Gateway question before a claim form: 4.33% to 6.09% conversion
Test run byApexureCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding a simple gateway page in front of a four-stage claim form lifted end-to-end lead conversion from 4.33% to 6.09%.
Apexure ran this A/B test in Unbounce for Reclaim My PPI Tax, a UK online tax rebate claims service.
It was the third test in a series that took the funnel from 1.02% to 6.09% overall.
- End-to-end lead conversion rate: 4.33% to 6.09%, about a 41% relative lift.
- Before the test, step one had a 25% completion rate against around 60% for steps two to four, which is what pointed to the fix.
- The test ran for about a month on paid traffic. No visitor or claim counts were shared.
The change
A one-question gateway with a Proceed button comes before the form steps.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The four-stage claim form, starting straight at step one. Funnel data showed only 25% of visitors finished step one, while later steps ran at around 60%.
Variant
A gateway page came first, asking the visitor to confirm a simple statement. Completing it showed a Proceed button that opened the remaining three steps.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- A quick, easy first answer works as a small commitment, and people who have started are more likely to keep going.
- Finishing the gateway gave a sense of progress before the harder questions, as the agency describes it.
- Step one was the biggest leak in the funnel, so making the start easier had the most room to help.
Caveats: About a month of paid traffic, but no traffic counts or confidence level were given.
Who ran it
Apexure ran this test for UK online tax rebate claims service and published the results (Apexure case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Apexure →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we put one easy qualifying question before our multi-step form, then more visitors will finish the form because a quick first win builds commitment before the harder steps.
- Primary metric
- End-to-end form completion (lead) rate
- Guardrails
- Gateway-to-step-two drop-off
- Lead quality or accepted-claim rate
- Time to complete
- Who should test it
- UK lead-gen businesses that rely on long online claim, application or quote forms fed by paid traffic. Most useful when step-by-step data shows the first step leaks badly. If step one already completes well, a gateway just adds a click.
Questions
What is a gateway page in a form funnel?
A short first step, often one easy question, shown before the main form.
It gets people started with almost no effort.
How do I know if my first form step is the problem?
Track completion for each step. Here step one completed at 25% against around 60% for the later steps, which made it the clear target.
Does adding a step to a form always hurt conversions?
No. An extra step that is very easy can raise completion, as it did here, because it builds commitment before the harder questions.
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