Empowering India's entrepreneurs; one conversion at a time

Project Overview

Deasra is a Pune-based digital platform, backed by Persistent Systems, that helps startups, solopreneurs, and micro-enterprises with everything they need to start, run, and grow a business. From business registration to compliance, marketing guidance to financial planning, Deasra serves as a one-stop resource for India’s MSME ecosystem.

upGrowth manages Deasra’s end-to-end strategy and execution, including website management, organic growth, and ongoing conversion rate optimization. Unlike typical B2C e-commerce CRO, Deasra’s challenge is uniquely B2B: converting a diverse, often non-digitally-native audience of first-time entrepreneurs into qualified leads and platform users.

Challenges

Deasra’s target users, solopreneurs, micro-business owners, and first-time founders, often had limited experience navigating digital platforms. Standard web UX patterns didn’t resonate with this audience. With 50+ services spanning legal, financial, marketing, and operational categories, users struggled to find the right service for their specific needs.

The primary conversion event saw significant abandonment: users landed on service pages but did not complete inquiry forms, indicating trust gaps and form friction. Educational content wasn’t converting readers into leads. Lead form conversion rate sat at 1.6%, service page bounce rate reached 68%, and form abandonment rate hit 72%.

Converting India's entrepreneurs through trust-first CRO

The Idea

Understanding Deasra’s audience required a fundamentally different approach than a D2C brand. The users aren’t impulse buyers; they’re entrepreneurs making considered decisions about business services. Research included user behavior analysis using heatmaps and session recordings to understand how MSME owners navigate the platform.

Form analytics identified specific fields and steps in the lead-capture flow that led to drop-offs. Content engagement mapping revealed which educational content pages had the highest exit rates versus which ones successfully led users to inquiry forms. The objective became clear: transform Deasra’s website from an information repository into a conversion-optimized platform that guides India’s entrepreneurs from awareness to inquiry.

Result

The trust-first CRO strategy transformed how Deasra engaged its audience. Lead form conversion rate improved from 1.6% to 4.3%, a 169% increase. Service page bounce rate dropped from 68% to 49%, a 19-point reduction. Content-to-lead conversion jumped from 0.9% to 2.8%, a 211% lift.

Average time to first inquiry decreased from 4.8 days to 2.1 days, a 56% improvement. These changes positioned Deasra with consistent conversion rates in the 3–5% range, strong for a B2B platform serving a diverse, often first-time-digital audience. The ongoing CRO practice continues to test and refine the experience, treating optimization as a continuous discipline.

Sneak peak of the solutions

Guided service discovery

The solution replaced flat service listings with an interactive decision tree module built using custom logic inside Webflow, integrated with VWO testing. Users answered 3 simple questions about business stage, need type, and urgency, then were redirected to a pre-filtered service page. This resulted in a 27% increase in service page engagement and a 22% increase in lead submissions from guided flow traffic.

 

Progressive lead capture

The initial form’s fields were reduced from 11 to 4 essential fields. Additional qualification questions were captured via follow-up call and CRM automation. Revenue declaration was removed as a mandatory field. Form conversion rate improved from 1.6% to 4.3%. Form abandonment reduced from 72% to 46%. Mobile form completion improved by 118%.

 

Trust-first content optimization

Contextual CTAs were inserted within high-traffic blogs such as “How to Register a Private Limited Company in India” and “GST Registration Guide for Small Businesses.” Inline testimonials and partner logos were added near CTAs, and FAQ accordions addressed compliance fears. Content-to-lead conversion improved from 0.9% to 2.8%. Average session duration increased by 38%. Bounce rate on the top 10 service pages reduced from 68% to 49%.

 

Vernacular and accessibility improvements

Language was simplified across service pages, replacing legal jargon with plain Hindi-English phrasing. Mobile page speed improved from 4.9 seconds to 2.7 seconds. Layouts were optimized for entry-level Android devices. Mobile conversion rate improved from 1.3% to 3.6%. Overall blended conversion stabilized between 3% and 5%.