Split Tests We Dig: Can an activity metric improve landing page conversion?

The short answer

Still open. SALESmanago was running the test when this was written, so the post shows the setup, a live count of people exploring the demo, without a result.

The DoWhatWorks dashboard showing the SALESmanago landing page test of live user stats as social proof, control beside variant

Today's "Split Test Example" comes from SALESmanago, a B2B SaaS company in the sales & marketing automation space. They are running an interesting 50-50 split test on an SEM landing page, trying to get people into a free demo. They borrow a technique you see far more often in the consumer space.

Here you can see the detail side-by-side (note: the red dot and related overlays are from us, not SALESmanago's site):

The two SALESmanago demo forms side by side, the variant adding a line reading 29 people are exploring our demo right now

Control is on the left, the new variant on the right.

And just in case that's too hard to read, here's the zoomed in detail from the variant: "29 people are exploring the demo right now."

Close up of the variant copy reading 29 people are exploring our demo right now, above the Enter demo button

It's an interesting attempt to provide social proof and to create a subtle form of urgency. It reminded us of copy you see in the travel space with prompts like "Only 2 left" and "4 people are looking at this right now." For example:

A Booking.com listing for W South Beach carrying the warning Only 5 rooms left at this price on our site

Bookings.com 'Only 5 rooms left' prompt for urgency

A Hotels.com listing for New Hotel Opera showing a 10% off badge and a note that 3 rooms are left

Hotels.com's version to drive urgency

So what do you think? Will this kind of social proof improve conversion rates in the B2B space?

Early access See the tests behind findings like this one.