Win Report: Redesigned navigation increases SaaS demo requests by 38%

Published: October 2025

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

In the next four minutes, we’ll show you how a navigation redesign increased SaaS demo requests by 38% (and delivered a slew of extra benefits).

A side-by-side comparison of two website navigation designs for SFG20. The control version shows a dark-blue dropdown menu with nested links, while the variation shows a white mega-menu layout with multiple columns and clearer organization. Both include a bright orange ‘Request a Demo’ button in the header.

SFG20 is the UK industry standard for building maintenance specification. Its comprehensive library of schedules helps building owners and managers keep track of changes in legislation, regulation, and codes of practice. SFG20 sells cutting-edge software that helps customers ensure that buildings are safe and legally compliant.

Website navigation is often overlooked as a testing target, but it can be a huge opportunity for conversion rate optimization. Very few CRO levers appear on (almost) every web page—let alone right at the top. And for SFG20, whose B2B traffic skews over 80% desktop, the menu warranted particular attention.

A heatmap overlay of the SFG20 website navigation bar showing user attention hotspots. The strongest focus areas are on ‘What is SFG20?’ and ‘Careers.’ — The navigation heatmap. “Hotter” means more clicks.

What’s the first thing you notice? Most obviously, user intent is highly concentrated on just two items:

What is SFG20? (The first menu item next to the logo.)
Careers (middle of the top menu).

Our early research had shown that visitors were hungry to understand what SFG20 was, so that result makes sense. This is a menu item that was meeting the audience where they were on the journey.

The second hotspot, “Careers”, was more of a surprise. Although recruitment is a critical activity for high-performing businesses, should it be the second most popular link on a SaaS site like SFG20? For us, this was a signal that the rest of the menu wasn’t working hard enough.

And if you look at the actual menu, you’ll get some sense of why:

Including the logo, there are twelve targets on this menu. Although the first menu item is on point, others require pre-existing knowledge. (If you don’t know what “Facilities-iQ” is, can you guess?) Our user testers couldn’t, and they also found the two-layer menu overwhelming. Some worked to understand the dropdowns with nested sub-menus and hover-dependent content. Others just skipped it.

This combination—concentrated hotspots and user friction—convinced us that the menu was worth testing.

The original page (or control)

To illustrate the context properly, here’s the homepage without the menu expanded.

The SFG20 homepage hero section featuring the headline ‘The industry standard for building maintenance,’ call-to-action buttons, and a mobile app interface mockup, with partner logos such as Newcastle University and CBRE displayed below. — The web page with no menu triggered.

A detailed SFG20 subpage view showing the ‘Facilities-iQ’ dropdown menu expanded over a teal background, presenting options like ‘Facilities-iQ Software’ and ‘Integrating with FM Systems,’ along with descriptive text and partner logos at the bottom. — A user has triggered the Facilities-iQ menu.

We considered adding highlights to this image so you’d find it easier to see the dropdown, but decided against it so that you could experience the menu more as SFG20’s visitors did. In this case, the activated “Facilities-iQ“ menu has dropped down to reveal a sub-menu with three options.

Here’s that menu in action.

Hovering over an option triggers additional explanatory content to appear on the right-hand side of the screen. Clicking on the buttons takes you through to a specific page.

The dropdown isn’t impossible to understand, but taken with the complexity of the menu above, it represented a huge opportunity for improvement and redesign.

The tested page (or variation)

Given that we were completely reworking the site’s navigation, we aimed to “tell the story” of the SFG20 proposition through the menu. The test was an opportunity to create a guided customer journey without fully overhauling the site.

We started by mapping out that “journey,” incorporating links to high-value pages and anchor points.

A screenshot of a Google Sheets document outlining the SFG20 navigation structure. It lists menu items such as ‘What is SFG20,’ ‘Maintenance Schedules,’ and ‘Resources,’ along with their subpages and URLs organized in columns.

What’s not obvious (from the small image above) is how much this process simplified the number of targets in the menu—from twelve to eight.

