One-page inquiry form split into seven steps: +154% conversion rate
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsHomEquity Bank replaced its one-page reverse mortgage inquiry form with a seven-step form and saw a 154% lift in conversion rate.
The bank's own digital team ran the test in late 2015, and it was published as a MarketingSherpa case study.
HomEquity Bank sells the CHIP reverse mortgage to Canadian homeowners aged 55 and older.
- Conversion rate: +154% compared with the one-page form.
- Sample size, duration and confidence were not shared.
- The team later cut the form to four steps for a further 53% lift, so seven was not the final answer.
The change
All questions on one page become seven short steps with a Next button.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
A single-page inquiry form, reached by clicking a button on the homepage, with all questions shown at once.
Variant
The same inquiry split across seven steps, so visitors answered a few questions at a time.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Seeing one short step at a time makes the form feel less like work for an audience that the team found preferred simple pages.
- Once visitors answer the first easy question, they are more likely to finish what they started.
- Fewer fields per screen means bigger text and buttons, which the bank found its older visitors liked.
Caveats: The source does not describe the test setup, sample size or duration. The audience is Canadians aged 55 and older, so results may differ for younger visitors.
Who ran it
HomEquity Bank ran this test and published the results (MarketingSherpa case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on HomEquity Bank →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we split our long inquiry form into short steps, then more visitors will finish it because each screen asks for less at once.
- Primary metric
- Form completion rate (inquiries per form visitor)
- Guardrails
- Lead quality or contact rate
- Drop-off by step
- Mobile completion rate
- Who should test it
- Lead-gen businesses with forms of six or more fields, such as financial services, insurance or home services. It is less likely to help if your form is already two or three fields.
Questions
Do multi-step forms convert better than one-page forms?
Often, for longer forms. Breaking questions into steps makes the form feel smaller at the start.
HomEquity Bank saw a 154% lift moving from one page to seven steps.
How many steps should a lead form have?
Test it. HomEquity Bank first went from one page to seven steps, then from seven to four, and both changes lifted conversions.
Do older audiences fill in forms online?
Yes. HomEquity Bank said most of its inquiries from people 55 and older moved from phone to digital channels after it simplified its site.
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