Background & Context

Schoters is a platform aimed at helping students and professionals navigate scholarship opportunities worldwide. As part of their growth strategy, Schoters invests heavily in lead generation through paid ads, driving users from various platforms into their funnel. Currently, their lead generation funnel follows this process:

$$ Ads → Mini Landing Page → Form → WhatsApp (Human Agent) $$

Problem Statement

Schoters faces several challenges in converting leads from their ads funnel into meaningful conversations with prospects. The existing funnel involves multiple steps, which may be causing drop-offs or leading to low-quality leads. Additionally, the use of human agents on WhatsApp might be influencing the conversion rates, as manual communication can be slow or inconsistent.

The challenges included:

Step Drop-offs: The multi-step funnel may be too long, leading to high attrition before the user reaches WhatsApp.
Lead Quality: Shortening the funnel might increase conversions but decrease lead quality.
Human Agent Bottleneck: Human agents may not be the best medium for immediate and scalable engagement, and this could be causing leads to disengage.

Hypothesis

Too Many Steps in the Funnel: The existing process involves too many touchpoints (Ads → Mini Landing Page → Form → WhatsApp), leading to significant drop-off before users reach WhatsApp.
Lead Quality Concerns: Shortening the funnel (Ads → JotForm → WhatsApp) might result in higher conversions but lower lead quality.
Human Agents as a Limiting Factor: Human agents on WhatsApp are a bottleneck, as slow or inconsistent responses may deter users from proceeding, leading to lower conversion rates.

Market Analysis

Company	Ad Strategy	Lead Harvesting Technique	Funnel Optimization
Ruangguru	Targeted Facebook Ads	Web-based lead forms	Multi-step onboarding
Zenius	Google Ads with Dynamic Retargeting	WhatsApp Support and Web Chat	Simplified onboarding with push notifications
Khan Academy	Organic SEO + Paid Search	AI Chatbot for FAQ assistance	One-step registration process

Multivariate Experiment Design

To test these hypotheses, four different funnel variants will be created and compared.

Variant	Funnel Flow	Whatsapp Interaction	Hypothesis
A	Ads → LP → JotForm → WhatsApp Human	WhatsApp message initiated by a human agent.	This keeps the funnel intact with a human touchpoint, testing for leads who prefer a personal connection.
B	Ads → LP → JotForm → WhatsApp Chatbot AI	WhatsApp message initiated by an AI chatbot.	Automating the chat interaction via AI might streamline responses and increase conversions.
C	Ads → JotForm → WhatsApp Human	Users skip the LP and go straight to a JotForm, followed by WhatsApp interaction with a human agent.	Reducing the number of steps before reaching WhatsApp might lower drop-off rates, while the human agent ensures quality interaction.
D	Ads → JotForm → WhatsApp Chatbot AI	Users skip the LP and go straight to JotForm, followed by WhatsApp interaction with a chatbot.	Simplifying the funnel and using an AI chatbot may reduce friction and optimize for quick, automated follow-ups.

Result

After running the pilot for two weeks, Schoters gathered sufficient data from the four funnel variants. The goal was to determine which variant optimized lead conversion from ads to WhatsApp while balancing lead quality and overall engagement.