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This Just Tested: An aesthetic design that produced 189% more leads

by peter.max
25 replies
I am a keen supporter of testing and I always read Marketing Expeirments blog to learn more about online testing. I thought I'd share their post today. It is amazing how much impact the visual appeal of a website has on conversion.

This Just Tested: An aesthetic design that produced 189% more leads
#189% #aesthetic #design #leads #produced #tested
  • Profile picture of the author Landis
    A huge improvement in conversion rates, but clearly there was too much changed to even conclude that it was just the design. For an example, he reduced the number of fields required from 20 to only 4. That most likely was the biggest factor in the bump in conversion rates. Not saying the design didnt help at all, as he did make it look more appealing, but it was probably reducing the number of forms that had the biggest impact.
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    • Profile picture of the author CASimmons
      Originally Posted by carpetmuncher View Post

      A huge improvement in conversion rates, but clearly there was too much changed to even conclude that it was just the design. For an example, he reduced the number of fields required from 20 to only 4. That most likely was the biggest factor in the bump in conversion rates. Not saying the design didnt help at all, as he did make it look more appealing, but it was probably reducing the number of forms that had the biggest impact.
      The form does seem to have had the biggest affect along with the clear value proposition in the headline. These 2 changes probably had the most impact.
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  • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
    I'd also like to point out that the new design has a person in it.

    People like to buy from other people. Not big faceless companies.

    So I agree there are just way too many factors changed to isolate anything to the design.
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    • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
      Originally Posted by CDarklock View Post

      I'd also like to point out that the new design has a person in it.

      People like to buy from other people. Not big faceless companies.

      So I agree there are just way too many factors changed to isolate anything to the design.
      Good point. That gives the feeling that if there were problems, there would be somebody there to help.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    What they said --^
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  • Profile picture of the author Emogen
    The improvements that would have made me more interested were the point form value proposition and the clear headings but as mentioned there are so many differences that it is difficult to credit a single change.

    The original form was possible too confusing for most leads as well, a pure business person would not understand some of the terms they were listing with the radio buttons.
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  • Profile picture of the author Shaun OReilly
    Originally Posted by peter.max View Post

    I am a keen supporter of testing and I always read Marketing Expeirments blog to learn more about online testing. I thought I'd share their post today. It is amazing how much impact the visual appeal of a website has on conversion.

    This Just Tested: An aesthetic design that produced 189% more leads
    Thanks for the link to the site.

    I wouldn't however conclude that the jump in response
    was necessarily due to the graphical elements.

    There are many other potential influences such as the
    different information being requested on each version.

    Dedicated to your success,

    Shaun
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    • Profile picture of the author jeskola
      I think the big thing here is the form.

      I would be interested in seeing the previous design with the only change to it being the new form and see what the response is!

      I think it wouldn't be too far off.
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  • Profile picture of the author peter.max
    I think it also demostrates the value of testing and keeping data. It is a significant improvement even though quite a number of things were changed
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  • Profile picture of the author davemiz
    lol... big deal..... its B2B.

    its easy to improve that much when you're starting from crap.

    these big companies dont do direct marketing like we do.

    i'd be more impressed if it was an offer already doing good numbers and THEN getting a bump like that.
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    • Profile picture of the author MichaelHiles
      Originally Posted by davemiz View Post

      lol... big deal..... its B2B.

      its easy to improve that much when you're starting from crap.

      these big companies dont do direct marketing like we do.

      i'd be more impressed if it was an offer already doing good numbers and THEN getting a bump like that.

      Actually this is not true.

      Many big companies certainly do direct marketing, and do it extremely well to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

      Champion Windows.... Deprecated Browser Error a giant direct marketing company

      Most of the credit card companies are direct marketing companies... MBNA was built almost entirely on direct marketing before it was sold to BofA.

      Sears Home Services: Installation, cleaning, repair, and home improvement help home improvement division of Sears... almost exclusively direct marketing... and Sears itself was built exclusively on direct marketing, as was JC Penny.

      Back in the .com heyday, we had almost every major ISP provider, and even Yahoo advertising with us in our 30 Val-Pak markets at Reach. CitySearch wanted to give me a daily hand job for dead inventory space.

      Oh... Val-Pak... a division of Cox... another billion dollar direct marketing player.

      Sorry man, I am not trying to be argumentative, but the kind of attitide of "well that's B2B" or "that's corporate so they don't know their asses from a hole in the ground" attitude is simply incorrect and could be costly when trying to learn best practices. I certainly learn as much or more from corporate direct marketing giants as I do lone gunmen like John Carlton.

      I presently have a pretty decent little consulting business almost exclusively in the corporate/b2b direct marketing arena, so I must be doing something right here.


      As for MarketingExperiments... they do great stuff, and I learn a lot out of there... as well as MarketingProfs and many other "stupid corporate marketing" sites that have members who have done something right to build and sustain billion dollar companies.

      In fact, some of these individual companies do more in sales in a single year than the entire combined efforts of the present internet marketing "syndicate" of gurus have done in their entire business careers.

      Wisdom says it's not an "either/or" proposition, but an "and" one.
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    • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
      I would have to agree that the form size is the big factor here.

      I had a B2B client recently who insisted upon a 30 field sign-up form and just would not budge on cutting it back to a much more reasonable number.
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      • Profile picture of the author MichaelHiles
        Originally Posted by bgmacaw View Post

        I would have to agree that the form size is the big factor here.

        I had a B2B client recently who insisted upon a 30 field sign-up form and just would not budge on cutting it back to a much more reasonable number.
        I just got done fighting with a client who INSISTED on a zip code. Name, email address, and zip code. I asked them WTF are you going to use the zip code for, and they said to allocate the lead to a regional rep so the sales guy could take over.

