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Services: SEO, CRO, Programmatic SEO
How We Helped a Bootstrapped Flashcard App Build a Web Engine That Drove 20% of $4M ARR Before an Exit
Noji APP CASE STUDY
by Dennis Lazard · May 18, 2026
$4M ARR
Acquired by DelightRoom
3.7X
Organic Traffic
17X
Organic signup growth
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About The Brand
Noji is a mobile app for flashcards, built to help students and teachers prepare for exams and learn new languages through fast, focused study sessions. Bootstrapped from day one and launched in December 2020, the app collected 2.5M+ downloads with an average 4.8+ rating, with users praising its simplicity, speed and the way it makes new material stick.
What brought Noji to ESA Digital was a clear signal from their 8.6K+ community: users were asking for a web version of the platform so they could train from PCs and iPads alongside their phones. The team had already built a landing page and a cut-down web version with a hybrid experience, but the site wasn't structured for organic search and wasn't converting traffic into long-term users.
Noji came to us with the goal of turning that web presence into a proper growth channel, driving organic traffic, surfacing their existing content library to Google and building a steady pipeline of free-to-paid users from search.
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The Challenges
A full audit of Noji's web presence and organic potential surfaced six core areas holding the product back from search-driven growth:- The Noji team had built a landing page that was closed from indexation, alongside a cut-down web version with a hybrid experience for users. Search engines couldn't see most of what existed and what they could see wasn't ranking.
- The site had a large number of pages that weren't configured for crawling, meaning most of the existing content was invisible to Google and contributing nothing to organic traffic.
- There were performance issues with the React-based web version, with slow load times and rendering delays affecting both user experience and SEO ranking signals.
- Noji had a library of 50,000 pre-made decks sitting unused from an SEO perspective. The team wanted to turn this asset into a separate category on the website and index the decks to capture organic traffic.
- The landing page didn't have the UX/UI optimisation it needed. There was a lack of value propositions and no social proof drawn from the 2.5M+ download base or the 4.8+ rating, leaving conversions well below where they should have been.
- There was no blog. With informational and navigational keywords driving a huge share of search demand in the education and language-learning space, this was a missed opportunity to capture top-of-funnel traffic.
Strategic Approach
Once goals and timelines were agreed with the Noji team, we built a roadmap focused on rapid indexation, content scaling through programmatic SEO and conversion optimisation:
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Step 1: Traffic research and competitor analysis
We started with traffic research of Google US, mapping organic demand across the flashcards, study tools, exam prep and language-learning categories. Alongside this, we ran a competitor gap analysis to identify where Noji could win quickly and where the keyword landscape was less saturated. -
Step 2: Mass-indexation of the most profitable pages
We prioritised every page by search intent and commercial value, then used dedicated indexation services to push the most profitable pages into Google as quickly as possible. As a result, we indexed over 85% of the previously hidden pages and started getting traffic from content that had been invisible to Google. -
Step 3: Webflow migration of landing pages
We rebuilt the landing pages on Webflow while keeping the core app on React, connecting the two via links. This split gave us faster page speeds on the SEO-critical landing pages and gave the marketing team the flexibility to iterate on copy and design without waiting on the development pipeline. -
Step 4: Architecting the deck library for organic traffic
We designed the architecture for Noji's 50,000+ deck library, built out the tagging system and categorised every deck into topic clusters by subject, exam and language. The result was a dedicated section of the site with 50,000+ unique, indexable pages, each one a potential entry point for organic traffic. -
Step 5: Landing page redesign (UX/UI & CRO)
We created a new mockup of the main page with the social proof and value propositions it was missing – strong messaging above the fold, trust signals drawn from the 2.5M+ download base and 4.8+ rating and a clearer path from visit to install or signup. The redesign was built around CRO principles and tested against the original. -
Step 6: Launch of the blog
We created a separate blog and started publishing posts targeting informational and navigational keywords – study technique guides, language-learning resources, exam prep walkthroughs and more. The blog became the top-of-funnel layer designed to attract a new organic audience that would later convert into paid users.
The Results:
Result 1: From 9.72K to 36.7K organic clicks per month – 3.7X growth in 12 months
Once we opened the website to search engines and rolled out the first phase of the strategy, organic clicks climbed to around 8K per month almost immediately.
By April 2023, Noji was at 9.72K organic clicks per month and by April 2024, that number had reached 36.7K organic clicks per month – a 3.7X year-on-year increase driven by indexation, programmatic SEO and content.
