlier tests showed that when users were guided from the main navigation to focused, curated category pages, they were more likely to click through to individual course pages. By contrast, the broad catalogue page displayed too many courses at once, which tended to overwhelm users and dampen engagement.

It was against this backdrop that the team realized a practical navigation problem: mobile visitors could not reach these high-performing category pages quickly because the existing structure buried them inside the hamburger menu, forcing users to make multiple taps before arriving there.

Hypothesis

To reduce this friction, the team proposed redesigning the navigation menu to provide immediate access to course categories. Collaborating with VWO’s customer success team, they hypothesized that adding a prominent “Courses” dropdown in the header navigation with direct access to key course categories would reduce friction and improve category page engagement and lead conversions.

Tests run

The redesigned mobile experience was validated via a split URL test using VWO Testing.

The original design featured a hamburger menu with “Courses & degrees” nested among other navigation items. Users needed to tap the hamburger icon and then make an additional selection to access course categories, creating unnecessary friction in the navigation journey.

The new design was hosted on a separate URL with the following changes implemented:

A “Courses” dropdown menu was added directly to the main header navigation, making it immediately visible and accessible.
The dropdown displayed nine key course categories: All courses, Artificial Intelligence, Business & Finance, Data Science & Analytics, Design, Health, IT & Security, Marketing, and Software Development.
Categories were presented in a clean, scannable list format that allowed users to navigate directly to their area of interest with a single tap.

This is how the control and variation looked as the test was run:

Control

Variation

This was critical for mobile-first users, eliminating unnecessary steps and allowing users to reach high-converting category pages directly.

Results

Variation 1 was declared the winner with a 7.78% improvement in lead form submission rate in just 14 days.

The streamlined navigation also drove other significant engagement improvements:

35% increase in category page CTR sitewide, confirming users found the new navigation more accessible.
55% attribution to the Courses CTA dropdown in the variation, compared to only 40% in the control, making it the primary pathway to category pages.
10.02% increase in category page visits, demonstrating that the new navigation successfully drove more visitors to focused category pages.

Following the successful test, they used VWO Web Rollouts to immediately deploy the winning variation without waiting for development resources. This allowed the team to capture conversion gains instantly and maintain their testing momentum independently.

With VWO Web Rollouts, the team could push changes in real time, ensure they worked consistently across browsers and devices, and retain the ability to roll back in a single click if needed.

Conclusion

The RMIT Online team documented critical learnings from this test about mobile navigation optimization. The importance of shortening the path to category pages was validated, confirming that users who can quickly access targeted category pages are significantly more likely to convert than those who must browse through broader catalogue pages.

This insight reinforces the principle that in mobile experiences, every tap counts, and reducing navigation depth can have substantial impacts on conversion rates.

Request a demo or take an all-inclusive free trial with VWO to understand how you can easily run split URL tests and amplify the power of experimentation with integrated user behavior insights.