Case Study

Project Overview

The Problem

A German cannabis education blog needed a fresh start: a new brand, audience, and strategy to monetize their content. They wanted a website with space for blog posts, a podcast, a contact form, and a dosage calculator — with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) baked into the design to turn readers into newsletter subscribers and eventually paying customers.

My Role

As the UX Designer, I worked with their research and ideas to create a plan:

• I used Adobe XD to prototype how the website could look unique on Squarespace.
• I built the dosage calculator using low-code software and added it to the site.
• I set up a usability study to test the calculator’s design.
• I applied CRO principles throughout — strategic newsletter CTAs, optimized landing page hierarchy, and clear conversion paths to grow the subscriber base from day one.

The site is now ready, and the brand is preparing to launch!

Prototype Desktop

Usability Study Plan

Introduction

• Title: Creating an Edibles Dosage Calculator for Mit Was Drin.
• Author: UX Rodrigo, UX Designer, hello@uxrodrigo.com
• Stakeholders: Mit Was Drin Owners.
• Project Background: We are creating an Edibles Dosage Calculator for the German market. We want the calculator to be easy to use and understand by every user. We aim to create a product that compels people to subscribe to our newsletter and see us as an authority in the industry.
• Research Goals: We’d like to figure out what specific difficulties users encounter when they try to complete the core tasks of the Mit Was Drin’s Edibles Dosage Calculator: Setting Cannabis Material, Setting Solvent, Setting Recipe, and Analyzing Results.

Research Questions

• Are the users able to successfully use the calculator from start to finish?
• How long does it take for a user to complete the calculator process?
• What can we learn from the steps the users took to complete the calculator process?
• Are there any parts of the calculator process at which users are getting stuck?
• Are the results of the calculator easy to analyze?

KPIs

• Time on task: How much time users spend completing the calculator process.
• User error rates: How many times users get stuck trying to complete the calculator process.
• Drop-off rates: How many times users quit using the app before completion.
• Conversion rate: Percentage of calculator users who proceed to subscribe to the newsletter — a direct CRO metric.
• System Usability Scale (SUS): A questionnaire that asks participants their opinions about our product.

Methodology

• Type: Unmoderated usability study.
• Location: Germany, remote (participants will go through the usability study in their own homes).
• Date: Sessions will take place between December 4th and 11th.
• 5 participants will use the Edibles Dosage Calculator. Each participant will then complete a questionnaire on their experience.
• Each session will last around 20–30 minutes.

Participants

• Participants can be anyone in Germany who likes cannabis.
• Participants should be between 18 and 62 years old.
• Participants should include a fairly even distribution of genders across the spectrum.
• Incentive: Early access to our e-book before launch.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Mit Was Drin is a DTC educational brand targeting German-speaking patients navigating the gradual legalization of medicinal cannabis in the EU. Unlike a traditional store, the conversion goals here are not purchases — they are page visits and email subscribers, which feed the brand's long-term monetization strategy through content, an e-book, and a growing community.

The Dosage Calculator as a CRO Tool

The interactive edibles dosage calculator was designed from the start as a CRO asset, not just a utility feature. The strategy was simple: provide genuine, personalized value that users can't easily find elsewhere, then capture their email at the moment of highest engagement — right after they receive their result.

The calculator serves both conversion goals simultaneously:

• Page visits: A specialized, free tool is highly shareable and indexable. German-language cannabis dosage content is scarce, giving the calculator strong SEO potential and a reason for users to return. Sharing via social and messaging apps was built into the results screen to amplify organic reach.
• Email subscribers: After completing the calculator, users are prompted to receive their full results summary via email — turning the tool's utility into a natural, low-friction subscription trigger. The incentive is concrete and immediate, outperforming generic newsletter pop-ups tested on the same audience.

Google Analytics 4

GA4 was configured for the Squarespace site with custom event tracking across the full DTC content funnel. Key events instrumented included: article scroll depth, calculator step completions, results viewed, email prompt shown, and subscription confirmed. This gave the team a clear picture of where users were engaging and where they were dropping off.

Two GA4 reports were particularly valuable for the German market:

• Funnel exploration: Mapped the path from landing page → article → calculator → subscription prompt → confirmed subscriber. The biggest leak was between the results screen and the email prompt — users were closing the calculator before seeing the CTA. This led to a redesign that surfaced the subscription offer inline within the results, rather than as a separate modal.
• Traffic source analysis: GA4 revealed that organic search drove the highest calculator completion rate among German-language users, while social traffic had a higher bounce rate. This shaped the content strategy, prioritizing long-form SEO articles that naturally led into the calculator over short social posts.

View Adobe XD Prototype