Autodesk Improves Their Checkout Experience With A Digital Experience Optimization Audit™

The Overview

Autodesk is a global leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software. Known for flagship products like AutoCAD, Revit, and Fusion 360, the company facilitates innovation for professionals and students. Their tools drive industry advancements, and their software solutions are critical for product development, infrastructure projects, and digital content creation.

The Challenge

Autodesk approached us with the challenge of transitioning their website from an educational hub, where free student licenses had given them a strong market presence, into a more commerce-oriented platform.

With their growing focus on driving new sales through the website, they needed a fresh, external perspective to assess how to better serve potential paying users. Specifically, their cart had seen many iterations over the years yet still suffered from high abandonment rates.

The Process

With some key challenges in mind, Autodesk came to The Good for a Digital Experience Optimization Audit™. This full-funnel analysis of Autodesk’s on-site experience employed a range of research methods, including heuristic analysis, user testing, journey mapping, and data analysis.

We aligned with the Autodesk team on clear goals: to uncover improvements that increase sales, decrease cart abandonment, and better help customers find a product that meets their needs.

As a part of our process, we dove deep into their data. We uncovered they had two clear user paths that we categorized as high opportunity and high intent.

1. High Opportunity: New users via organic search show behaviors of an audience in the research phase. These are the people who have a low understanding of what product matches their needs and are spending more time on the site doing research.
2. High Intent: Returning users on desktop via paid search exhibit behaviors typical of high-intent browsing. They are looking to confirm what they know and find details, and they have a higher likelihood of converting.

Understanding these two key audiences set us up for successful user testing on the homepage, in search, on product pages, on the subscription page, in the cart, and at checkout. We knew how each audience was using each type of website content on their path to conversion and could ask better research questions to inform recommendations because of it.

In user testing, we found that Autodesk’s account creation and checkout processes didn’t instill confidence. The experiences were too complex and left users with more questions than answers.

Session recordings and heatmaps supported our user testing findings and offered direction on how to improve. Heatmaps indicated that unregistered users looking for guest checkout lacked direction. Adding to the confusion, the existing page prioritized a “sign-in” action and buried alternative paths forward (sign up, continue as a guest). Heatmaps showed users avoiding the signup area altogether and searching for alternative ways to continue.

The cart’s design created confusion, with primary calls to action misaligned with user expectations. For example, one CTA near the order summary broke with checkout conventions and read “Save,” which made the experience feel like an interest form rather than a checkout flow. The overall flow lacked clarity, making what should have been a quick process feel much longer and more complex than necessary.

After weeks of evaluation, our team delivered a 100+ page report highlighting key areas for improvement.

The Solution

Included in our report was a roadmap with testing opportunities by funnel stage and a collection of long-term initiatives for later phases of experimentation. While we cannot disclose all of our findings, here is a sample of the strategies we recommended for Autodesk:

• Giving greater prominence to log-in/account creation/guest checkout
• Surfacing benefits of purchasing a subscription
• Streamlining the checkout process to reduce abandonment
• Leveraging email collection for cart abandonment emails

We provided a strategic recommendation to address each challenge that surfaced during our audit research, always keeping their two audiences (high opportunity and high intent) in mind.

The Results

Following our recommendations, Autodesk tested and implemented several improvements.

• The cart’s layout was restructured to follow more conventional commerce design patterns.
• Visual distinction was given to secure payment options like PayPal, helping to build trust with users.
• They also revamped the calls to action, ensuring they were both descriptive and placed in intuitive spots.
• Auto-complete functions were added to form fields to simplify and speed up the checkout process.

By implementing the changes, Autodesk saw improved user engagement and increased conversions:

• Users progressed through the checkout process faster, with fewer drop-offs
• Confidence and trust in Autodesk’s experience increased, leading to a higher likelihood of conversion
• Subscriptions increased by 11% YoY

How They Got There

Autodesk leveraged The Good’s DXO Audit™ for actionable insights that improved their registration and checkout experience.

Our audit process, rooted in data-driven research and strategy, gave them the roadmap needed.

Are you interested in improving your own digital experience? Get in touch with us to start your own audit and unlock your website’s potential.