Well, well, well. We meet again. I’m afraid the vast majority of you smart cookies (including me), who voted, were wrong. The poll received close to 400 votes, of which, only 9 picked the winning button. Out of the 12 options, the winning button was picked the least. Go figure.

If you don’t know what I’m on about, please refer to this button shape case study.

The Results:

(ordered from highest click-through-ratio to lowest)

Conclusions:

I wish I had some profound reasoning as to why the boring rectangle received the highest CTR, but I don’t. My initial thought was because it’s what people are used to clicking. However, that would be incorrect since rounded buttons are the most common shape these days.

The left pointing arrows both came out with respectable CTRs. Why? As Kim and Browie both mentioned, they draw attention to the underlined text.

Shape #2, with the most votes, came in with the 7th best CTR. The only difference between that shape and the winning shape was the small arrow on the right. In terms of difference CTR it was a 40% drop. Go figure.

The loser, poor guy, just didn’t pull his weight. Had close to half the CTR the winning shape had. Size seems to matter here.

The Heckler:

“Mr Green these numbers are cool and all, but is it really worth the hassle?“

Alright I’m going to put my lab coat on for this one.

Lets compared winner shape 1 (0.196% CTR) vs loser shape 8 (0.096% CTR).

Say we are launching a new product called the Underwater Snuggie. We have a $ 100,000 budget, which would get us 1o0,000,000 ad impressions. We have a conversion rate of 5% from ad to sale (worth $ 50). Let’s assume that conversion rates are identical between the ads.

Shape 8 would generate: $ 240,000

Shape 1 would generate: $ 490,000

Worth the hassle? I think so.

The Gold Pass Champion:

No one commented the right answer! Damn it guys! Even though 9 people voted for it in the poll. So I had to choose from votes for the second best button which was button number 12. The Gold Pass Champion is a reader from France Keeg (I don’t have your details so please contact me and I will send you the gold pass). Très bien!

Final Thoughts:

My split test, even though was only a couple of hundred dollars worth of traffic, showed the big difference between the simple shape of button. I haven’t even touched color, text, or location. The square shape won this test, but that doesn’t mean that it will win all tests. Traffic changes. What worked this week might not work as well next week. I’m sure most of you have active landing pages or campaigns. Have you split tested your buttons?

The results showed the very reason why you need to test…97% of assumptions were wrong.

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A.D.H.D Summary (You guys did just great to scroll down here!): 400 votes. 400 assumptions. 9 correct answers. If you want to assume anything, assume that you will be wrong.

Mr Green

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