

How Web Graphics Affect Conversions - JayInt
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/shocking-truth-about-graphics/

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Turing_Machine
Another tip for increasing readership: don't have annoying popup social
widgets that jump in front of the text.

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drostie
Seriously. I had to click an X in the top right corner and use Firebug to set
"display: none;" for three boxes just to get the distractions out of the way.
It's a site called "KISSmetrics" which cannot "keep it simple stupid" and is
telling me about how images can distract people from your articles?

One cute statement about their final image example: whenever I have to pay a
new web service, there are just an absolutely tremendous number of options for
me to be dealing with. In order to narrow down the field to companies who
actually care about my time, I have some peculiar general rules:

(1) Name must not be concatenated CamelCase words. This still eliminates about
50% of my options, while GitHub is among the only known exceptions where it
might be worth paying them for something.

(2) No autoplaying flash. This no longer eliminates so many services as it
once did, but it should still be standard.

(3) SSL is a must. You would seriously be surprised.

(4) May not contain clip art of a white woman wearing a headset. It can be an
Asian woman, or a white man, or she can be holding a phone, or it could not be
clip art (here is our cofounder Olivia...), whatever. This actually seems to
further limit the field by over 50%. Web service hosts apparently have really
odd stereotypes, or else they expect me to.

I give that list here, again, because their last example of ineffective image
use is, naturally, clip art of a white woman wearing a headset.

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simonbrown
What's wrong with CamelCase names?

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evincarofautumn
Medial capitals have always been around in English, but the use has exploded
of late, and a lot of people think it looks silly, as though a word is missing
a space or a letter is randomly miscased. It looks alright in personal names
because we’re used to it—no one complains about MacDonald, DeLuca, LeBlanc, or
O’Shaughnessy. But the phenomenon of medial capitals in company names is
really only about 40 years old. There are many well-known examples—YouTube,
PayPal, RadioShack, PlayStation, &c., but I think they succeed by sheer volume
and dot-com kitsch.

The only time it really bothers _me_ is when budding authors are trying to
come up with fantasy names. They use (what I lovingly call) Dread
Intercapitals alongside Dread Apostrophes and Dread Accents to make names that
look like Harâk’Thür—presumably in imitation of Tolkien, who actually knew
what he was doing, and had internally consistent language models.

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aaronbrethorst
_The only time it really bothers me is when budding authors are trying to come
up with fantasy names._

Neal Stephenson has a fairly long, very amusing riff on this in his latest
book, Reamde. Well worth the read.

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JangoSteve
This being an article by KISSmetrics, I was disappointed there were no actual
numbers or research done for the article. Unless I missed something, not a
single statement was backed up with actual data. The only study mentioned in
the entire article was in the context of ad copy and was done over 30 years
ago (I'm assuming they're referring to a study from Ogilvy on Advertising [1]
but I could be wrong).

For example:

 _If the images you’re using are not clearly tied to your value proposition,
or to the central theme of your page, then they will only confuse your
readers. At best, they’ll be pointless distractions. At worst, they’ll give
the wrong impression and lead readers to feel tricked or disappointed._

In my experience, the blog posts I've written gain much more traction when
they have images, even pointless stock images (I have experimented with this).
So while I agree, that ideally, images should provide actual value to the
story, I've found that a couple pointless stock images are better than no
images. This is why I would have _really_ liked to see actual evidence to back
up their claims.

EDIT: Also, while we're on the topic, I also hate including all those social
sharing widgets, but viewership takes a dramatic hit when they're not there.

[1] <http://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising-David/dp/039472903X>

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nhebb
Blogs and landing pages should be treated separately. For a blog, a pointless
stock image still serves the purpose of visually breaking up the article so it
doesn't look like a big wall of text.

