NW Preferred Federal Credit Union serves a narrow audience: Farmers® Insurance agents who need specialized business financing. Their product options page was getting traffic, primarily from social and Facebook ads, but visitors weren’t clicking through to product pages. The analyst reviewing the original design estimated that 80 to 90 percent of visitors were landing on the page and going nowhere. The credit union’s flagship product for this audience, the contract value loan, wasn’t prompting action.
The test asked whether a redesigned page could close that gap.
The question
When a page is pulling traffic but not converting it, the problem is usually on the page, not upstream. The original product options page had adequate traffic. It didn’t have a clear path forward.
Visitors arrived and saw an identity headline (“Created for Farmers® Agents by Farmers® Agents”), five product links in the hero pointing to specific loan types, a benefits strip, and a grid of product tiles below. According to the analyst’s video walkthrough of variant A, visitors had to hover over each tile in the product grid to see the product name and where the link would take them, a step that made the content area less legible than it appeared. The analyst also noted that even the contract value loan, the credit union’s primary product, was easy to miss: the five hero links weren’t visually prominent, and the grid required interaction before its destinations became readable.
The page had navigation paths. What it lacked was a single prominent action pointing visitors toward the flagship product.
The hypothesis
The redesign hypothesis was that making product destinations visible upfront, organizing content by business need rather than product name, simplifying the hero to a single focused CTA, and introducing partnership-focused messaging would reduce friction and drive more clicks through to product pages.
What changed
This test changed nearly everything on the page simultaneously. That’s worth stating plainly: because so many variables were modified at once, the test result tells us the redesign as a whole likely worked, but cannot tell us which specific change drove the lift.
Here is what actually changed between variant A and variant B:
Hero section. The headline shifted from “Created for Farmers® Agents by Farmers® Agents” to “Exclusive Financial Solutions for Farmers® Agents.” The original speaks to who built the product; the revised version speaks to what a visitor can get. Variant B also added a new subheading not present in variant A: “As a Farmers® Agent, you deserve a partner that understands your unique needs. Whether you’re growing your business or optimizing cash flow, we’re here to help.” This introduced partnership language and named two specific use cases, shifting the framing from identity-based community to utility-based relationship.
The functional change in the hero was significant. Variant A listed five product links (contract value loan, district manager variant, acquisition loan, commercial real estate loan, agency staffing loan) at the top of the page. Variant B replaced all five with a single prominent CTA button: “Get Started with Contract Value Loans.” This is a direct reduction in choice, from five competing paths to one focused action. The background image was also updated with a darker gradient overlay for better text contrast.
Solutions Overview header. Variant B introduced a section header above the product content area: “Comprehensive Solutions for Every Stage of Your Business,” with subtext “We offer a suite of financial products tailored to Farmers Agents.” Variant A opened the equivalent section with “How Can We Help You Thrive?” The new header explicitly frames the product set as a coherent suite organized around business lifecycle stages, setting up the category structure below it.
Product content area. Variant A presented a flat grid of six loan types. According to the analyst’s video walkthrough, visitors had to hover over each tile to see the product name and link destination. Variant B replaced this with grouped content cards organized into three categories: Growth and Expansion, Ownership and Cash Flow, and Savings and Employee Benefits. Each card showed a headline, a short description, and a clearly labeled link, visible without any hover interaction. The grouping mapped to how a business owner might think about their needs rather than how the credit union names its products.
Secondary navigation relocation. Variant A placed a set of navigation buttons (Rates, Contact Us, Find a Branch, Testimonials) in a dedicated section midway through the page. Variant B moved these to the bottom as styled icon navigation, pushing secondary navigation out of the path visitors would take when scanning for products.
Final call-to-action. Variant A’s closing section contained a statement about the credit union’s one-on-one approach but no button. Variant B added a “Get Started with Contract Value Loans” CTA button at the bottom of the page, repeating the hero CTA.
Additional changes. The value proposition strip was reformatted from a centered single-column layout to a two-column format. The testimonial section added the reviewer’s name and affiliation (Jessica Darkins, Farmers Agent).
