Why 94% of Our Leads Were Wrong

About Hand Talk

Hand Talk is an award-winning accessibility platform that uses AI to translate digital content into sign language through virtual avatars. Hand Talk was acquired by Sorenson (opens in a new tab), a global language services provider and the leader in communication solutions for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.

Problem

The Sales team raised a red flag:

"We're getting many leads, but most are low quality or completely off-target. Could bots be attacking the form?"

• Lead volume spiked, and 94% were disqualified after review.
• Sales were overwhelmed, spending hours trying to qualify users who were either consumers or didn't respond.

Analysis

The plugin had two redirect paths to the landing page, and Google Analytics tracked every redirection event.

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Redirection volume

Of the total redirects to the landing page in November:

• 96% came via the loading screen
• 4% came via the About section
• All traffic appeared legitimate: real users, not bots

Top 5 referring URLs

Behavior patterns

Traffic peaked every Thursday: November 3, 10, 17 and 24. These were the live voting days for the reality show, heavily trafficked by deaf users using the plugin to translate the voting instructions.

Users weren't spamming. They were just confused.

Why this happened

Most of these users were deaf and interacting with the plugin as a translator, not as potential clients. The confusion came from:

• The "Made by Hand Talk" label appearing during plugin load
• The slow load time, which made users think they needed to "continue"
• The lack of context, leading to misdirected clicks

Redirects vs. leads

We plotted leads against plugin redirection activity, and found that:

• Disqualified leads peaked on the exact same days as the traffic from website 2
• The surge came from accidental engagement, not from legitimate interest

Solution

Different ways, different reasons

Results

• 94% → 0%

  Disqualified leads from the loading screen

• −84pp

  Drop in the overall disqualified lead rate

• 100%

  Of valid plugin leads now come from the About section

The loading screen now directs to the home page, so valid plugin-based leads come only from the About section, and the sales team got their time back without the plugin losing any accessibility function.

Lessons learned

I understood how deeply external factors on a B2B project, like a TV show's voting schedule, can influence internal product metrics, and even reroute a team's work. The insight didn't come from screen analysis; it came from behavioural pattern detection and environmental awareness.

Not all traffic is good traffic. Context and intent matter.