Melbourne Business School's CRO trial

The challenge

Melbourne Business School (MBS) is Australia’s pre-eminent institution for postgraduate business education. Facing industry-wide shifts and evolving prospect expectations, MBS worked with Luminary to refresh site designs, conduct deep user research, and execute targeted conversion rate optimisation initiatives designed to increase prospective student engagement and enrolments.

Postgraduate business education represents a significant financial and personal investment for prospective students, often involving a multi-year consideration period. In recent years, macroeconomic pressures and shifting market dynamics contributed to declining MBA sales across the sector.

Despite maintaining its reputation as Australia’s top-ranked business school, Melbourne Business School experienced high visitor drop-offs across key landing pages on its website. Analysis revealed that existing enquiry forms were prohibitively lengthy, with roughly 85 percent of users abandoning the process before completion. Furthermore, the primary call to action across course pages was heavily focused on immediate course applications or generic brochure downloads. 

To address these hurdles, MBS engaged Luminary to deliver a strategic conversion rate optimisation program targeting an ambitious increase in Part-time MBA enrolments.

What we did

Prior to the conversion optimisation initiative, Luminary executed a comprehensive visual design refresh to align Melbourne Business School’s digital presence with its updated brand identity. The design refresh introduced a refined colour palette, updated typography, new iconography, and cleaner graphic elements throughout.

Beyond visual updates, the redesign focused on refining core user journeys and enhancing UI patterns to support goal-driven candidate behaviours on high-stakes course pages. Luminary introduced dynamic motion design and hero banner animations to elevate visual engagement to guide prospective students through decision milestones. Key conversion touchpoints were also reimagined, including a new ‘Our Alumni Community’ component to elevate peer testimonials and an upgraded site search featuring suggestive search, filtering, and popular query highlights.

Unlocking conversion through research-led UX

Luminary commenced the six-week conversion optimisation trial with an intensive goal-setting workshop and digital needs analysis. To understand the prospective student journey, the team conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with recently enrolled Part-time MBA students, evaluating their motivations, research habits, and decision triggers.

The research revealed critical insights into candidate behaviour. Prospective students placed immense value on peer validation, often researching alumni career trajectories on LinkedIn to benchmark their own potential progression. Additionally, candidates reinforced the value of interactive information sessions where they could evaluate campus culture and build professional networks.

Translating these insights into action, Luminary developed a 12-point strategic roadmap focused on the Part-time MBA page as a pilot environment. Alongside the broader design refresh rollout, the completely redesigned the enquiry journey, including:

• Redesigning the page header to highlight upcoming information session dates, course length and start times
• Streamlining the enquiry journey, replacing lengthy multi-field forms with a simplified brochure pop-up
• Introducing a custom component showcasing successful alumni with direct links to their LinkedIn profiles.

The outcome

This phase of the work for MBS put key user research insights into newly designed components, setting a solid foundation for executing a targeted, research-backed conversion rate optimisation trial.

The CRO trial on the Part-time MBA page produced transformative results, with click-through rates for information sessions increasing by 162 percent (from 0.8% to 2.1%), resulting in a 42 percent increase in session registrations (from 0.43% to 0.61%). The brochure form completion rate rose from 29% to 43% (a 48 percent increase), while the site saw a 123 percent increase in click-through rates on ‘How to apply’ calls to action (from 0.8% to 1.8%). 

These high-intent conversions were achieved despite broader market headwinds and reduced overall web traffic. Following the success of the pilot, MBS decided to expand these optimised components across the school's full portfolio of degree and short course pages.