Makelaarsland Used A/B Testing To Increase Sign-ups

To register for home listings, visitors had to provide their personal information, the address of the property to be sold, and then click ‘finish’ on the lead generation form. Makelaarsland decided to A/B test its lead generation page to increase the number of sign-ups for listings.

Makelaarsland’s website had a simple registration process for home listings. Interested visitors would need to provide their personal information, the address of the property to be sold, and then click Finish.

Toward the right, the lead generation page had a Need Help? section with the company phone number and email address. There was a picture of a woman employee below this section.

This is how the original page looked:

The Traffic Builders team hypothesized that instead of a woman employee’s image, an image of a man putting a Sold sticker on a For Sale sign on the lead generation page could improve the number of visitors deciding to list their homes.

Accordingly, they created the following variation, and then ran an A/B test against the original.

The test was run for 20 days at 95% statistical confidence before Makelaarsland implemented the changes on its website.

Compared to the original version (the control), the variation recorded a significant 89% increase in sign-ups/listings.

Eva Louwen, Traffic Builders’ senior conversion optimization consultant and the person who authored and executed the test, pointed out that the variation used a persuasion technique known as “response efficacy.” The new image was effective in suggesting that the action of signing up would result in the desired outcome of selling the house. And that’s the outcome potential Makelaarsland customers were looking for.

Explaining her choice of this psychological premise, Eva said, “I picked it because it addressed the low response/trust issue problem with Makelaarsland.” She further explained, “People that sign up Makelaarsland as their estate agent want to be sure they’ll eventually sell their house. We used this technique by adding an image of a man putting a ‘sold’ sticker on a ‘for sale’ sign. This visual reassurance ended up convincing more visitors that signing Makelaarsland was indeed the right move to make.”