A contractor rebuilt a utility company’s user sign-up flow with an HTML-first, Astro-based form that works without JavaScript, stores each step server-side, and meets WCAG AA. By using simple form submissions, progressive enhancement, and a tiny web component for validation, form completions doubled overnight and users never lost their data.

• An HTML-first, server-rendered Astro rebuild (each wizard step a real page, plain form POSTs) doubled form completions overnight after a React version with spinners and localStorage-based image storage failed and was rolled back in three days.
• The "missing" users were real all along—JS-based analytics tools had been silently dropping people whose browsers/connections choked on the old JS bundles.
• A 1KB web component (validation-enhancer) added accessible, non-intrusive validation on top of native HTML form validation without sacrificing progressive enhancement or WCAG AA compliance.
• Storing each step's data server-side meant users never lost progress, even resuming an application a month later.