How the subject and quality of a photo affect clickthrough rate
CaringBridge
CaringBridge offers free personal, protected websites for people to easily share updates and receive support and encouragement from their community during a health journey. Every 7 minutes, a CaringBridge website is created for someone experiencing a health event.
Experiment Summary
Ended On: 04/13/2019
CaringBridge was trying to drive traffic to a campaign landing page during a matching gift appeal. They had two photos for the same story and wanted to see which would drive a better clickthrough rate and more traffic. The first photo was a professional photo of a child who had beaten tremendous odds to survive a difficult birth. The second was a personally-taken photo of a mother holding the same child after giving birth. They launched a test in Facebook’s Test and Learn tool to determine which photo attracted more clicks.
Research Question
Will a professional photo or an amateur photo attract more clicks?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Click Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Professional Photo | 2.2% | ||
| T1: | Personal Photo | 5.6% | 158.2% | 100.0% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 240 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 50,533, 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:
158.2% increase in traffic
× 0% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The amateur photo attracted 158% more clicks than the professional photo. There are a few potential hypotheses as to why this happened.
First, the professional photo might have looked too slick—almost like stock imagery. It might not have been believable that it was the actual child the story was written about. Additionally, the amateur photo might resemble a picture that a user might actually post on Facebook, which makes it seem less like an advertisement.
Second, the story is about a child surviving birth against tremendous odds. The professional photo shows the outcome: a healthy child. This might reduce the “minor mystery” effect that the amateur photo has—showing the mother and child at the beginning of the journey and subtly suggesting that the viewer click through to find out.
Either way, this gives CaringBridge useful knowledge on how to promote the next campaign with the best photo possible.