ExactTarget Used A/B Testing To Improve Its Page and Increase CTR

In September 2013, ExactTarget hosted Connections 2013, a premier Digital Marketing conference in Indianapolis. To attract registrations, the company developed a landing page.

Here is the snapshot:

The image on the original page showed a laptop screen to draw attention to the announcement of the conference. While this image was not completely irrelevant for their conversion goal, it gave a false impression that the event was a virtual conference instead of a live event.

ExactTarget knew that appropriate images could make a significant difference to how visitors perceived the information and call-to-action messages on websites. Indeed, they had experienced this in the past.

So, they decided to test the hypothesis that using an image that visitors would see as more relevant would improve the CTR to the registration page.

The original version served as the control for the test.

ExactTarget replaced the laptop image with an image of a conference, as shown in their variation below:

More than 11,000 visitors were tested for each version.

The variation beat the original by 40.18%. This was probably because the image conveyed the message of a live event buzzing with participants—a place where prospects would want to be.

This was just one test in a series of tests by ExactTarget. And yes, the result doesn’t directly say anything about the actual registrations from the landing page. But it did reinforce the expectation that relevant images play a crucial role in pushing visitors down the conversion funnel. Depending on which step of the funnel the test is implemented, images can even help generate leads and even registrations/sales.

It’s important that the images you use should look compelling. But using images only to “beautify” the site may end up as a waste of valuable real estate on websites. So, the next time you need to select an image for a web/landing page, consider its “relevance” to the purpose and messaging of the page. Use images that somehow reinforce an important feature of your product, service, or event.

Some typical image types that are completely ignored by people are large pictures included to serve no other purpose than to “jazz up” the page. The images that were scrutinized and thought of as important content was usually product pictures and images of real people (as opposed to stock photos).

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