        I asked if the prospect was actually ready to start talking to a sales rep at that point of initial curiosity and they said, "well we have to feed our people".

        Interesting. So we uncovered a different problem in the organization that we're now solving... (inward, self-interest focus in marketing vs. customer-centric marketing and sales)
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    • Profile picture of the author Raydal
      Originally Posted by davemiz View Post

      lol... big deal..... its B2B.

      its easy to improve that much when you're starting from crap.
      ...
      i'd be more impressed if it was an offer already doing good numbers and THEN getting a bump like that.
      I agree that the first page was already making so many mistakes
      that the improvements were just waiting to happen. I would have
      also been more impressed in going from good to great rather than
      bad to good.

      I agree with you here.

      -Ray Edwards
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  • Profile picture of the author Steven Carl Kelly
    I certainly feel like the shortening of the form from 20 (20!) fields to four had the biggest impact on conversion rate. Adding a person helped, too. In all of my testing over the years, adding a person to a sales page has improved conversions virtually 100% of the time.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      While the proposition/conclusion might deeply offend the statistics wonks, the bottom line is that the company almost tripled response to their landing page. They now have a new control to test against.

      In my opinion, good design is very important. And really good design goes virtually unnoticed as it does its job directing your attention to the offer...
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Hancox
    By the way, this is a great argument for just sometimes testing RADICAL changes all at once. In this case, two pretty radically different versions, 189% more leads with one.

    Most marketers would still be piddling around with the headline
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Jones
    There's just too many changes to put it down to any one factor. I have to admit that I myself also found the second page far more interesting to my eye - so kudos to the design team but I can't see a formula for repetition in it.

    Cheers though :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author davemiz
    michael,

    I get what you're saying, but like i said... they don't do things the way we do them.

    B2B is not the same as what we do.... you're talking about companies... with staffs... and big budgets.

    That said, with all that, with all these "pro's" you mention, they still couldn't design something to convert?

    I guarantee you I can take that page and get a higher conversion.

    And I'm 1 dude. Not a team doing "hundreds of millions"..... those numbers don't mean jack. How much is their budget? its all relative bro.

    If you look at the majority of the case studies on marketing experiments, like the one in question, you can tell in 3 seconds they dont know what they're doing... even though they have these "marketing pros" and big budgets.

    as a result its pretty easy to improve stuff thats crap.

    Its easy to show a big improvement when you're starting with a faulty, poorly designed/thought out piece.

    Try taking something thats already doing well, and done well and make it convert better... THAT to me, is something to take note of.
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    • Profile picture of the author peter.max
      Originally Posted by davemiz View Post

      michael,

      I get what you're saying, but like i said... they don't do things the way we do them.

      B2B is not the same as what we do.... you're talking about companies... with staffs... and big budgets.

      That said, with all that, with all these "pro's" you mention, they still couldn't design something to convert?

      I guarantee you I can take that page and get a higher conversion.

      And I'm 1 dude. Not a team doing "hundreds of millions"..... those numbers don't mean jack. How much is their budget? its all relative bro.

      If you look at the majority of the case studies on marketing experiments, like the one in question, you can tell in 3 seconds they dont know what they're doing... even though they have these "marketing pros" and big budgets.

      as a result its pretty easy to improve stuff thats crap.

      Its easy to show a big improvement when you're starting with a faulty, poorly designed/thought out piece.

      Try taking something thats already doing well, and done well and make it convert better... THAT to me, is something to take note of.
      Well is just shows that there is money to be made in helping B2B offline businesses to optimize landing pages and squeeze pages. And they are paying for it...
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      • Profile picture of the author Shaun OReilly
        Originally Posted by peter.max View Post

        Well is just shows that there is money to be made in helping B2B offline businesses to optimize landing pages and squeeze pages. And they are paying for it...
        That's for sure.

        Here's another great site for a company who do conversion
        rate work for BIG companies such as Sony and even Google:

        Conversion Rate Optimization | Conversion Rate Experts (no affil.)

        Dedicated to your success,

        Shaun
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        • Profile picture of the author Martin Luxton
          On the original site the header created a massive disconnect for me.

          My first thought was, "Why are they showing a picture of a men's locker room?"

          What is obviously a picture of their server rack to the business owner is not so obvious to the visitor.

          Martin
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      • Profile picture of the author MichaelHiles
        Originally Posted by peter.max View Post

        Well is just shows that there is money to be made in helping B2B offline businesses to optimize landing pages and squeeze pages. And they are paying for it...
        Some of us have sort of just called this "web development" and have been doing it for a very long time.

        And YES, those companies are still paying for it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Raja Kamil
    Here my opinion;
    Its certainly depend who your customer are.
    In this case, the kind of customer, love simple.
    Simple design.
    Only a few questionnaire.

    But, in certain cases, some websites need a lot of form, the owner of the website and the visitors themselves already have a mind setting that they need to fill a lot of stuff.

    Other thing that I noticed other than the web design and number of form is the banner.
    It was distracting. Placed just below the submit button is not a clever option though.

    Good for getting attention on banner but worse for getting replies.
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  • Profile picture of the author ShaneRQR
    Even though (as pointed out) it's too bad we can't see test results from individual elements being adjusted, it's still very interesting to see, IMO.

    I just hate that no one ever uses percentage points to talk about conversion increases, like they bloody well should. (e.g. going from 1% to 2% is 1 percentage point increase and 100% increase. Going from 5% to 6% is 1 percentage point increase and 20% increase.)
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