Version A, emotional, benefit-oriented:

Starting right now, you will enjoy a perfectly organized DVD collection…

Movie Collector Instantly Catalogs Your DVD & Blu-Ray discs.

You’ll Save Time and Money Today.

Finally Have Total Control Over Your Movie Collection.

Version B, practical, feature-oriented:

Automatic DVD Database Software for Windows, Mac OS X & iPhone

Movie Collector Automatically Catalogs Your DVD Collection.

Just Enter Movie Titles or Scan DVD Barcodes.

Instantly Download All Movie Details and Cover Images.

Seven days of testing gave me the following interesting results:

• Downloads: up 1.5%
• Sign-ups: up 2.3%
• Sales: up 9.7%
• Average First Purchase Value: up 13.5%
• Profits: up 24.4%

I was expecting version B to do better. People who are into cataloging their stuff tend to be a serious, practical crowd. But I wasn’t expecting the difference to be this big.
I am not complaining though

Now I must say that most of my current traffic is search engine traffic, either organic or paid search, e.g. searching for “dvd database software”. I suspect that this type of visitor knows exactly what he wants to do and why. He or she is just searching for the best software to do it. They don’t need to be conviced that they should organize their stuff to save time and money and to get control over their collection. They just want confirmation that Movie Collector will do what they want as efficiently as possible.

For other less targeted traffic like Content Network traffic, results may be different.
So I unpaused my Movie Collector Content Network campaign and am testing that now. Who knows, with a special fluffy landing page the Content Network may finally become profitable.

In terms of numbers of sales, it’s doing about the same as the old design. The profits for category B are slightly higher (about 3%), mainly because the average first purchase is still higher for the new design.

All in all, the new product pages are not a great success. But at least they are now performing well enough to switch to the new pages and start optimizing their details. I already have a couple of ideas I want to try:

• Headlines: Emotional / Fluffy / Benefit oriented vs Practical / Feature oriented
• Pricing: .95 vs rounded pricing
• Upsells: Move stuff like CD Delivery, Priority Support etc… to an interstitial upsell page, as opposed to including them in my “Recommended Buying Choices”

Today, I have started the “Fluffy vs Practical” headline test.

Version A:

Starting right now, you will enjoy a perfectly organized DVD collection…

Movie Collector Instantly Catalogs Your DVD & Blu-Ray discs.

You’ll Save Time and Money Today.

Finally Have Total Control Over Your Movie Collection.

Version B:

Automatic DVD Database Software for Windows, Mac OS X & iPhone

Movie Collector Automatically Catalogs Your DVD Collection.

Just Enter Movie Titles or Scan DVD Barcodes.

Instantly Download All Movie Details and Cover Images.

I am interested to see how this one works out. I A/B tested similar messages in my Adwords ads and the practical ones worked better there, that is, they resulted in a higher CTR.

I love A/B testing
Remind me to do another post about how I do these tests exactly.