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Halda is making its way into the marketing technology world as a website tool that personalizes website action items to its users. A curiosity of lead conversion on university websites prompted co-founders Lance Hydrick, Dallin Palmer and Spencer Peterson to create a product that increases lead generation for universities.

If you’ve been on a university website you’ve surely seen buttons such as “Contact Us” or “Apply Now.” What do you contact them for? What questions do you have? What do you even apply for? None of these questions can be answered in two words. Halda piques interest with options like, “See if you qualify,” rather than the mundane options that tend to fall into the background. Halda is designed to draw users in, personalize their experience and increase leads for the organization utilizing its software. How is it done?

In an interview, I sat down with co-founder Lance Hydrick and he explained how the software works:

“There are different ways we display it, it’s not ‘just a pop-up.’ We have something that lives as an overlay on the website that is a quick assessment. Going back to the financial aid example, [the page] has a little blurb that says, ‘Interested in Scholarships?’ Well, yeah, I’m interested, so I’m going to click on that and an assessment will display. Now it’s going to ask anything that the school would need to be able to give a student a better idea of what scholarship they could qualify for.”

In 15 seconds, a user is more invested and is given personalized direction for what steps to take. Lance shared that his passion for the accessibility is founded on his personal experience as a first-generation college student. And while the vision came to life through its integration with higher education websites, Halda isn’t planning on stopping there.

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This software is something that just might revolutionize user experience on the web in a myriad markets. Of this Hydrick said, “It’s not just higher ed. It’s every website on planet Earth that has customers that go there.”

The Halda team is laying the foundation for expansion into other industry verticals by considering customer needs and what their journey may be like while navigating the web. Making it a personal experience is their goal: “We are trying to create human communication on a website that’s meaningful.”

While Halda is successfully growing, no success is immune to setbacks. Hydrick shared that during the beginning stages of crafting their software between 2017-2019, they found themselves prioritizing making technology fit problems instead of identifying and understanding a problem and using technology as a tool to solve it.

While looking the end in its eyes, they realized they needed to understand their market better. They reached out to the National Association of Graduate Admission Professionals (NAGAP) and offered to view their landing pages to determine why their lead conversion was low. It was during this time they found the bland calls to action — “Contact Us,” “Learn More” and “Apply Now.”

After three years of trial and error, a reevaluation of their strategy and many, many high fives shared over successes, 2020 came and the idea for personalized action items came with it.

Part of what fuels Halda’s fire is its location. Halda headquarters is located within the Startup Building in the heart of Provo. Hydrick expressed his excitement of being a part of a community of start-up companies all located within the Startup Building: “We have a lot of really fun companies that are trying to grow — all going through difficult things at times and you can lean on each other and cry on each other’s shoulders. The Startup Building is just a great environment.”

Not only did he rave about the Startup Building and the community there, but also about how nice it is being so close to BYU. Graduates have drive and want to build careers and do meaningful things — and start-ups like Halda are the perfect beginning!

Have questions, suggestions, or experiences you want to share with the founding team and the members of Halda? Email them at hey@heyhalda.com

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