A popular destination travel company with a large number of visitors and good sales felt that it could do better. It wondered if improving its deal page (that essentially needed the visitors to fill up a form) could result in an increased conversion rate. To find out if this would indeed be the case, it engaged InsightWhale.
InsightWhale set out to investigate if (and how) the form on the deal page could be optimized to get more people to fill it out and enter the next stage of the company’s sales funnel.
Hypothesis:
Essentially, the travel company wanted more people to fill out the form on its deal page and move forward in their buying journey. InsightWhale observed that this form was a long one with 8 fields (all compulsory) and a multi-column layout. Furthermore, analyzing data from Google Analytics helped InsightWhale learn that the majority of the website’s users used mobiles for interacting with it.
These observations and data helped InsightWhale form a clear hypothesis around reducing the number of the required form fields and optimizing its design and content to suit the website’s predominantly mobile traffic. InsightWhale hypothesized that:
Removing the number of required form fields and making other sections of the form optional will reduce friction for the user and in turn improve conversion rate.
Svetlana Boeva, CRO specialist – InsightWhale
Methodology:
| Spread: 33/33/33 | Visitors: 54,697 |
| Confidence Score: 100% | Duration: 45 days |
Treatment:
Based on its hypothesis, InsightWhale proposed and created two versions to test.
In addition to fewer required form fields and a single-column (mobile-friendly) layout, these versions used two different styles of showing the non-required fields.
Var 1: In the first challenger, InsightWhale showed the 3 required fields (marked with an asterisk sign) at the top followed by the remaining 5 optional fields at the bottom above the CTA button.
Var 2: For the second version, InsightWhale showed just the 3 required fields and hid the remaining optional fields under a dropdown option.
The original version used a multi-column layout and eight mandatory fields:
InsightWhale tested the challengers against the original version over a period of 45 days to ensure statistically significant results. The test traffic included visitors from organic, referral, and direct channels across multiple devices, mostly from mobiles (about 72%).
InsightWhale ran its experiment with a very lean tech stack, using Google Analytics for the learning and Convert Experiences for running the experiments.
Importing all custom variables from Google Analytics is easy because the process of integration with Convert is simple and understandable. You just need to connect the Google Analytics account and set the right dimension in the Convert interface.
Svetlana Boeva, CRO specialist
Results:
As a result of the optimized form, the travel company saw a whopping 26% increase in the conversions on the deal page getting a significantly higher number of people to move forward in the company’s sales funnel. The bounce rate metric, however, (which was also being monitored) didn’t change.
The second version beat both the original version as well as the first one.
InsightWhale wasn’t just sure that the challenger would beat the original but it also felt that the second variation would win, which turned out to be correct.
We can conclude that users do not tend to fill a large number of fields since two variations with 8 opened fields showed the same CR which is less than the CR of Variation 2.
As for bounce rate, it doesn’t differ from variation to variation, so changing the form didn’t influence this indicator.
Svetlana Boeva, CRO specialist
Svetlana explains that the second version converted the best as it had “the minimum number of fields and less content in the form” thereby getting the users “closer to sending the form“.
CEO of InsightWhale, Tony Simonovsky tells how only data-informed insights can drive results, and that CRO campaigns do work when you’ve got the right people working on it:
As CEO of InsightWhale, I live by data—because it doesn’t lie. And properly implemented insights drive results—it’s practically a fact of life. But too frequently I hear people reluctant to invest in CRO because, they say, it just doesn’t work. CRO campaigns work—as long as the people behind it are doing the right work.
Tony Simonovsky, CEO – InsightWhale
The Big Takeaways:
Lean tech stacks can also power winning experiments. You don’t need tens of CRO tools to run successful experiments. You can just look at your Google Analytics data to learn about your users and form a strong hypothesis, and then use an A/B testing solution like Convert to test it.
Prioritizing the device to optimize for is as important as the element being optimized. In this case, InsightWhale decided to optimize the form for the mobile device first because that’s the device 72% of the travel company’s visitors used to interact with its website.
Small design tweaks can be critical in reducing friction. If you compare the winning and losing challenger versions, you’ll see that while both reduced the number of required fields to three, only the second one (the second challenger) looked like it was a quick, short form you could complete in under a minute using your mobile.
InsightWhale offers end-to-end conversion rate optimization services (right from ideation to implementation) to medium-sized companies from all over the world. It strives to deliver tangible monetary value to its customers with its different optimization and A/B testing services.
At Convert, we’re on a mission to create meaningful, sustainable experiences for today’s users and future generations. As the only Climate Neutral Certified A/B testing platform, we’re proud to offer a robust, affordable, and feature-rich platform that’s been an industry favorite for over a decade. But we’re not just about optimization for profit. With a Conscious Business approach, we’re dedicated to making a real difference and driving positive change within the CRO space and the world.