Redesigning the homepage to just a signup form

The HOTH (acronym for Hittem Over The Head) is an seo company providing white label seo services like guest posting and linkbuilding. They had a decent amount of traffic – but the account signup on the homepage was just 1.4%. Clayton of The Hoth analysed that most of the traffic was coming from referrals, word of mouth and direct traffic. Hence most visitor would already be familiar with the company.

Hypothesis

Changing a long form home page to just a signup form will increase account signups, because visitors are already familiar with the brand. Adding more information will only distract or raise further questions.

Results

The new homepage increased signup conversion from 1.4% to 13%.
To address the quality of the leads – more information was added after the signup, and the leads were contacted via phone and email.

Learnings

There are multiple considerations regarding a long form vs short form:

The type of visitors: some visitors – the ‘analytical’ type – will want a lot of information, where as the ‘driver type’ will take a quick decision. It is not clear what the dominant type is in this case.
The complexity of the product: if people are unclear about the service they will not signup. The variation actually leaves a lot of questions – which might lower conversion and/or lead quality.
The commitment of the signup: a free signup signup will need less explanation and convincing then for example a purchase
Trust: as the visitors are already familiar with The Hoth less trust building is required.
Distraction & focus: perhaps the long form raised more questions than it answered – also there was only a signup at the top, where generally multiple signups are recommended for a long page.

On balance the new short form version performed better. It might have been a bit too bare bones though. The current homepage again includes an explainer video.

Another interesting solution is too have a full screen signup form – with some more information below the fold for people who are not ready to signup. A nice example is the Crazy Egg homepage.