Comments on: Does Your Product Logo Actually Matter?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 05:18:25 +0000

A/B testing. I use http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo

By: drew

drew — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 18:31:14 +0000

Question, how were you able to quantify the results?

You said that people would log on to the site and randomly get a different image. How did you measure that yours actually won?

By: dudette

dudette — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:15:24 +0000

Oops, got cut off. Silly curly quote. I think the logo chosen from 99Designs is a nice logo, but not implemented well in this design at all. It’s not fair to just drop it into a design that was created for another logo. For one, if you’re going to go with that logo, then you need to have a picture or illustration of a bingo card elsewhere on the page. For two, the green swoop in the header was obviously designed to complement the first logo. And throwing the second logo on top of it doesn’t work, b/c the text of the logo gets lost. Not fair to throw 99Designs under the bus, in my opinion.

By: dudette

dudette — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:09:51 +0000

I think the logo chosen from 99Designs is a nice logo, but not implemented well in this design at all. It’s not fair to just drop it into a design that was created for another logo. For one, if you

By: dude

dude — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:01:58 +0000

This is an argument that is hard to concretely solve because it’s so subjective. For instance, I think the chosen ‘new logo’ is absolutely awful. It says nothing about your business and clashes with the top header style in general. The original logo is almost certainly ‘bad’ in most people’s opinion, but not as bad as some generic no-substance flowy B that doesn’t fit with the site.

It’s as if I wanted to do an A/B test to determine if FedEx or Amazon had a better logo, and I tested it by putting Amazon’s logo on FedEx’s website. Well, no shit, Amazon’s logo looks terrible at the top of fedex.com!

Try this again with a _real_ new logo and I bet you’ll see the opposite happen.

By: Daniel Rose

Daniel Rose — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:46:05 +0000

Hi Patrick, I discovered your blog today (linked from an article on currybet).
I found this article incredibly informative and helpful! I guess it really highlights the effect a good quality logo can have. I think where people run into trouble is mistaking a logo for a brand. It’s really only one element (in fact, I recently wrote an article on logo’s and branding concepts.
In any case, thanks for the interesting article, I’d be interested in seeing the statistics over a longer time period, too.
Thanks,
Daniel

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:38:20 +0000

Yea, the original logo is way better than the new one, which doesn’t seem to fit at all. Not only that, but the name of your product is obscured in the new logo. So, is this a fair A/B test? I would have to agree that it is a fair test and it does tell us something. I think it tells us that poorly designed logos impede the buyer’s positive experience.

Chris

By: Amber

Amber — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:07:14 +0000

The 99designs logo looks pretty bad compared to some designs I’ve seen on there. And it really doesn’t fit with the “bubble” design of the site or the color scheme (especially as compared to the original). Of course, it’s easy to call the losing logo out after the fact, but this one seems abnormally bad.

By: enver sav

enver sav — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:32:37 +0000

Hey Patrick, did you ever do a logo vs no logo A/B test. I have a feeling that logos are remnants of print publisihing where they served as a hook to grab buyer’s attention when looking at the magazine rack. The closest visual element that accomplishes this is the favicon appearing at the tab bar or address drop down.

Unless you have a widget based marketing strategy, where you reinforce a brand visually, logos are a waste of time and money.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:58:19 +0000

This is A/B testing gone totally wrong. As Dennis said, the lost sales are most likely due to burning the logo recognition you had with your previous logo.

I’m a designer, and I’m the first one to denounce the bullshitting my colleages do. Change your logo to a giraffe and you would still have the same numbers. Logos (or branding in general) allows you to build meaning into a recognizable symbol. If you think the logo of Apple, Nike, or Coca Cola logo is great you probably also think the company is great.

If you provide great service, a solid product, friendly support and good value, your logo becomes a visual representation of it to your customer’s eyes. Provide shitty service and the same thing happes (AT&T). There are some things a designer can do to make it stick (being simple, or having a visual pun such as FedEx) but after that you’re on your own.

I love A/B testing, but this is impossible to track.

And BTW, I don’t think your site looks terrible, it looks like a thrift store: personal, honest and cheap.