“You shall not pass”: improving lead quality by lowering conversion rates

That time we decreased a vanity metric by 69% and increased a more actionable and business-centric metric by up to 136%.

“You shall not pass” is a quote from “The Fellowship of the Ring” from The Lord of the Rings

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. Problem identification
   2.1) Quality vs. Quantity of leads
   2.2) Not looking in the same direction
3. Solution
4. Impact
   4.1) Perceived lead quality increase
   4.2) Data-gathering: 69% decrease, 49% increase, and platform variations
5. Final thoughts

Introduction

What’s Casavo?

Casavo offers a smart solution for selling your home. With the Casavo app, we match the needs of sellers with the desires of buyers, guiding people through the entire process for a transparent and advantageous experience.

Project overview

This project has been led in April-May 2024 by the Activation team at Casavo.

This team handles the seller user experience from the instant evaluation of a house to the signing of the sales proposal to sell their house with Casavo.

Flow and glossary

1. The homeowner answers 8–10 questions about their house (evaluation flow). They indicate whether they want to sell their home or only want an evaluation (interested in selling VS only evaluation). Then, they fill out a contact form.
2. They receive an instant evaluation (restitution page)
3. They can add photos and more precise information about their house (data-gathering)
4. If they’re interested in selling leads, they are called after 1–2 days. If they’re only evaluation leads and they’ve at least started the data-gathering, they are also called. The person calling them is the seller advisor, who guides them from the instant valuation to the official marketing of the house, handled by the real estate consultant.

The main 4 steps of the seller user experience

2. Problem identification

2.1) Quality vs. Quantity of leads

As you may expect, there’s a significant drop between those who start the evaluation and those who sign a sales proposal with us.

This happens for four reasons:

• Users drop off at the contact form → We can’t do much about this, as we need both phone numbers and email
• One in four users leaves a fake number in the contact form → We don’t clearly explain why we need to call them.
• Sellers may identify as Only evaluation because they don’t want to be called back → Many of them start the data-gathering just to try it out, but then they get called and become upset.
• Sellers identify as Interested in selling → But they don’t expect to be called back

Most will say no if we ask users if they want to be called. It’s understandable. The problem is, that we need to call users to cover all the information about their house that doesn’t fit neatly into our form.

That’s why we should optimize seller advisors’ time. We want them to have better leads (= leads that convert more easily), not more leads.

Photo by NoWah Bartscher on Unsplash

2.2) Not looking in the same direction

After the instant evaluation, we realized there was a significant misalignment between:

• Product copy → It emphasizes the complete valuation to boost data-gathering conversion rates
• Seller advisor pitch (= a brief and concise presentation of your company’s features, benefits, and potential) → It focuses heavily on signing a sales proposal to sell with Casavo

Why is it problematic?

The message changes completely when the seller moves from the digital product to a call with the seller advisor. Sellers were expecting a full, free evaluation, not a pitch to sign a sales proposal.

This is especially problematic for Only evaluation users (=30% of our leads in the last 6 months):

• These leads are harder to convert
• They don’t expect to be called
• The product promises a full valuation (that’s exactly what they signed up for), but the seller advisor pitches signing with Casavo

Photo by Antonio Feregrino on Unsplash

Additionally, while the evaluation serves as a hook and gives you an initial idea of your home's value, it's just the beginning of the process. It isn't meant to be the ultimate goal of our product.

3. Solution

We’ve identified three areas of improvement:

1. Clarify the purpose of data-gathering → We want users to understand its benefits. For Only evaluation leads, we should stress that completing it triggers a call
2. Align the product copy with the pitch → Our focus is convincing sellers to sign a sales proposal, not just completing data-gathering for the sake of it
3. Improve the UI of the restitution page → We aim to make it more noticeable and task-oriented.

Changes in the restitution page

Here’s what changed on the restitution page, mainly concerning the data-gathering component.

• Focus on sales: while we continue to mention the full valuation, we emphasize that data-gathering serves a more practical purpose: sharing your home profile with potential buyers. This helps users better focus on the sales step.
• Clearer CTA: We’ve replaced the general “Complete your house profile” (which converted very well!) with the more specific “Upload photos and information”
• Call announcement: We’ve created two versions of the data-gathering component. Interested in Selling leads are called by default, while Only Evaluation leads are called only if they start data-gathering.
• UI enhancement: We’ve made the component more task-oriented (with a check and tag “It’s your turn”) and used a different color to make it more noticeable

Restitution page

Focus on data-gathering component

4. Impact

4.1) Perceived lead quality increase

Following the release of the new component on the restitution page, we conducted qualitative research with seller advisors to better understand this project's impact.

A few weeks after the release, some of them noticed improved lead quality, with sellers complaining less about being called back.

Now, we need to verify if there is an actual impact on the next funnel stages, such as an increase in the conversion rate for signing the sales proposal.

4.2) Data-gathering: 69% decrease, 49% increase, and platform variations

(A quick reminder: data-gathering is the step of the seller user experience where sellers can add photos and more precise information about their house)

On one hand, there has been a 69% decrease in the conversion rate at the beginning of the data-gathering process. This means that 69% fewer users are starting the data-gathering. While this decrease was anticipated, it requires close monitoring — just in case.

69% decrease in the conversion rate at the beginning of the data-gathering process.

On the other hand, there has been a 49% increase in the conversion rate from data-gathering started to completed. This means that 49% more users who start adding photos and information end up sending them to us.

49% increase in the conversion rate from data-gathering started to completed

This demonstrates higher engagement. It’s also highly beneficial for seller advisors as they can effectively utilize this data to prepare for follow-up calls.

Regarding the 49% increase, there is a notable difference between the app and website:

• On the app side, this metric has remained relatively stable; it was already high due to greater efforts in app downloads compared to the web.
• On the website, there was a peak of +136%. We need to investigate further to understand why there’s a difference in impact between the web and app data-gathering processes.

5. Final thoughts

This project tackled several internal challenges:

• We conducted internal research with seller advisors to improve the restitution page and assess its impact
• We aligned Product copy with seller advisors’ pitch for a unified message
• We improved managing user expectations, emphasizing transparency despite initial discouraging data
• We shifted from a vanity metric to a more actionable metric by decreasing initial data gathering starts, focusing on highly engaged leads with greater potential (Vanity metrics look impressive but don’t impact business outcomes (e.g., likes on an Instagram post). Actionable metrics provide insights for real business decisions and improvements (e.g., number of contracts signed))

I hope you enjoyed reading this article!

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Want to read more?

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• Post-mortem: how a sorry email had the best open rate ever reached
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• Diving into the chaos: a design case study

Or check other Casavo stories by my colleagues ✨

I’m a millennial, so here’s your Peace sign.