# Blue form background lost: 0.69% to 0.54% orders

- Outcome: Lost
- Page type: Signup page (SaaS)
- Elements: Form design, Color
- Date shared: 2006-03
- Test run by: [MarketingExperiments](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/marketingexperiments/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/the-power-of-small-changes-tested
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/me-offender-search-site-blue-form/

Giving the subscription form a blue background cut conversion from 0.69% to 0.54% (42 vs 33 orders), about 22% fewer orders per view. MarketingExperiments (MECLABS) ran this as part of a multivariate test for a subscription site that lets people search registered sex offenders. The results are early and the order counts are small.

## Result

**0.69% to 0.54% orders**

- Conversion: 0.69% to 0.54% (42 vs 33 orders), about -22% relative. A negative result.
- Each form got roughly 6,100 page views over eight days.
- A blue-button form did worse still (0.39%), and the standard form beat this one by 28%.
- No significance was reported, and these were early numbers from a test still running.

## Control

The standard subscription form, with the site's usual button and plain form styling.

## Variant

The same form, but set on a blue background.

## Why it likely lost (our reading)

- A coloured panel can make a form look like an ad or a separate box, which may reduce trust.
- Colour on its own rarely matters much. What counts is contrast with the rest of the page, and the blue version may have had less.
- With only a few dozen orders per form, part of this gap may be chance.

## Caveats

Early results after eight days of an ongoing multivariate test from 2006, with only 42 vs 33 orders. Headline and logo were varied at the same time, and the per-form numbers are averaged across those versions.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we put the subscription form on a coloured background, then more visitors will order because the form will draw the eye.
- Primary metric: Orders per form page view
- Guardrail: Form start rate
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor
- Who should test it: SaaS and subscription sites whose sign-up form is hard to spot or blends into the page. If your form already has a clear, high-contrast button, a colour change is unlikely to help, and you need a few hundred orders per version to trust the result.

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Credit: MarketingExperiments ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/me-offender-search-site-blue-form/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.