The Company
VenueSphere is an online third-party referral business that helps individuals and companies find a perfect venue for parties, meetings, conferences and other events. They are based out of London and their service is completely free for visitors.
To capture leads, they have a neat and simple form above the fold on their homepage. The headline, just above the form, “Looking for a venue in London?” describes the value proposition aptly. The headline is accompanied by a sub-headline that originally read, “Call us or fill in a form to speak to a dedicated venue coordinator”. This is how it looked on their homepage:
The Test
Quoting Ben at Venue Sphere, “Our homepage is fairly broad – it doesn’t perform brilliantly in getting conversions because it’s not very focused. So I wanted to get people’s attention, so they read more about what we do.” And so he decided to play around with the sub-headline in an attempt to increase the leads they were getting. He wanted to try something more dynamic and attention-grabbing. The new sub-headline read, “Stop right now! Call us or fill in the form and we’ll do the hard work for you for free” which he set up for test with VWO.
The goal that they were tracking with VWO was the visit to the thank-you page (that appears when people fill the contact form), which is equal to the number of leads from the form.
This is how the new sub-headline looked on the homepage:
The Result
Close to 1200 visitors became a part of this test and the variation emerged as the winner. The new sub-headline recorded a whopping 69% increase in leads.
Ben had also integrated the test with Google Analytics and he also added, “I was also able to see that our phone conversions were better with the variation, as was time on site, pages per visit and bounce rate.”
Here’s a quick comparison image showing the control and variation:
Why the Variation Won
To understand why the variation was able to get 69% more leads, let’s deconstruct the new sub-headline into three parts:
Part 1: “Stop right now! Call us or fill in the form”
After reading the headline, this part in the sub-headline clearly directs the visitors what do they have to do next. The “Stop right now” phrase with an exclamation at the end though sounds abrupt or forceful but it definitely got visitors’ attention. Quoting Ben, “I was concerned that it might be too forceful, that it might put people off, but that didn’t seem to be the case. I think that there is a strong case for saying that users want to be told what to do in certain situations”
Part 2: “and we’ll do the hard work”
This phrase assures the user that VenueSphere takes complete responsibility of helping them find the perfect venue. It also directly lets the visitors know that finding the most delightful venue could be lot of hard work and VenueSphere would do it all for them.
Part 3: “for free.”
And comes my favorite and the game-changing part! The magical word “free” finally lets the visitors know that they just have to fill the form and the company will help them find the perfect venue. At absolutely no cost.
Another customer of VWO was able to increase their conversion rate by 28% by adding the word “free”. Read the full A/B testing case study here.
I am not sure which part motivated the visitors most. The first where they were directed what-next, or next when the company took complete responsibility for them, or the last — that it was all for free! But I would definitely love to see VenueSphere perform more tests where they test these messages and understand what is it that their visitors care about most — the fact that the service is free or that they don’t have to do absolutely anything to find a venue.
Tell me what do you think! Let’s talk in the comments section below.
Bonus: You should also read this absolutely insightful article from the VWO blog where Anand gives 10 tips to write headlines that convert.
The post A/B Testing Copy on Homepage Increased Leads by 69% [Case Study] appeared first on VWO Blog.
A/B Testing Copy on Homepage Increased Leads by 69% [Case Study]
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