tdmckinlay

In a scientific study with 8 experiments, curved CTA buttons received 17% to 64% higher clicks (CTR) than buttons with sharp angles.

You are right, my bad! Thanks for catching that in the comment above, I've updated it

Thank you so much!

I agree that the figures can vary for many reasons and we shouldn't expect them to be exactly the same (some things we don't end up controlling for).

At the same time, if we take the experiment of the soup for example:

They measured 9,227 sales of it so the 21.1% increase is quite robust and I'd expect the error margin to be much lower than 5% either way - so in some ways the precision is warranted.

I also feel that if I were to round a 21.4% to 20% I'd be miscommunicating the findings of the research :)

The effect was tested on profit margins as low as 17% and as high as 55%. Outside those ranges it's unclear if it will still work.

Author of the summary here:

You are right regarding the chocolate bar experiment.

That's why the researchers ran multiple experiments, some of which measured actual behavior:

- People were 16.1% more likely to bid for a gift card for an Everlane backpack (vs a J.Crew one) when they saw cost information about it

- Sales of chicken noodle soup bowls ($4.95) in Harvard’s campus canteen increased 21.1% when costs were disclosed

Here's how they describe it in the paper:

First experiment (science conference talks from YouTube): "We selected two conference talks (in physics and engineering) from YouTube and altered their acoustic features using iMovie software. The good audio quality version of each talk was created with an audio filter called “small room,” which reduces the echo and increases the clarity of the speaker; the poor audio quality version was created with an audio filter called “Large Room,” which does the opposite, increasing the echo and decreasing the clarity of the speaker."

The second experiment (NPR interviews) was again using iMovie and they describe it like this: "The good audio quality version of each talk was created with no audio filters so that participants heard the interview as it was originally recorded. The poor audio quality version was created with audio filters that made it sound as if the researcher had called in on a bad phone line."

True, I love the way Duolingo does it (I guess we could somewhat fit this under 'gamification' when it comes to digital products).

But it's such a missed opportunity in so many other domains, like encouraging people to eat healthier (although the UK Government does a good job with the "Five a day" slogan)

That's true, I also wonder if it ties up with some parts of app gamification

Very good point, and I think that also creates a really good peak at the end of your buying experience that you will remember for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule

I wish there was too, but I couldn't find one.

I was surprised about how many videos there are on Youtube explaining the Jeep Wave!

Spot on, that's a really good one!