The results
Variant B produced 15 conversions versus 8 in variant A, a 90% lift in product page CTR. Statistical confidence was 86.48%.
Verdict: Likely win. MetriFi acts on results above 80% confidence. This redesign likely increased click-through to product pages.
One important caveat about the data: 23 total conversions across 1,577 users over 60 days is thin. An 86.48% confidence figure is real, but it carries more uncertainty when it rests on 23 conversions than it would on several hundred. The direction of the result, that B outperformed A, is credible. The exact magnitude of the lift (90%) is less certain.
Design questions this test raises
Does simplifying hero choice increase conversions? Variant A gave visitors five product links at the top of the page. Variant B gave them one. For a site serving a niche audience with a flagship product, narrowing the hero to a single focused action may reduce the decision load for first-time visitors. This test can’t isolate that change, since it ran alongside a complete page redesign. But the reduction from five scattered links to one prominent button is a structural pattern worth testing on its own.
Does hiding link destinations cost you conversions? Based on the analyst’s video review of variant A, visitors had to hover over each tile to see the product name and where it would take them. Variant B made every destination explicit in the card label. The data is consistent with this friction mattering, though the test changed too many things at once to treat it as a controlled finding. The hover-to-reveal pattern appears on financial services sites more often than it should.
Does organizing by business need outperform organizing by product name? Variant B grouped loans into categories a business owner might recognize, like “grow your business” and “manage cash flow,” rather than listing products by their formal names. This is not a data finding. It’s a design observation the test setup illustrates. But financial institutions that primarily organize product pages by product names may be asking visitors to already know what they’re looking for.
How much of the lift came from messaging versus structure? Variant B introduced partnership language in the hero subheading (“you deserve a partner that understands your unique needs”), organized products under a stage-of-business framework (“Comprehensive Solutions for Every Stage of Your Business”), and replaced identity-based positioning with utility-based positioning. These messaging changes ran alongside the structural changes to product tiles and navigation. The test can’t separate their contributions.
What does the identity headline trade away? “Created for Farmers® Agents by Farmers® Agents” is a credibility signal. It communicates that the institution understands this specific professional community. Replacing it with a value headline (“Exclusive Financial Solutions for Farmers® Agents”) emphasizes utility over community. Both have merit for this audience. This test doesn’t tell us whether the headline switch helped, hurt, or was neutral, since it was bundled with every other change.
What this means for your site
The 80 to 90 percent drop-off rate the analyst identified on variant A is a recognizable pattern in bank website design: a page receives meaningful traffic, but most visitors don’t navigate deeper. When that happens, the instinct is to fix the traffic source. The data here is consistent with the traffic not being the problem. Addressing friction on the page appears to have moved more visitors to take action, though the multi-variable nature of the redesign means no single change can be credited.
A few concrete takeaways:
Show your product destinations without requiring interaction. If visitors have to hover, tap, or click to discover where a link goes, you’re asking them to take a risk on a click that might not go where they expect. Make the destination visible in the link label or the surrounding context.
Consider reducing choice at the primary action point. Variant A gave visitors five product links at the top of the page. Variant B gave them one. For a site with a flagship product, narrowing the hero to a single focused action may reduce the decision load for first-time visitors.
Give your primary product a dedicated CTA, not just a link. Variant A included the contract value loan in a list of hero links, but gave it no visual emphasis over the other four. Variant B introduced a dedicated button making that product the singular call to action at the top of the page. If there is one product you most want visitors to engage with first, a dedicated button in the hero draws more attention than membership in a list.
Organize by what visitors are trying to accomplish. Loan product names often carry little meaning to first-time visitors. Grouping products by business need (“grow your agency,” “manage cash flow”) gives visitors a navigation structure that works even before they know your product lineup.
These are directional takeaways from a single test on a niche credit union website design: a specialized financial product serving a narrow professional audience. A general-audience consumer banking site may have different dynamics. But the structural friction patterns this test identified, hidden link destinations, diffuse choice in the hero, product-centric organization, are common enough to be worth examining regardless of the audience.
