Can A Customer Testimonial Negatively Effect Landing Page Conversion Rate?
January 10th, 2007
I have a Google Alert setup to alert me whenever there is news on the net about landing pages. Today I saw the headline “How a Customer Testimonial Cut Our Sales in Half” which is an interesting title considering common knowledge is that a customer testimonial increases landing page conversion rate. I read through their blog entry which concluded that their landing page with a testimonial converted at only 9.35% where the identical page without a testimonial converted at 22.69%. If you read their blog there is some missing information and the whole test wasnt really that scientific.
The pages each got less then 120 clicks total which is less then enough to make a true scientific evaluation. I am going to assume their traffic is coming through Paid Search Engine Marketing. If so, what did the ads say? If the ads were different then it may skew the results. Finally maybe its not the customer testimonial itself but the placement or size. I wonder how the page would convert if the testimonial were smaller and located under the sign up form. I have nothing against MindValleyLabs. I think they are a good company, I would just like to see more proof to support their findings.
xBMANx
Entry Filed under: General Internet Advertising
2 Comments Add your own
1. Mike | January 17th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Let me elaborate on our findings.
1) It was a controlled experiment via PPC so all the traffic saw the same ads and ended up on either of the two landing pages.
2) Since it is a controlled experiement the results are not skewed and statistically speaking results can be valid much sooner than 120 clicks. I am talking about a standard t test at a 95% probability.
3) You are right, we need to test different placements of the testimonial to findout whether it was the testimonial or how the testimonial was displayed on our page.
Hope you enjoy reading our blog.
2. xbmanx | January 17th, 2007 at 2:35 am
Mike,
Thanks for the comment and thanks for clearing those issues up. I find your testing very interesting and would like to see results after you move the testimonial around. Good work and good blogging, I enjoy reading about your work.
xBMANx
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed