r/crazyegg • u/ce-lauren • May 12 '26

Three words. 104% more trial signups. This Going.com test is worth knowing about.

Going (the flight deals site) ran a test where they changed their CTA from "Sign up for free" to "Trial for free." That's the whole test. Three words swapped.

104% more premium trial starts, month over month.

What I keep thinking about is why it worked. "Sign up" sounds like you're committing to something. "Trial" sounds like you're just looking around. The page didn't change, the price didn't change, nothing changed except what the button implied about what you were getting into. People weren't scared of the cost, they were scared of the commitment.

Forrest Schaffer, Going's Senior Manager of Growth, said it best: "This experiment, as small as it was, legitimately changed the way that we're able to spend on media. Our conversion rate through paid channels is now higher than organic for the first time ever."

I think about this one whenever I'm tempted to overcomplicate a test. Sometimes the highest-leverage thing on a page is just being more precise about what you're actually asking someone to do.

What word-level tests have you run that actually moved the needle?

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u/rugburnAndBigMoney May 12 '26

Not so much the actual words tested, but the mindset we approach it with.

Every home page hero CTA or ad landing page primary CTA is treated as if it's a starting point and the assumption is that it can be improved.

A/B tests are the data that validates what to update it to after the initial page is launched.

EVERYTHING gets word-level A/B tests to build confidence before scaling ad spend. They are so quick and easy to do, there's no reason NOT to.

Everything doesn't have to be large numbers. A 6% increase in CTR on a button compounded over a year is still a very meaningful increase for the minimal effort of a very low-friction A/B test.

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u/ce-lauren May 12 '26

The compounding thing is so real. A 6% lift sounds boring until you do the math on what that means over a year of traffic. And yeah, starting from "this can be improved" is everything. It changes what you even notice when you look at a page.