Rebuilt subscription offer page: 0.24% to 0.27%, not significant
Test run byMarketingExperimentsResearch publisher
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsA rebuilt offer page for a financial information subscription moved paid conversion from 0.24% to 0.27%, a difference that was not statistically significant.
MECLABS ran the test for a business selling financial information subscriptions, published on MarketingExperiments.
Many changes shipped together, so the page as a whole is what was tested.
- Paid conversion went from 0.24% (238 of 98,723 visitors) to 0.27% (204 of 76,094). This was not significant, so treat it as flat.
- The bigger finding was plan value: on the control page, annual plans earned $1.07 in lifetime value per visit against $0.11 for monthly.
- On the new page, the annual plan with trial earned $0.44 per visit, the annual no-trial plan $0.64, and monthly $0.16.
- Annual subscribers stayed about 1.5 years versus about 3 months for monthly, per the source.
The change
Full offer-page rebuild plus a new annual no-trial plan
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The existing offer page sold the subscription with a $59.95 monthly plan and a $399.95 annual plan, both with a free trial.
Variant
The page had rewritten copy, a new layout and email capture form, revised calls-to-action and a shorter order path. It also added a $399.95 annual plan with no free trial.
Why it likely came out this way
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Bundling many changes can cancel out: some may have helped while others hurt.
- Adding a third plan split demand, and the annual-with-trial option lost share on the new page.
- Conversion rate alone hid the fact that plan mix drives revenue, since annual buyers were worth far more.
Caveats: Many changes were bundled, and the conversion difference was not statistically significant. The data is from 2008.
Who ran it
MarketingExperiments ran this test for a business selling financial information subscriptions and published the results (MarketingExperiments). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on MarketingExperiments →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we rewrite the offer page, shorten the order path and steer buyers toward annual plans, then revenue per visitor will rise because annual subscribers stay much longer than monthly ones.
- Primary metric
- Lifetime value per visitor
- Guardrails
- Paid conversion rate
- Plan mix (annual vs monthly)
- Trial-to-paid rate
- Who should test it
- SaaS and subscription businesses that offer both monthly and annual plans. Measure value per visitor, not just conversion. It matters less if you sell only one plan or retention is similar across plans.
Questions
Should a subscription business push annual plans?
Often, yes. In this test, annual plans were worth roughly ten times more per visit than monthly on the original page because subscribers stayed much longer.
Why measure lifetime value per visit instead of conversion rate?
Conversion rate treats a monthly and an annual sign-up the same.
Value per visit shows which page and plan mix actually earns more.
Does removing the free trial hurt annual plan sign-ups?
Here the annual no-trial plan converted better than the annual plan with a trial on the new page, at 0.11% versus 0.07%.
Results like this vary, so test it on your own audience.