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Demo Club sign-up A/B test results.
I thought I might improve on the design of my Demo Club sign-up page. I’ve always been interested in how even tiny design changes impact user behavior and task completion.
The top image is my original sign-up page, which I’ve had around forever. It’s lengthy with a lot of text to read and fields to fill out. It’s also inconsistent with the rest of the site design and missing any navigation (save the red badge at the top which returns to the homepage).
The bottom image is a newer design. I used a standardized page template so it would have consistent navigation, and eliminated many of the input fields. I simplifed the instructional text and moved it to the sidebar, and enlarged both the field headers and the input fields themselves. Overall, I expected sign-ups to increase since less info was required to complete registration.
Since January I’ve been using Google Website Optimizer to run an A/B test with these two page designs. The test just completed it today.
I’m surprised to find that the new design performed 35% worse than the original.
Questions, questions. What is it about the older, more text-y page that encourages people to complete the sign-up? Is it because more text is less vague? Is it because the inconsistent page design “shocks” the user into attentiveness? Is the value proposition or call to action stronger here?
At worst I expected the new design to perform at least as well as the original. Certainly not the case. Makes me wonder if there’s anything worth salvaging from the redesign.
