Does a cleaner lead form first step lift conversion?
The first step of the lead form used green borders and blue backgrounds. We tested a plainer version with fewer colors, with and without a trust badge. Conversion fell 21.0% and revenue per visitor 19.8% over 14 days.
Lost Responsive 14 days Called at 90%
The hypothesis
By removing the extra colors around the first step of the lead form, we will focus visitors on the first question, resulting in more visitors starting the form and more leads.
The landing page opened on the first step of a multi-step lead form. Green borders and blue backgrounds competed with the first question for attention.
Traffic came from an outside partner's promotions, and the partner could change which version of the page received it at any time. That happened during this test, so we moved the changes to the new page and restarted with clean tracking.
What we changed
We removed the extra colors and tightened the spacing on step 1.
Variation A removed the green borders and blue backgrounds from the first step and updated the margins and padding. Variation B made the same changes and added a trust badge.
- Green borders removed
- Blue backgrounds removed
- Margins and padding updated
- Same changes as Variation A
- Trust badge added
The result
Conversion fell 21.0% and revenue per visitor 19.8%.
Conversion fell 21.0% and revenue per visitor 19.8% over 14 days, and we paused the test. The drop was too large to leave running.
The swing was also too large to trace to 1 change. Traffic moved between page versions during the run, so we could not tell how much of the drop came from the new design and how much from the traffic.
What we took from it
Removing color from step 1 did not make the form easier to start.
We expected fewer colors to put the focus on the first question. Instead, fewer visitors started and finished the form. The borders and backgrounds may have helped mark where to begin. With traffic moving between page versions, the size of the drop is less certain than its direction.