| Great feedback, Joel. 1.)“ You didn't show what you were using before, but at a dismal 5% conversion I am guessing it was straight screenshots that weren't "posed" on a device or anything?“ I looked hard for a screenshot of our original landing page but couldn’t dig one up. The screenshots were of the parts of our site that were resonating the most with our most engaged users, and we got good feedback on both the screenshots themselves and the visual design. However, we found that the additional complexity for our average user in having to parse and understand a bunch of screenshots is not as effective as a sports-related photo with a simple, powerful tagline and explanation. “I don't think I would call a football and baseball image "random" on a sports site, though.” You’re right, random wasn’t the right word. We meant that we didn’t experiment much with the photo itself or ask for feedback from a wide list of sources. 2.)“Your original headline was a classic mistake.”
We are not just talking about taglines or even comparing the two taglines we showed here. In fact, “A Social Network for Sports Fans” is almost as vague as “Follow Sports Together”.
We experimented with a lot of other options for messaging and many which were more detailed and clear (3 bullet points on the key benefits of the site, for instance). In these experiments, we consistently, we found that simple but curiosity-inciting messaging works better than more detailed and clearer messaging. 4.) This lesson is obvious to us now, but was not obvious from the start. By sharing our results we are hoping that others will avoid our mistakes, even the ones that may be obvious to you. 5.) That sounds like a cool study. I'd love to read about it even you can find the link. 6.) Thanks! |
I think this is similar to what is described by Dan Ariely in his book, Predictably Irrational, as the Decoy Effect. Relevant excerpt from Wikipedia [1]:
"People not only compare things, but also compare things that are easily comparable. For example, if given the following options for a honeymoon - Paris (with free breakfast), Rome (with free breakfast), and Rome (no breakfast included), most people would probably choose Rome with the free breakfast. The rationale is that it is easier to compare the two options for Rome than it is to compare Paris and Rome. Ariely also explains the role of the decoy effect (or asymmetric dominance effect) in the decision process. The decoy effect is the phenomenon whereby consumers will tend to have a specific change in preference between two options when also presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated. This effect is the "secret agent" in many decisions."
In your case the third choice - email - is the decoy or secret agent - making the other two options more attractive for ease of use.
[1] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational Edit: Wikipedia link