Sample case study for demonstration. This engagement is illustrative: the scenario is typical of the work Axoria does, and the results are described without figures until verified client data is published.
The situation
A non-bank lender offering short-term working capital to small businesses acquired most of its applicants through paid search and comparison-site placements. The channel worked, but competition for lending keywords is fierce and cost per click had climbed steadily. The application form, a single long page unchanged since launch, had never been tested.
The lender engaged Axoria for a conversion optimisation programme with the aim of getting more qualified applications from the traffic it already paid for.
The challenge
Financial services CRO carries constraints other sectors do not. The form had to collect information required for regulatory and underwriting purposes, so fields could not simply be removed. Compliance had to approve every change to copy. And the metric that mattered was not form completions but applications meeting the lender’s minimum criteria, since unqualified applications only cost the underwriting team time. The challenge was to find where qualified applicants abandoned, understand why, and change the experience in ways compliance could sign off.
Research and analysis
We instrumented the form at field level in GA4 so every focus, error and abandonment was recorded, paired with session recordings and heatmaps in Hotjar. Drop-off clustered in two places: early, when applicants were asked for turnover and time trading before any indication of eligibility or cost; and late, at the document-upload step, where mobile users in particular gave up.
An exit survey and interviews with recent applicants confirmed the pattern. People did not object to providing information; they objected to providing it without knowing whether it was worth their time. Many were also unsure whether checking eligibility would affect their credit score, a concern the page did not address.
Strategy
Every observation became a hypothesis scored on expected impact, confidence and effort, producing a ranked backlog rather than a wish list. Three themes sat at the top.
Eligibility before effort
Move a soft eligibility check to the start of the journey so applicants learn early whether they qualify, and state clearly that the check does not affect their credit score.
Multi-step structure
Break the long form into short, labelled steps with progress indication and saved state, so that leaving to find a document does not mean starting over.
Trust at the point of doubt
Place security, regulatory and data-handling information next to the fields that trigger hesitation rather than in the footer.
We agreed with the client to test the multi-step redesign as one variant against the existing form, rather than as a series of small tweaks that would each take months to reach significance on the available traffic.
Execution
Optimization
After the redesigned form won, field-level analytics showed which steps still lost applicants, and those fed the next round of hypotheses. Underwriting acceptance was reported alongside completion rate so that any test which improved completions but lowered quality was rejected. Learnings fed back into lead generation: the eligibility framing that worked on the form was adapted into ad copy and landing pages.
Results (illustrative)
Figures are withheld until verified, client-approved data is published. Measured through GA4 field-level events and the underwriting system against the pre-test baseline, the movements typical of a programme like this are:
- Form completion rate: a clear, statistically significant improvement for the multi-step variant, with the largest gain on mobile.
- Qualified applications: rising in step with completions, confirming that the eligibility check filtered out rather than encouraged unqualified applicants.
- Cost per application: falling with no change to media spend, giving the marketing team room to bid more competitively on the terms that mattered.
What we learned
- Diagnose before you test. Field-level tracking and applicant interviews pointed to two specific problems, which is why the first big test won.
- Quality is a guardrail, not an afterthought. Reporting underwriting acceptance next to completion rate kept the programme honest and is standard in our work with finance and lending clients.
- Work with compliance, not around it. Batching approvals in advance turned the most common blocker in regulated CRO into a scheduled step.
- Measurement makes the case. None of this is visible without properly configured analytics and event tracking, which is where every CRO engagement starts.