Schuh increased basket adds by 17%

In the example that initially inspired this post, Schuh found that altering its product page CTA from ‘Buy now’ to ‘Add to bag’ led to a 17% increase in adds.

Schuh’s deputy head of ecommerce Stuart Mcmillan said:

My hypothesis is that the control [‘Buy now’] induced a feeling of loss aversion, where the treatment [‘Add to bag’] deferred this later in the journey.

Two words in a subject line cause 23% boost in open rates

In this example from ContentVerve the words ‘Hell yeah’ led to a 23.88% increase in email opens.

An A/B test was setup to monitor the impact of adding those two words to the email subject line, with the two variations being:

  • How to find long-tail keywords on the fly
  • Hell Yeah – How to find long-tail keywords on the fly

The latter achieved the far higher open rate, with the theory being that interjections such as ‘hell yeah’ or ‘check it out’ are an effective way of capturing the reader’s attention in a crowded inbox.

One word increased conversions on MatchOffice by 14.79%

Real Estate portal MatchOffice.com ran an A/B test to find the best wording for the CTA on its product pages.

In this instance, the product pages give details of available office space but users are required to click the CTA in order to request additional information on pricing via email.

The two variations included in the A/B test were:

  • Order information and prices
  • Get information and prices

The latter variation achieved a 14.79% increase in conversion to a statistical confidence of 95%. The same test on the company’s Danish site yielded a 38.26% boost in conversions.

But why the big increase? It’s a simple case of promoting the benefits of taking an action.

The man behind the case study, Michael Lykke Aagaard, said that the word ‘Order’ emphasises what you have to do instead of what you’re going to get. In contrast, ‘Get’ conveys value as it emphasises what you’re going to receive rather than what you have to do to get it.

Wording change causes 39% fall in conversions

The power of the word ‘get’ should not be overstated, however, as this case study shows that context is equally as important as the words that are used.

Student website WriteWork setup a test that pitted the control CTA against a new treatment:

  • Control: Read full essay now
  • Treatment: Get instant access now

In this case the treatment caused a massive 39.03% drop in conversions. The conclusion is that the new CTA only conveyed value, whereas the control sample conveyed both value and relevance.

Specificity and personal touch lead to 8% increase in conversions

The final case study comes from Roader Studios, which tested the wording on a CTA that was designed to get people to opt-in to a new campaign.

The initiative was called ‘Famous in Five’ and the aim was to show people that they could make a name for themselves in their industry in just five days if they took part in Roader Studios’ new challenge.

A targeted email campaign directed potential candidates to the landing page, which displayed a CTA that said: ‘Click here to continue reading’.

However the campaign team felt that conversions would increase if the CTA was more specific and hard-hitting, so a challenger page was created with a new button that read: ‘Make me famous’.

The test ran for two weeks and the challenger beat the Original by 8.39%.

The author of the case study suggests that the increase in conversions is due to the fact that the wording is more specific, but also the addition of a strong personalised appeal with the use of the word ‘me’.