Overview
Client / Project: CU Denver Business School
Focus: Landing Page Redesign for CTR & Conversion Rate Recovery
Tools: Google Ads, GA4, Looker Studio, MS Clarity, Student Interviews
Challenge
The MS Cybersecurity landing page was underperforming across the metrics that matter. CTR remained strong, but conversion rate had dropped significantly. Google even began classifying the page as Low Ad Relevance, which tanked quality signals and raised cost per conversion.
GA4 and MS Clarity showed short session durations, low scroll depth, and minimal interaction with key content. The page simply wasn’t giving prospective students what they needed to confidently take the next step.
Solution
The ads were still pulling in interest, but the page wasn’t converting, and Google had started flagging it as low relevance. Instead of guessing, I went back to the behavior data. In GA4, Looker Studio, and MS Clarity, I followed the path students actually took through the full program site: which tabs they opened, where they lingered, and where frustration showed up as short sessions or rage clicks.
At the same time, I benchmarked against competing cybersecurity programs and asked current students what they had needed to see before feeling confident enough to apply. The same themes kept coming up: clarity on outcomes, curriculum, prerequisites, and flexibility. Using those patterns, I rebuilt the landing page to put the highest-value information at the top, tightened the copy, clarified the primary call to action, and aligned the content with the search intent behind our keywords. The goal wasn’t just a prettier page, but a page that actually answered the questions prospects were bringing with them.
Results
115%+
increase in conversions
≈100%
higher landing page conversion rate
60%
reduction in cost per lead
CTR was strong before the redesign, but the real transformation showed up where it mattered: conversions. After rebuilding the MS in Cybersecurity landing page around actual user intent, conversions jumped by more than 115%, the conversion rate nearly doubled, and cost per application dropped by over 60%. Even with fewer clicks overall, the campaign became dramatically more efficient, proving that the issue wasn’t traffic volume but the landing page’s ability to turn interest into action.
