A/B Testing: Changing 3 words results in 43% increase in funded accounts

By Daniel Burstein On Jan 9, 2013

A recent MarketingExperiments Web clinic featured the following experiment …

Background: This test was implemented in the secure section of a large financial institution’s website. The offer was an up-sell for a savings account.

Goal: To increase approved and funded savings accounts

Primary Research Question: Which link copy will result in the highest impression to funded account rate?

Approach: A/B Single Factor Split

CONTROL

Here is the original conversion path …

TREATMENT

After analyzing the path, the MECLABS team launched a single-factor test with a treatment that simply changed three words in a link. The only change in this test was the link text to begin the application process.

RESULTS

*Conversion rate has been anonymized to protect Research Partner.

By changing the copy in the link to communicate the more serious implication of opening an account, versus simply “learning more,” the link attracted prospects with higher levels of motivation and resulted in a 43% increase in funded accounts.

To learn more about this experiment (along with four other tests from MarketingExperiments), watch the full video replay of “The 5 Most Startling Marketing Discoveries from 2012.”

Related Resources:

Optimizing Calls-to-action: 4 questions to ask yourself while writing a CTA

A/B Testing: 3 resources for copywriting and call-to-action optimization

Optimizing Copy: The 7 most common copywriting mistakes we see marketers make

Conversion Rate Optimization: Minor changes reduce cost per conversion 52.9%

Daniel Burstein 323 posts 125 comments

Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute. Daniel oversees all content and marketing coming from the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa brands while helping to shape the marketing direction for MECLABS Institute — digging for actionable discoveries while serving as an advocate for the audience. Daniel is also a speaker and moderator at live events and on webinars. Previously, he was the main writer powering MarketingExperiments publishing engine — from Web clinics to Research Journals to the blog. Prior to joining the team, Daniel was Vice President of MindPulse Communications — a boutique communications consultancy specializing in IT clients such as IBM, VMware, and BEA Systems. Daniel has 18 years of experience in copywriting, editing, internal communications, sales enablement and field marketing communications.

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3 Comments

Mccoy says 12 years ago

Am wondering, though there was a 43% increase in funded accounts, did the CTR from the landing page CTA drop? If it did wouldn’t it possibly negate the effect and drop the potential increase in EPC?

Reply
Taylor Kennedy says 12 years ago

Hi Mccoy! My name is Taylor Kennedy and I am currently a Senior Research Manager at MECLABS. I ran the test in question and looking at the data that was aggregated for each Landing Page group, Clickthrough actually increased at each step in the process following the divergent groups of link copy. Overall, visitors to the landing page from the ‘Open an Account’ link group saw a rate of 18.95% reaching the application start vs. visitors from the ‘Learn More’ group, who saw only 12.84% reaching the application start (the step directly following the landing page). Visitors from the ‘Open an Account’ group were consistently more likely to progress in the Account Application process at a statistically significant level versus the ‘Learn More’ group.

Hope this answers your question.

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