Building a Digital Ecosystem for Ascensia Contour in Russia
Convert the demand a media campaign generates into purchases on the brand's own channels.
22.1% bounce rate by 2024
20,000+ community members across three platforms
Background
The Ascensia Contour campaign in Russia ran on two tracks after RMAA Agency won the client's pitch. A separate case study covers the media plan that built demand for the blood glucose meter brand, and this one covers the owned channels that had to receive it.
Contour's standing in the market rested on pharmacy distribution rather than on anything the company owned online. The brand was spread across three separate Russian websites. One held a workable search base with 722 queries in the top fifty, while the product landing page reached only 89 of them and drew about five visitors a day. The companion app already passed readings into EMIAS, the medical information system behind Moscow public healthcare, yet it had never been promoted. The websites could point a visitor toward pharmacies that stocked the device, but none of them could take a reservation.
Goal
We agreed on a set of objectives at the outset, and each one pointed to a concrete piece of the work that followed.
- Rebuild the website around mobile use and stop losing traffic the campaign had paid to attract.
- Turn that site into a point of sale by embedding live pharmacy stock and a booking function into the product pages, keeping demand instead of releasing it back into search.
- Build demand that survives between flights through SEO and an editorial programme aimed at organic search.
- Produce a video library that lets every channel demonstrate the product rather than describe it.
- Build owned social communities on the platforms where Russian patients gather, since a meter buyer returns for test strips year after year.
- Rebuild the app's store listings through ASO to convert store visits into installs.
Solution
Web Ecosystem and UX Redesign
Before launching any paid media, RMAA Agency turned the official Contour website from an information page into a working sales tool. Analytics showed that more than 84% of visitors arrived on a phone, so we started with the mobile layout, reorganizing navigation, headers, and product copy around the information patients actually look for.
The desktop platform went through the same rebuild. Its previous version buried key marketing assets, scattered the menu across too many entry points, and made even customer support numbers hard to find. We restructured the interface around drop-down catalogs, added 3D product renders that put each device's core advantages front and center, and removed the text-heavy subscription forms. For the purchase step, we replaced a cluttered grid of pharmacy logos with geo-targeted sorting in the dedicated "Where to Buy" sections, so every visitor sees their nearest pharmacies first. We also implemented a Telegram-based support chat.
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The path to purchase had to be as short as the search itself. We embedded the Uteka native booking widget directly into product pages, so a visitor viewing the Contour Plus One sees local prices and current stock at nearby pharmacies on the same screen. A reservation takes one click, and the device is ready for pickup at a pharmacy within walking distance, turning the corporate site into a genuine booking surface rather than a brochure.
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Organic Search
Organic traffic builds long-term loyalty in healthcare because patients return to the same source whenever a new question comes up. RMAA Agency rebuilt the site map, and our editors then produced 30+ articles aligned with a fresh semantic core. Instead of corporate text, the pages answered questions that patients actually type into search, including everyday glucose-tracking rules and meal-planning routines for people with diabetes.
Video Library
Someone learning to operate a meter or moving across from a competing device needs to see the steps rather than read them. We produced a library of 29 films. Four full product videos covered the Contour, Contour Plus, Contour Plus One and Contour TS meters, and 14 shorter cuts taken from them each explained a single feature, from the smart light indicator to the second chance sampling technology. Six tutorials walked through the Contour Diabetes app, and five exercise films covered routines suitable for people managing diabetes. A single voice-over runs through all of them, so the brand sounds the same wherever a viewer meets it.
Social Communities
Trust matters more than reach inside a health community, because people arrive there to compare experiences with others facing the same condition. We launched and managed the Contour pages on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Telegram with a mix of practical guidance on using the meter, diet and lifestyle material, and polls that invited members to compare their own routines.
The audience settled the editorial direction. Recipes and explanatory posts outperformed everything else, and one post on a portion-control method reached more than 178,000 people. Engagement rose roughly fivefold between the spring and summer of 2023 on a comparable posting schedule, and the age and sex profile of the VKontakte page matched the known distribution of diabetes in Russia, which meant the content was reaching patients rather than a general audience.
App Store Optimization
The store listings decide whether a person who reaches them installs the app or leaves. We built a semantic core for the stores, developed optimization recommendations, rewrote the descriptions, and replaced the visual assets with images that foreground features such as automatic blood sugar logging. Those changes lifted the view-to-install conversion rate on both the App Store and Google Play.
Results
By the end of the engagement, the brand's own channels worked as one system rather than a set of separate pages.
- Traffic absorbed: 600K+ visits from paid channels between June 2023 and March 2024, with under 23% of sessions ending within 15 seconds.
- A purchase path: the embedded booking tool lets a visitor reserve a device at a nearby pharmacy straight from the product page.
- Communities: 20,000+ members across VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Telegram, built from a standing start.
- Search presence: a rebuilt semantic core, a restructured site and a continuous editorial programme that keeps organic traffic arriving between flights.
