Interesting, although heatmaps for A/B testing is not a new concept. They don't appear to have put much thought in to the actions taken after the findings though. Being surprised that more people go to "Pricing" than "Sign up" is a little odd. People generally will look to maximise information and minimise commitment in this context, "Sign Up" promises some potential kind of work/commitment/lock in.
Replacing that with a link to a video seems to miss the point - people are clearly interested in a specific kind of information (pricing, commitment costs - the main potential deal breaker) and by making this change - you're still not giving it to them. Now maybe you want to try and hook people in the belief that if it looks cool enough, that'll override what would have been a problematic price point - that, of course, would be a much more interesting A/B test - up front pricing or concealed...
What you describe is exactly what we have come to believe. Based on their earlier experience with online tools, people probably have a "threshold" on what they are willing to spend. No matter how cool the tool is or what value it brings to the table, they want to first make sure that they can afford it (before deep diving into learning if they really want it).
Replacing 'Sign up' with 'Video' makes sense because the pricing link is still there. So visitors who want to see pricing can go there directly. What we observed was that the homepage doesn't convey full potential of the tool so putting up a video link probably helps those visitors who aren't that price conscious.
Yes, I can see that as a valid approach. The differentiated test I might try though is to put pricing directly on the home page. It doesn't need to be the main item, but as a test it might be interesting. As you say, some percentage of people need to know price first of all - there's no point expending energy evaluating and understanding a tool only to find out that you can't afford it anyway.
Of course, this then gets in to price differentiation - there may be an argument to say that you could have two sites, one more "enterprise" focused, where features and capability are primary, and the price is high, and one more focused around lower level users, making the price a key selling point.
I posted this on your blog but it seems that you are checking this more regularly so I'll post it here:
The reason people (myself included) click Pricing is because they want to know what they’re getting themselves into before starting a free trial. I suspect that if you added the pricing clearly on the homepage, the # of clicks on your ‘free trial’ button would increase and pricing would decrease dramatically.
This is covered in the book ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ where the author describes a man refusing a flower from a little girl because he’s “on to her game.” The idea being that people have become conditioned NOT to accept free things without understanding the ramifications of signing up – “What if I like it? What happens then? Do I have to pay $600?”
I have noticed this affecting my signups for web apps lately. For example, ZenDesk looks great but the 30 day trial won’t help my company in its infancy. I would love to use a ‘free single user’ version and would gladly pay eventually, but I click pricing and see that after my 30 day trial expires, I’m stuck paying much more than I’m comfortable with. So I haven’t signed up yet. Again, GetSatisfaction is similar. I would like to use their service but before clicking ‘Signup’ I click Pricing to see what I’m getting myself into. What happens if I get hooked? Am I going to be out $200/month?
This is the question I asked myself with your software and your pricing is reasonable. I will definitely sign up when my company launches our product.
Thanks for posting this. Yes, you are true that people want to know what is the catch before they sign up. In fact, I am a big believer of not concealing or hiding things. Earlier on our pricing page we used to have free trial above the pricing page. Even though we got relatively more number of sign ups for trials but it doesn't help us because a lot of those users won't be able to afford the service.
So, we are trying to be transparent: telling visitors what the tool does and then what it costs. No gimmicks :)
This site promotes a new feature of the "Visual Website Optimizer" software.
On the one hand, this is a beautiful advertisement in the style of a blog entry. But on the other hand, this unity between blog entry and ad is a bit scary.
I believe that advertising should be exactly like this: Inform you of a product, tell you what value it can offer you, then allow you to make an informed choice.
... or when it isn't clearly visible as such. However, this one indeed seems to be labeled clearly enough. Still it looks like a personal user report at a first glance, and that's kind of scary.
It is a personal user report, because the guy trying to sell folks an A/B testing service uses it to A/B test his own site.
That doesn't strike me as abnormal. In fact, if hypothetically a multi-billion dollar multinational advertising firm did not routinely dogfood its own A/B testing service, I would consider that a strike against them.
No, it is a corporate usage report. It is just the writing style that makes it look "personal".
This difference may be subtle, but it is important, because it has a huge impact on how trustworthy the information is. And finding the right level of trust for various information is exactly what makes the difference between an informed user and a persuaded user.
(BTW, it is of course very positive that they make use of their own product, and this is certainly not what I'm criticizing.)
In its current form it isn't evil, it's just scary. I'll try to explain:
It is socially accepted that companies may speak about their products in a onesided, strongly biased way, called "advertisement". This is in contrast to balanced, objective reports as expected from e.g. journalists and scientists. And it is also in contrast to honest, uninfluenced personal opinions as expected from e.g. friends and blogs.
In return, those "advertisements" are expected to be explicitly labeled as such, or to be so exaggerated that they are obviously visible as such. That's how we try to ensure fairness.
In a sense this is the case here, because the "blog entry" is shown under your website's domain. On the other hand, it is a user report of someone (i.e. you) who is using and testing your software, where one usually expects the honest and uninfluenced personal opinion of a user.
It is okay as it is. But if you changed one detail, it wouldn't be okay anymore. (e.g. write about another website rather than your own, or put it into another blog at another domain, or remove the exaggeration in the title as well as the text.)
So it is scary, because it is close to the border. But I think it is still on the "good" side of the border, not on the "evil side".
Huh. There are so many companies that spend so much time far, far beyond the bad side of the border that my expectations are entirely different than yours.
Just because there are rogue firms doesn't mean we should lower our standards ... especially on a site like Hacker News which emphasizes quality of the submissions.
However, I agree that this is complaining on a high level.
Not sure this is the right place to answer but this means till 15th June we are offering additional number of visitors tested in all plans. So, if we are offering 10,000 visitors in one plan now, after 15th June it will be 5,000.
Replacing that with a link to a video seems to miss the point - people are clearly interested in a specific kind of information (pricing, commitment costs - the main potential deal breaker) and by making this change - you're still not giving it to them. Now maybe you want to try and hook people in the belief that if it looks cool enough, that'll override what would have been a problematic price point - that, of course, would be a much more interesting A/B test - up front pricing or concealed...