New website design finally starts performing

And a week has gone by again. But now we’re finally seeing better results from the “B design”. Phew…

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”

Continue reading

New website design still not winning over old one

Here’s the results after another week of testing
(results of new design compared to the old design):

  • Downloads: down 4.22%
  • Sign ups: up 1.50%
  • Sales: down 19,11%
  • Profits: down 11,52%
  • Average First Purchase Value: up 10%

Something’s not right in the new design, but it’s hard to determine what it is.
Yes, I know, that is because we changed too many things at once.
Continue reading

New website design, take two

Last week, I told you about the A/B split test I started, comparing my old website design vs a radical new design. I was planning to let it run for 2 weeks, unless the results after 1 week would be dramatic. Well, they are:

These are the results after 7 days (A is the old design, B is the new design):

  • Downloads: About the same
  • Sign ups: 20 percent more for design B
  • Sales: 19 percent less for design B
  • Profits: 10 percent less for design B
  • Average First Purchase Value: 10 percent higher for B

Continue reading

Testing a new website design

The design of our website is being changed almost continously. I am always trying to improve its conversion power, by making small optimizations to the layout, the design and the copy.

But this time I am implementing a more radical change: a completely new layout. In the next couple of weeks I will be testing the new layout vs the old layout using an A/B split test. That is, fifty percent of new visitors will be seeing the old layout, the other fifty percent will get the new layout. Then we’ll be measuring sign-ups, downloads, sales and profits in both groups.
Continue reading