How the placement of an inline offer impacts conversion
The Heritage Foundation
Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institution—a think tank—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 05/25/2017 - 06/05/2017
On The Daily Signal website, we had been testing an inline direct ask for a donation. Given the high volume of traffic to the website, Heritage was seeing considerable revenue come from this offer. However, we began to be concerned about the visitor experience since the offer was interrupting the flow of the article.
We decided to test the impact of moving the donation ask to the bottom of the article and simply including an show inline sentence that would link to the bottom. Our belief was that even if the treatment saw no significant difference, it would be a win since it would improve the readers’ experience.
Research Question
How does the placement of the donation advertisement impact donor conversion?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Positioned in Middle | 0.03% | ||
| T1: | Positioned at Bottom | 0.05% | 91.1% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 48,547 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 388,524, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.
Flux Metrics Affected
The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:
0% increase in traffic
× 91.1% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
Moving the donation ask to the bottom of the article resulted in a 48% increase to the number of visitors going to the donation page and a 91% increase to overall donations. Our hypothesis is that allowing the visitor to experience the content before making the ask increased the clarity of the value proposition. This is what would have led to the increased volume of traffic and conversion.