Win Report: How blurring the results doubled sign-ups for a utility comparison website

Published: October 2023

Win Reports help you to grow your business by showing our methodology at work. Each article highlights a real-world test, sharing the research, insights, and techniques that led to the win.

In the next three minutes, we’ll show you how our team doubled the sign-ups for utility comparison website glimp—and how this thinking can apply to your business.

A side by side comparison of the control and variation showing the differences.

Like other comparison services, glimp’s website takes prospects through a series of questions, scans the market, and connects them to cheaper deals—often saving hundreds of dollars per year.

glimp hired us to grow their business.

Research: Friction at the critical moment

You might think that a service that saves hundreds of dollars should sell itself, but our Research Department identified numerous opportunities for improvement and testing.

For example, funnel analysis showed that many potential customers abandoned the registration process at step six, when asked to submit their contact details. This is not unusual. Commitments create decision points… high‑stakes moments for customers and businesses alike.

These moments—often happening right before a sale—are high‑leverage opportunities for growth.

The original page (or control)

By step six, the customer was just one step away from the deals, yet only around 3% of users took that step. How could we reduce the friction at this critical moment?

The existing webpage looked like this:

A screenshot of the control which asks for personal information. — Asking for personal information will often make a prospect pause.

The tested page (or variation)

After establishing a hypothesis, we created a variation that applied the following techniques:

Future pacing: Blurring the deals is a form of future pacing—helping users imagine that they already have their desired result. In this case, we showed users that the deals were real and “waiting” behind a simple form. Can you feel the effect of the blurring on the prospects? Those are my offers. I can almost touch them. How much money will I save?
As we say on page 197 of our Amazon #1 best‑selling book, Making Websites Win: Many companies don’t make it clear what happens once a visitor says yes.
To learn more about future pacing, see Why many visitors abandon because they don’t understand what they’ll get.
Presenting counterobjections: By removing unnecessary copy, we focussed on the instant nature of the comparison, the independence of the free service, and the customer’s potential savings. Each of these changes emphasized the benefit of immediate action.
Simplification: The variation reduced clutter on the form and provided a one‑button choice for moving forward—increasing conversion by removing clutter is one of our most effective strategies.

Here’s what the variation looked like:

A screenshot of the variation showing the deals blurred out behind an overlay containing a redesigned form. — The variation showed the deals blurred out behind an overlay containing the redesigned form.

Result: The variation had over double the sign-ups

During the test, the variation saw a 108% increase in sign-ups and users viewing the deals.

We add every successful test to our proprietary Wins Database, then look for ways to apply the lessons to other clients.

If you want us to grow your profits—quickly and efficiently—check if you qualify for a free one-on-one strategy session with one of our CRO consultants.

We’ll work with you only if we believe we can get amazing results together. Our success has come entirely from positive word of mouth, and we plan to keep it that way.

A few words from the co-founder of glimp, Michael Speight

“We engaged CRE to try to take us to the next level—which they’ve done,” says Michael Speight, co-founder of glimp.

Thanks to glimp for letting us share these insights (and for being such an awesome team).

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