It has been a really long time since I did any testing of webpage elements and I was thinking “Hmm, what am I paying $20 a month for CrazyEgg if I haven’t logged in since summer?”  So I sat down for a moment and thought of something I could add.  Ahh, I know — maybe I’ll try adding another download button after my benefits spiel and before the ginormous 566×545 pixel sample bingo card, whose scroll-inducing enormity comes before the one visual download button in my main body.

Four days later I come back to CrazyEgg and see the result of 4,200 visitors:

86 clicks, or 10.4% of clicks on the page, on that one stinking extra button.  This increases the conversion of my main page by about 20% (some clicks are presumably “stolen” from other ways to reach the same goal).  Since my main page is also my AdWords landing page this started decreasing the amount I was paying for conversions instantly, and of course increasing the number of trials downloaded will hit the bottom line pretty darn directly.  The naive assumption is that 20% more trials is 20% more sales.

Sadly, my main page does not account for 100% of conversions, but my quick back-of-the-envelope calculation is that the main page causes about 40% of trial downloads directly, which implies that it drives something like $800 of revenue a month, so a 20% increase in that is $160 added to the bottom line (plus assorted cost savings from AdWords which I will not get into because the math gets heady).

Putting a button there is kind of jawdroppingly obvious… I’m not sure why I didn’t do it before.  Sure, there is one button visible to the left when you open the page, and the first text link in the content area is to the download (I have previously tested this and highly recommend it, because the first text link in the content area gets a huge portion of user interaction).  But if someone scrolls down to actually read the benefits list, then they’re left high and dry with nowhere to click unless they scroll past the huge image or scroll upwards.  Neither of those activities “flows” well after you’ve just read a benefits list, not nearly as well as “click here” does.

Well, lesson learned. 

I don’t think I’ve said this in a while: I love you, CrazyEgg.