Written on July 31, 2009 by Stephan Schmidt

A/B Testing Download Landing Pages in Wordpress

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Recently I’ve published my first eBook about reducing time to market in software development. This was a good chance to start some A/B testing. With A/B testing you have one (or several) alternatives of a landing page and measure which one performs better.

Changes can be small, but have huge results, as the recent 37signals A/B testing has shown:

The winner: 30% better conversion than the original

I’ve chosen to switch the image of my eBook, with one 2d and one 3d cover you see a lot today on eBook download pages. The author of boxshot 3d was kind enough to supply a copy for the test. I was lucky because boxshot 3d produces stunning results.

After I couldn’t get Google Website Optimzer working, I developed my own A/B test and relearned a litte PHP. Not very hard so you can also do this on your own (no magic!), but it’s easier to follow this video on A/B testing in wordpress.

Now for the results:
abtests A/B Testing Download Landing Pages in Wordpress

The Page had three download links:

One behind the image
One right after the image
One at the end of the article

I’ve stopped after 500 downloads and only supplied the winner thereafter. The results of the test were astonishing, as you can see. The main link had nearly 43% more downloads with the 3D image version! The second link didn’t work quite as well, perhaps because the 3D image was out of sight when people scrolled down. This would suggest that as soon as the image is out of sight, people are no longer influenced by the 3d image.

The astonishing results are consistent with findings by others:

I have been doing Website AB Multivariate Testing for over 7 years. The consistent result is that small design changes make the biggest difference to improve your ecommerce and lead generation conversion rates

So when you provide eBook downloads, go with a 3D version of your eBook! I’m curious what you would have tried, what changes to a download pages you think would increase conversion? Please leave a comment.

Hope this article helps, you can now download my eBook and see for yourself, enjoy.

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About the author: Stephan Schmidt is head of development at brands4friends. He has more than 15 years of internet technology experience and 10 years experience in agile. He was head of development, consultant and CTO and is a speaker, author and blog writer. He specializes in organizing and optimizing software development helping companies by increasing productivity with lean software development and agile methodologies. Want to know more? All views are only his own.