Buffer got a 17% conversion lift by fixing their signup flow
"The clearest pattern across our wins is that removing friction consistently outperforms adding persuasion. The changes that drove the biggest lifts in signup conversion all shared a common thread"
I recently sat down with Simon Heaton, Director of Marketing at Buffer, and dug into their website experiments and what is working for them in 2026.
I have admired Buffer since I first discovered their transparency page, where they publicly share not only revenue information, but employee salaries, the full road map, and countless other aspects of the business.
Unlike a lot of brands where transparency feels a bit performative, for Buffer, it genuinely seems tied to the type of brand they are (they even send an email auto-cancelling inactive customers just to do right by people)
Let’s dive into the conversation…
Has there been any changes on the website that made a statistically significant difference in conversions? What were they?
So we run a continuous experimentation program on the marketing site, and the clearest pattern across our wins is that removing friction consistently outperforms adding persuasion.
The changes that drove the biggest lifts in signup conversion all shared a common thread: they simplified the path to account creation rather than trying to convince people harder.
Our highest-impact experiment was cutting an entire page from the signup flow.
We were routing people from the homepage to the pricing page before signup, and 57% dropped off between those two pages.
Sending them straight to sign up led to a 17% signup conversion lift, so pretty sizable as an outcome from a single test.
Simplifying page design and messaging was the next biggest theme. Full redesigns of both the homepage and pricing page — focused on clarity, transparency, and reducing the number of decisions a visitor has to make — both shipped as wins.
Broadening our hero copy to speak to a wider set of use cases, and swapping illustrations for real product screenshots also improved conversion.
Removing technical barriers made a difference too.
Replacing a visible CAPTCHA with an invisible one on the signup form directly improved completion rates. And even micro-copy changes mattered; switching our CTA from “Get started now” to “Get started for free” won because it lowered the perceived commitment.
What didn’t work is equally telling. Adding persistent banners on blog pages, social proof on the signup page, and defaulting to higher pricing tiers all lost.
The lesson: once someone is in the signup flow, they’ve mostly decided. Extra elements at that point are noise.
So the lesson for us has been pretty simple: subtract before you add.
Casey: Our data here at DoWhatWorks follows many of the patterns that Simon shares in their data. For example, the idea that “removing friction consistently outperforms adding persuasion” is something we see substantiated in many tests, like this recent one from Mercury, where the clean, simple first-step sign-up form beats out adding additional value points and social proof.
We also have data on tests around additional social proof losing on sign-up flows, and banners losing on both blogs and homepages in A/B testing. This test below is from Navan.
I notice you have a website block for support while usually teams just have a link in the footer. Can you share any info on that decision?
Everything on our homepage has to earn its spot, and support consistently does.
Users tell us all the time that support is one of the reasons they choose Buffer and stick with Buffer, so we treat it like a real product differentiator, not just a post-purchase function.
We’ve always taken a very human approach here. We used to call our customer advocacy team the “Happiness Heroes,” which says a lot about the philosophy. The photos on that section are real team members, not stock images, and many of those folks have been with Buffer for 10+ years. They know the product deeply and genuinely care about helping people succeed.
That mindset goes beyond response times. We’re a human-first company, and that shows up in how we support users. Our team often knows customers by name. They go out of their way to help in difficult moments. We’ve always tried to treat people like people, not tickets.
What’s interesting is that support doesn’t just solve problems for us, it drives retention. We regularly maintain a 95%+ happiness score (CSAT), and customers often come out of support interactions feeling even better about Buffer than they did before.
That’s why it gets homepage real estate. It’s one of the clearest examples of what makes Buffer different.
One of the things that put Buffer first on my radar was your transparency page and the breadth of that. Can you tell me more about how much traffic or engagement that gets? I was curious if it’s more the signal of doing it or if lots of prospects actually check it out pre-purchase.
It’s a bit of both, but it starts with values, not strategy.
Transparency at Buffer has been a core part of who we are for a long time. We’ve been building in public since 2013, sharing things most companies would never share, because we believe openness builds trust, accountability, and stronger teams.
So the /open pages exist because that’s who we are, not because we’re optimizing for a funnel. That said, to your question about whether people actually engage with it, yes, it does get meaningful traffic, as well as press/social mentions. But more importantly, the signal it sends is enormous.
