How photos of people double conversion

The scientific fact is well studied that when looking at a scene or a picture consisting of many different objects, people subconsciously pay attention to human faces. Even babies and monkeys look at faces longer than at other objects.

This was confirmed by two independent experiments.

I analyzed the results of two A / B tests of users of the Visual Website Optimizer website and came to the conclusion that the surest way to attract the attention of visitors is to place human photos on the site.

Interestingly, although both of these tests were conducted independently, they revealed one pattern and led to the same result. This gives me confidence to say that human photos on the site have something that can increase conversion.

Let's look at both experiments.

First example

Guys from Medalia Art sell Brazilian and Caribbean paintings online. Recently, they were pleasantly surprised when photos of artists on the main page of the site increased the number of visitors by 90%. This was not their first A / B testing, they had already been “played” with their main page before that. In the past, they managed to reduce the bounce rate by 20% by experimenting with the placement of advertising messages.

As is usually done in online stores, the main page displays pictures of the three most famous artists. This time, without any good reason, the developers decided to see what would happen if the paintings were replaced with photographs of artists. I tried to find out how they came to this idea, but the guys claim that it was an absolutely spontaneous decision.

The purpose of this study was to increase the interest of visitors. An interested visitor should click on any link on the main page. Otherwise, his visit was considered a refusal. The fact of the sale itself was not used as a result of the conversion, because most sales occur after long telephone conversations and bidding.

Below I give screenshots of research options.

The first option with pictures is the control.


And the second with photos is the winner.


But the results in numbers

Option	Conversion	% Improvement
Checklist with pictures	8.8%	----
With photos	17.2%	+ 95%

Obviously, the version with photos of artists led to a much greater conversion than the version with their paintings. In fact, he almost doubled it.

Second example

Jason Thompson's EmptyMind Blog is dedicated to web analytics and optimization. In the sidebar of the site is a large phone icon leading to a page with contact information. Unlike Medalia Art, Jason had a reason to conduct a comparative testing of the icon against the photo.

After attending the next summit, he received several comments from different people that he did not at all look like his tweeter icon. Then Jason decided that it would be better to use the same photo on all social networks. Checking the blog photo was just a continuation of this thought.

In this experiment, the goal was a page with contact details, what is the percentage of visitors that went to it. Here are the options and their performance.

The control version


with a photograph

Option	Conversion	% Improvement
Checklist with phone icon.	3.7%	----
With photo	5.5%	+ 48%

Here is what Jason said about these results:
People want an emotional connection with other people. Photography makes this emotional connection easier and, as the experiment proved, leads to the page more people than the faceless icon.

conclusions

Both experiments independently came to the same (statistically significant) conclusion that photographs of people increased conversion. This proves that there is something magical about them.

I recommend you do this kind of A / B test to see if a human photo can help your business miraculously.

And if you succeed, then perhaps we have found a great formula for increasing conversions on sites. Good luck