Hubstaff homepage redesign: +49% visitor-to-trial conversion
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsA full redesign of Hubstaff's homepage raised visitor-to-trial conversion by 49%.
Hubstaff, a time tracking and workforce management software company, ran this split URL test for three months with 259k visitors, and it was published as a VWO case study.
It was a full redesign, so the lift comes from the whole page, not one element, and trial-to-paid conversion dipped 7%.
- Visitor-to-trial conversion: +49%, the main goal.
- Hero email form submissions: +34%.
- On-page clicks: -6% and pricing page views: -3%. Fewer clicks alongside more trials suggests a more direct path, not lost interest.
- Trial-to-paid conversion: -7%. The team said the in-app experience was the same for both versions and other analytics showed paid subscriptions were not affected.
The change
A full redesign with new positioning, newest features and an email form in the hero.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Hubstaff's long-running homepage, which had only seen small changes over the years.
Variant
A completely redesigned homepage that put the company's broader positioning and newest features up front, with an email sign-up form in the hero.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Leading with current positioning and features likely helped visitors see the product fit their team faster.
- An email field in the hero let visitors start a trial without hunting for a button.
- A fresh layout and order of copy may have cut out older content that no longer matched the product.
Caveats: Full redesign: many changes shipped together, so no single change can be credited. Trial-to-paid fell 7%, which the team put down to factors outside the homepage. The test is from around 2021.
Who ran it
Hubstaff ran this test for time tracking and workforce management software and published the results (VWO case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Hubstaff →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we redesign the homepage around our current positioning and newest features with an email form in the hero, then more visitors will start a trial because they see the fit sooner and can sign up in one step.
- Primary metric
- Visitor-to-trial conversion
- Guardrails
- Trial-to-paid conversion
- Organic traffic to the homepage
- Pricing page views
- Who should test it
- SaaS companies with high homepage traffic whose product has outgrown the old page. With low traffic or little design capacity, test single sections first, because a redesign takes months and can't tell you which part worked.
Questions
Should SaaS companies A/B test a homepage redesign?
Yes, if traffic allows it. A split URL test like Hubstaff's shows whether the new page actually beats the old one before you roll it out site-wide.
Why did trial-to-paid conversion drop if trials went up?
More trials can bring in less committed users.
Hubstaff saw a 7% dip but found paid subscriptions were not affected, so it looked at the full funnel before deciding.
Does an email form in the hero help trial sign-ups?
It was part of this redesign and hero form submissions rose 34%.
Because many things changed at once, its own effect wasn't isolated.