Logo.
What is SFG20.
Maintenance Schedules.
Pricing.
Resources.
Search.
Login.
Book a Demo.

And when you see the top-menu design in Figma, it feels even simpler.

As part of the process, we designed each of the dropdown menus inside Figma. Here they are:

Three screenshots of the SFG20 website’s redesigned navigation menus shown in Figma. The top image shows the ‘What is SFG20’ dropdown with grouped links, the middle shows the ‘Maintenance Schedules’ dropdown with industry-specific categories, and the bottom shows the ‘Resources’ dropdown with links and featured content thumbnails.

To test our thinking, we conducted a usability study to test the new design against the control. The testers, who were all pre-screened for relevance to SFG20’s market, overwhelmingly preferred the new variation.

A horizontal bar chart comparing performance metrics between two SFG20 designs. The green bars show strong improvements in metrics such as ‘Better prepares for demo request,’ ‘More likely to engage with,’ ‘Helps understand SFG20,’ and ‘Encourages exploration.’ — The new design (green) hugely outperformed the original (grey).

The reasons that testers cited for preferring the variation included:

Cleaner and more modern design: Users found it visually appealing and professional.
Better organization and structure: Navigation felt intuitive and well-sectioned.
Easier to understand SFG20’s offering: Content was clearer and more digestible.
More exploration encouraged: Users found browsing and finding relevant pages easier.
More engaging user experience: Improved layout and hover effects made it smoother to use.
Improved readability: Better color contrast and text clarity compared to the control.

Once the usability study results came in, we worked directly with SFG20’s developer to ensure the new menu was implemented quickly and accurately, supporting them throughout the process.

Here’s the final variation page (menu closed)…

A full-page view of the SFG20 homepage featuring the headline ‘The industry standard for building maintenance’ with orange call-to-action buttons, a mobile app mockup, and a white expanded dropdown menu under ‘What is SFG20’ displaying multiple columns of navigation links. — The variation web page (no menu triggered).

And here’s the page with the “What is SFG20” menu activated.

A similar SFG20 homepage view showing the ‘What is SFG20’ dropdown menu expanded over a teal background. The menu lists sections for ‘What is SFG20,’ ‘Software,’ and ‘FM Providers,’ with accompanying resource links and video thumbnails. — The variation web page with the “What is SFG20” menu triggered.

To summarize the final changes:

We completely redesigned SFG20’s primary navigation.
We simplified the menu, making it easier to use while resolving numerous usability issues.
We aimed to “tell the story” of the SFG20 proposition through the menu, incorporating links to various pages and anchor points.
We introduced supporting resources to help users better understand the proposition.

What difference would these changes make in a real-world test?

Result: SaaS demo requests increased by 38%

During the test, we observed a 38% increase in SaaS demo requests for SFG20. In addition, the new navigation delivered:

35% increase in clicks on the menu links (including the dropdowns).
12% increase in visits to key pages, including:
- 18% increase to “What is SFG20.”
- 52% increase to “Facilities-iQ” pages.
20% increase to industry-specific maintenance schedule pages.
A decrease in the sitewide bounce rate (an improvement).

Here’s what our client had to say

Lisa Hamilton, Director of Marketing, SFG20, the UK industry standard for building maintenance specification.

“The navigation redesign turned a series of complex messages into a simple, guided journey. By simplifying the menu and focusing on intent, users found what they needed faster—delivering a 38% increase in demo requests, stronger engagement with ‘What is SFG20’ and product pages, and a noticeable drop in bounce.
“It’s been a high-impact win and a fascinating project to work on!”

What next?

As usual, we added the test to our proprietary Wins Database, then looked for ways to apply its lessons to other parts of SFG20’s business and then 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 only work with you 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 Jessica and Lisa at SFG20

Watch the full testimonial below, or read a transcript.

“Our results are pretty mind-boggling,” says Jessica Vella-Bone, Marketing Manager at SFG20.

Thanks to SFG20 for letting us share these insights (and for being such a great team to work with).

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