We hear from customers and users constantly that they chose Buffer, stayed with Buffer, or recommended Buffer specifically because of our commitment to openness. It’s a trust signal that compounds over time, and more companies should be investing here.
To me, the bigger impact is the signal. It tells people what kind of company we are. Human-first, thoughtful, values-led, and willing to be open about how we work. That matters a lot, especially in software, where trust is such a big part of the buying decision.
So to directly answer — it’s both. The signal of doing it carries real weight in how people perceive and choose Buffer. And yes, prospects do check it out. But the reason it resonates is because it’s authentic, not performative.
One thing we think a lot about when it comes to CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) at DoWhatWorks, is starting with where does a brands traffic come from. Optimizing a page that is being sent paid ad traffic, versus traffic that comes from social channels vs. traffic that comes from referrals, all look very different. Anything you can share about what Buffer optimizes for here?
Definitely, and I think that framing is right.
As a bootstrapped, product-led business, most of our traffic has historically come from organic channels: search, social, word of mouth, brand. We do have paid programs as well, but we think about those very differently.
For paid search, for example, we tend to use much more focused landing pages. Minimal distractions, limited navigation, fewer competing actions, just a clear path into the product. The job there is conversion, while organic is different. Those pages need to do more work. They need enough depth to rank, enough substance to genuinely answer the query, and enough context to help someone evaluate whether Buffer is right for them. By nature, that usually means lower conversion rates than paid landing pages, but that’s not a failure. It reflects broader intent captured.
Social traffic for us mostly flows to our blog, YouTube, and educational content. We use social to support product marketing, but also to educate and build trust with our audience.
We have a huge base of creators and small teams using Buffer, and we’re in a strong position to share useful insights back with them. So social is often more about trust, affinity, and community than immediate conversion.
The through-line across all of it is still the same: how quickly can we get someone to value?
Sometimes that value is inside the product, and sometimes it’s before the product. For example, we’ve built AI-powered tools on the site that people can use without logging in, which gives them a way to experience value before they ever create an account.
Buffer has minimal (if any) talk of AI on your homepage. Can you give some background on that decision?
That’s intentional. AI isn’t the core value proposition of Buffer, so we haven’t made it the headline on the homepage.
We do have AI capabilities in the product, and we’re continuing to build in that direction. We have an AI assistant for content creation and ideation, AI-supported features in analytics and engagement, and we’re using AI internally all the time as well. So it’s not that we’re ignoring it.
But we have a pretty clear point of view here. In social media, authenticity still matters a lot. Maybe more than ever. Feeds are increasingly full of generic AI content, and we think the people who stand out will be the ones who keep showing up with a real voice and perspective.
So for us, AI is a tool in service of that. It helps people move faster, get unstuck, and improve their workflow, but it’s not the main reason someone chooses Buffer.
That could evolve over time, but that’s how we think about it today.
Anything else you want to share around data or performance of the site or certain pages I would love to learn from the team!
One broader thing that feels worth sharing is that, like many companies that grew up on content marketing and organic traffic over the last decade, we’re operating in a pretty different environment now.
Zero-click behaviour is rising. Discovery is shifting. And a lot of the informational content that used to drive big top-of-funnel traffic just doesn’t create the same value it once did.
What’s working better now, both in traditional search and increasingly in LLM-driven discovery, is content with clearer commercial or evaluation intent. Pages that help someone understand the product, compare options, explore a specific use case, or see how Buffer fits their needs.
So our organic strategy has been shifting in that direction. Less obsession with raw traffic volume, more focus on quality, relevance, and intent. That’s where we’re seeing the strongest results, both from a conversion standpoint and from an overall brand standpoint.
We’ve entered a world where building is no longer the bottleneck.
Tools like Claude Code and vibe coding platforms have made it accessible to everyone.
What’s still hard is knowing what to build and what will actually move the needle.
That’s the problem we’re solving at DoWhatWorks.
We analyze millions of websites to surface A/B tests from leading brands, then organize the results of those tests into an easy-to-use platform.
So before your next redesign or website experiment, you’re starting from a place of data, not anecdotal experience.
Reply here (or book a demo directly through the site) if we can help you.