Sign-up page without a login button, plus proof: +17% paid clients
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsRemoving the login button from the sign-up page and adding a testimonial and achievement badges lifted paid clients by 17%.
The agency CodaLift LLC ran this test for Planoly, a Texas-based software company, and it was published as a VWO case study.
These changes shipped together, so the gain can't be credited to any one of them.
- Paid clients: +17%. This counts people who went on to pay, not just form fills.
- Visitors reaching the billing step: +10%.
- The source also mentions a 15% revenue lift, but that was a projection, not a measured result.
- Sample size, duration and confidence were not shared.
The change
Login button removed, badges and a testimonial added
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
A three-field sign-up form with two buttons: one to sign up and one to log in. Heatmaps showed about one in four visitors clicked the login button instead of signing up.
Variant
The login button was removed, leaving a single sign-up button. Achievement badges and a customer testimonial were added to the page.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- With only one button, new visitors no longer had to choose between two similar actions.
- The login button was pulling away a lot of clicks. Some of those visitors may have been new users who clicked the wrong button.
- A testimonial and badges give reassurance right when someone is deciding whether to create an account.
Caveats: This was a bundled test: the login button removal, badges and testimonial changed at once. The 15% revenue figure was projected, not measured, and no sample size or duration was published.
Who ran it
CodaLift LLC ran this test 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 CodaLift LLC →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we remove the login button from our sign-up page and add a testimonial, then more visitors will become paying customers because they face one clear action and see proof from other users.
- Primary metric
- Paid conversions per sign-up page visitor
- Guardrails
- Login success rate for returning users
- Support tickets about login
- Sign-up form completion rate
- Who should test it
- SaaS products where the sign-up page gets mostly new visitors and heatmaps show stray clicks on secondary buttons. Keep an easy login path elsewhere, such as the header, if many returning users land on the page.
Questions
Should a sign-up page include a login button?
It can split attention. In Planoly's case one in four visitors clicked login instead of sign-up, so removing it, as part of a bundle, came with more paid clients.
Make sure returning users can still log in easily.
Do testimonials help SaaS sign-up pages?
They can reassure people at the moment of commitment.
This test added them with other changes, so their exact effect is unknown.
What metric should a sign-up page test use?
Use paid conversions or activated users if you can.
Raw sign-ups can rise while paying customers don't.
Mida
MarketingExperiments