# Colorful two-column lender landing page lost: control won by 51.52%

- Outcome: Lost
- Page type: Landing page (Lead-gen)
- Elements: Design, Layout, Testimonials
- Date shared: 2009-03
- Test run by: [XBanker](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/xbanker/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/wild-card-winner
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/me-xbanker-colorful-two-column-landing-page/

A more colorful, two-column redesign of a PPC landing page lost to the plain placeholder page it replaced, which converted 51.52% better on quote requests. XBanker, a lender, ran the test and attendee Ryan Hutchings submitted it to a MarketingExperiments web clinic, where it was published. The redesign changed color, layout, text styling and form design all at once, so the loss can't be pinned on a single element.

## Result

**control won by 51.52%**

- Quote requests (conversion): the control beat the redesign by 51.52%. This is a loss for the variant.
- An earlier two-column treatment of the same page lost to the control by 85.51%, so the plain page won twice in a row.
- The clinic audience predicted the redesign would win and rated it more visually appealing. Their preference did not match visitor behavior.
- Visitor and conversion counts were not shared.

## Control

A quickly built placeholder landing page with a direct eye path, few links and a quote request form sitting in that path. The button copy repeated the main headline.

## Variant

A more colorful two-column design that used red text to tie headlines, subheads, testimonials and button copy together. It also had a darker grey background, more visible form drop-downs and the call to action above the fold.

## Why it likely lost (our reading)

- The plain page kept a single, direct path from headline to form. The two-column layout split attention between columns.
- Red text used on many elements may have made everything look equally important, so nothing guided the eye.
- MarketingExperiments' reading: neither treatment matched the order in which prospects think through the offer as well as the original did.
- A polished look does not help if it slows down the visitor's main task: asking for a quote.

## Caveats

Several changes shipped together (layout, color, text styling, form design), so no single element explains the result. The tests ran one after another in 2009 and no sample sizes or confidence levels were shared.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we redesign our PPC landing page with a richer two-column layout, then quote requests will rise because the page looks more credible, unless the extra design pulls attention from the form.
- Primary metric: Quote request (lead form) conversion rate from PPC traffic
- Guardrail: Lead quality or qualified-lead rate
- Guardrail: Form start rate
- Guardrail: Cost per lead
- Who should test it: Lead-gen businesses sending paid traffic to a simple, single-path landing page. Test a redesign before replacing a plain page that already converts; it is less useful if the current page is genuinely confusing or broken.

---

Credit: XBanker ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/me-xbanker-colorful-two-column-landing-page/).
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.