I agree with you though that I would have liked to see some numbers, but
otherwise it was a good article that should at least give you some ideas on
what to test next.

~~~
JangoSteve
I completely agree, which is why I was also confused that the referenced study
was on offline ad design and copy, their first screenshot was a landing page,
their second screenshot was an online news article, and their third screenshot
was a blog post.

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mistercow
> Ogilvy found that, on average, headlines placed below an image are read by
> 10% more people than headlines above. Since reading the headline is a
> prerequisite of reading the body copy, you’re losing a potential 10% of your
> audience if you’re distracting them with an image in the wrong place.

Actually, you'd be losing at most about 9% of your audience. I know that's a
bit of a nitpick, but it bugs me when people equate "not X% more" with "X%
less".

Also, to actually lose 9% of your readers to your headline position, you have
to make the very optimistic assumption that you're not losing readers to any
other factor.

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scriptproof
These Ogilvy's stats are about printed documents. I am sure it is false on the
Web because we are so used with images. All major websites put the title above
the image. See the Huff or Ars for example. And they know their business. For
the rest, it may be true or partially true.

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revorad
The shocking truth about conversions is that businesses, including startups,
spend crazy amounts of time tricking people into "converting", instead of
building products that, you know, actually improve people's lives.

~~~
viscanti
I think you're conflating "tricking" with "doing a better job of
communicating". For most businesses (including startups), there's a clear
value proposition. Their product/service actually fills a need/want. Iterating
design/marketing copy is an attempt to find the best (or at least a better)
way to communicate that value proposition. In the vast majority of cases, the
goal isn't to trick someone into converting, it's to properly communicate the
benefits of converting.

~~~
Czarnian
There's an argument to be made (not necessarily by me) that if you have to
spend a lot of time communicating your value proposition to your market, there
may be something wrong with your product. The value proposition of your
product should be self-evident.

~~~
viscanti
Generally there are alternatives, so the challenge is in communicating why
your product/service is a better fit for solving that problem than any of the
other possible alternatives. There's also a greater than 0% possibility that
your marketing copy is so bad that it confuses people and gets in the way of a
solid and "fool-proof" value proposition. Even the best product/service can
shoot itself in the foot with poor copywriting or unprofessional design.
Making sure you pay attention to doing well with that isn't the same as
"tricking" people into buying your product/service. It's about attention to
detail and making sure everything you do is demonstrating the quality of your
company.

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z92
Finished reading it. But where is the "Shocking Truth"? Wondering if I am
missing something.

~~~
paraschopra
Shocking Truth was that shocking headlines really do work.

~~~
omonra
Did you convert? :)

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wildster
It's a shame that the kissmetrics.com does not follow this philosophy.

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deepakprakash
Most of it applies to photosharing websites as well - especially the bit about
keeping the title/headline below the image. I'm irritated every time the title
is at the top and I need to scroll up to see the title (The initial response
for me is to inspect the photo - exactly as mentioned in the article).

Building one myself, I instinctively felt this should be below the image, but
my designer disagreed and that's the way it is right now. We will definitely
push this down - evidence always wins :)

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ysjwang
I feel like the bombard-the-reader-with-images approach could be an artifact
of thinking from the time when HTML images were still a novelty, simply
because no one else had done it before. (I have absolutely no data to back
this up though).

It just goes to show that quality > quantity.

Thanks for the link, good read!

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troels
Images in web sites? That hasn't been novel since .. well .. before html

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micaeked
Here is a design tip for you: don't take up my screen space with useless shit
I can't scroll away from

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Pent
The annoying popups on the bottom of the article actually get in the way of
reading it, to a point where I just close the page. They are definitely not
following their own advice.

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ootachi
I thought the reason annoying generic stock images of salespeople smiling and
wearing headsets were so common is that they _did_ increase conversions, a
lot.

~~~
billpatrianakos
That is the reason, you are correct. What I've learned in the past two years
is that the web is chock full of blogs that repeat tired old "tips" that are
either outdated or just plain wrong and that other blogs that give fresh
insights and new tips but wrongly give readers the impression that those tips
are gospel (ie set in stone).

The trick is to do your own homework, don't take any advice as absolute, fit
everything to your unique circumstances, and always remember that your mileage
_will_ vary. I've spent enough time reading a lot of crap and had to learn to
be extra judicious the hard way. I take most articles like this as very loose
guidelines. It was definitely a great article with good advice but I know
better than to just run out and apply it just because the experts said it.
Experts contradict each other all the time.

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Kiro
I thought it was more or less proven that stock photos (like headset girls) do
in fact work, how dull it may seem.

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dustingetz
Not sure who kiss metrics is and I'm on my iPhone so not gonna check before
posting, but this looks like a shitty Jason calacanis, mahalo style content
farm article. There probably is something to the thesis "graphic design
doesn't necessarily equal higher revenue" (I mean duh, see digg) but this post
didn't support the thesis in a meaningful way.

