Cutting three unnecessary fields from the first sign-up step, and matching each new lead’s follow-ups to the search that brought them in, got new users to verified (KYC) status sooner. We learned it at a forex broker: cut the friction the rules do not require, and make the first message match the reason someone signed up. Verification was a separate, later step; the aim was to reach it sooner, not to make it lighter.
The funnel looked reasonable on paper. Traffic was decent, and leads were coming in. But between the landing page and the first real milestone, a verified account, too many people dropped out. Everyone had a theory, and nobody wanted to touch the CRM.
The Integration Nobody Wanted to Own
Our goal was clear. First, improve landing-page conversion at the top of the funnel. Then make sure that traffic turned into registrations that became verified accounts, not just leads.
The bottleneck was a hard disconnect between what a user saw on a marketing page and what happened once they crossed into the broker’s internal systems. Until the landing pages talked to the CRM, nothing after sign-up could reflect why a lead had come in.
So the obstacle was execution, not strategy. Connecting the landing pages to the CRM met pushback right away: legacy systems, teams protective of their processes, and a technical lift nobody had budgeted for. We brought in a developer dedicated to the marketing team so we could move faster. Even so, a project we had estimated at one month took nearly three months before the integration worked.
It is easy to stall at this point and keep polishing ad copy and hero images while the leak sits deeper in the stack. Three months was a long time for a connection that should have been table stakes, but what came after made up for the delay.
Three Fields, Then Follow-Ups That Match the Search
Once the integration was live, we ran structured acquisition tests across Google Ads and Meta, looking for the highest-leverage change we could make. The answer was simpler than we expected: we removed three unnecessary fields from the first onboarding step.
Why did three fields matter? At the first step of any sign-up, each field prompts a quiet calculation: is this worth it? Few people consciously decide to leave. They feel the friction and stop. Taking out three fields that did nothing for the user made that moment easier to pass.
The second change built on the first. Once search intent reached the CRM, we used a marketing automation platform to route each new lead into a sequence based on the search that brought them in. Someone who searched for “gold trading” and clicked through landed on a gold-specific page, and once they signed up, they received educational follow-ups about trading gold. From the ad to the landing page to the follow-ups, the experience read as one conversation.
New users reached verified (KYC) status sooner. We did not push them harder; they understood what they had signed up for.
What Does the EU’s New AML Regulation Mean for Your Sign-Up Funnel?
For EU-regulated firms, it mostly means one rulebook instead of many, not a new kind of check. Customer due diligence already applies under national laws based on the EU’s anti-money-laundering directive. From July 10, 2027, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 moves those duties into a single regulation that applies directly in every member state, and the firms it covers include investment firms.
The core checks are set in law. A firm must identify and verify each customer and understand the purpose and intended nature of the business relationship. Outside lower-risk cases, the minimum identification data for an individual includes all names and surnames, place and full date of birth, nationalities, and usual place of residence.
Friction that has nothing to do with those checks, such as extra marketing fields, a generic sequence after sign-up, or a weak bridge between ad traffic and the CRM, sits on top of steps you cannot remove. That makes it the part worth fixing now, while you map your onboarding against the new rules. This is not legal advice; your compliance team decides what the rules require for your firm.
How Do You Cut Sign-Up Friction Without Touching Compliance?
Cut only the fields your compliance team does not need at the first step, and make the first follow-up match the reason the user signed up. In practice, that means two checks.
- Sort the fields at step one. Marketing fields, such as how someone heard about you, can often wait until you have delivered some value. Identity, AML, and appropriateness data is collected when and how the rules require, and that is your compliance team’s call, not the growth team’s. If a field asks about trading experience, treat it as a compliance question first.
- Check the first message after sign-up. Does it reflect why each new user showed up, or is it a generic sequence someone built once and forgot? In our case, the shorter form and the matched follow-ups worked together; neither was the whole answer.
Work for a second forex and CFD broker shows the same logic. There, simplifying registration and tightening the link between the website and the client portal were part of a wider program in which monthly KYC-verified customers more than quadrupled. This onboarding and conversion work is part of our acquisition and retention services.
Friction rarely announces itself. It raises acquisition costs and flattens conversion until someone goes looking for it. The lesson we keep coming back to is to build the flow around the user’s intent, not around internal convenience.
Verification is only the first milestone. What happens after the first deposit or purchase needs its own system, and we cover it in how we build a post-purchase retention loop.
Alchemy Avenue is a marketing agency, not a broker, and does not provide investment advice.
Sources: Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 31 May 2024 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing, recital 2 and Articles 2, 3, 20, 22, and 90, Official Journal of the European Union, L series, June 19, 2024 (accessed October 23, 2026). The second broker’s figures come from our own client reporting and are shared anonymously.
Updated October 23, 2026: we merged a related post into this one, re-checked its facts, and added sources.