By April 2023, Noji was at 9.72K organic clicks per month and by April 2024, that number had reached 36.7K organic clicks per month – a 3.7X year-on-year increase driven by indexation, programmatic SEO and content.
Result 2: 17X growth in organic signups
The combination of programmatic SEO, landing page CRO and blog content didn't just drive traffic, it drove conversions. Monthly organic signups grew from 45 in May 2023 to 316 in May 2024, then to 756 by July 2024. That's a 17X increase in monthly organic signups in just over a year, with the curve still trending upward.
Result 3: 50,000+ deck pages turned into an organic engine
By indexing Noji's previously hidden content library, we made use of unused content and turned it into a major source of long-tail organic traffic. Over 85% of the site's pages are now indexed in Google and the deck library became a section of the site with 50,000+ unique, indexable pages, each one capturing intent-rich searches from students looking for ready-made study material.
Result 4: Roadmap to $4.7M ARR from organic search
During our Google US research, we identified organic traffic opportunities capable of driving approximately $400K+ in Monthly Recurring Revenue, or roughly $4.7M ARR. Alongside the numbers, we delivered a clear roadmap by topic cluster, giving Noji a step-by-step plan for capturing that demand over the following quarters.
Result 5: Acquired by DelightRoom (Alarmy) at $4M ARR – with 20% of revenue coming from the web
In May 2026, Noji was acquired by DelightRoom – the bootstrapped Seoul-based studio behind Alarmy, the #1-ranked alarm app in the App Store across 97 countries with 110M+ downloads – through its M&A arm, DelightHub. The deal, which includes upfront cash and earn-outs, was a clean exit for the founders after five years of bootstrapping.
By the time of the acquisition, Noji had grown to 6M+ lifetime users, 100K+ active subscribers, 2.5M installs in the previous 12 months and $4M in annual recurring revenue. The number that mattered most to us: more than 20% of Noji's revenue was arriving through the web, an unusual split for a consumer mobile app and a direct outcome of the cross-platform workflow we'd built. The web channel ESA helped design and scale didn't just bring in users, it built the kind of organic growth and clean unit economics that acquirers in the consumer app space are paying premiums for.
“DelightRoom understands consumer apps from the inside and we're excited to join forces through DelightHub. For Noji's users, that means continued investment in a product they already pay for. For us, it's the clean exit we wanted after five years of bootstrapping.”
– Danil Gontovnik, Co-founder of Noji
“DelightRoom understands consumer apps from the inside and we're excited to join forces through DelightHub. For Noji's users, that means continued investment in a product they already pay for. For us, it's the clean exit we wanted after five years of bootstrapping.”
– Danil Gontovnik, Co-founder of Noji
ESA team combine both a creative and data-driven approach in performance marketing, testing around 10 hypotheses per week for acquisition, engagement and retention. Their work on developing and executing a product growth strategy for the UK and US markets has led to a 68% increase in our number of monthly clients and $1.3M raised in Oct 2019 based on our growth metrics with ESA.”
Roman Grigoriev (www.splento.com)
CEO at Splento (fundraised $1.3M)
CEO at Splento (fundraised $1.3M)
“I met Dennis and his Google team, when they pitched their startup Smartsub. We accepted them to our accelerator program in 2017, Batch 9 and they successfully passed through it. Within a short period of time they managed to develop MVP of their product, design and implement go-to-market strategy launching the product on the US market. Their broad digital business experience and data-driven approach allowed them to make things done.”
Cristobal Alonso (www.startupwiseguys.com)
CEO at SWG (funded Smartsub in 2017)
CEO at SWG (funded Smartsub in 2017)
“ESA team with their Google Ads skills, growth mindset and natural ability to mentoring are able to bring a lot of value to startup ecosystem with so many tech companies in their growth stage and businesses struggling with Google online advertising.”
Monika Synoradzka (www.hugething.vc)
CEO at HugeThing (funded Smartsub, 2019)
CEO at HugeThing (funded Smartsub, 2019)
ESA team had outperformed my expectations working with one of our main SEO clients. They delivered X2-times organic traffic growth for 12 client’s websites, working with technical, content and link-building SEO optimisation in Google, website structure, navigation, technical code and conversion rate optimisation.”
Maria Kristalinskaya (www.bbdo.com)
Head of Retail Media at eBay (GE), Techstars Startup Mentor, ex-BBDO
Head of Retail Media at eBay (GE), Techstars Startup Mentor, ex-BBDO
