Why Style Matters: A Simple CSS Trick to Boost Your Copy Response Rate

In this test we experimented with two different ways of displaying testonials to see which style caused a bigger response rate.

What we found was quite dramatic.

The test took place within our Ecommerce Online Training Course. We offer prospective buyers a few free sample chapters of our book.

At the end of each chapter we add a subtle call to action – inviting the reader to click to our sales copy page and read about the benefits of purchasing our course.

In the test we studied two different call to actions. Both had exactly the same text. The only difference was a simple CSS trick we used to make the testimonial stand out more.

Here’s Version A:

And Here’s Version B:

The difference is apparent. In version B the testimonial stands out much more. We used a CSS trick to put the testimonial within quotes and we colored the text navy blue to make it stand out more.

The Result:

Version A had a CTR of 9.09%.

Version B  had a CTR of 34.88%

That’s a improvement of over 300% improvement!

But that was not all.

We also tracked how many people who clicked through ended up reading our copy and looking at our pricing options.

For Version A - 25% of people ended up viewing our pricing.

For Version B, the number was 53%.

It seemed that displaying a testimonial more prominantly not only caused more people to click to view our copy – but it also caused them to pay more attention to the copy.

We repeated the test a second time. This time within a different lesson of our online course.

Here’s Version A:

Here’s Version B:

Once again the results were pretty darn dramatic.

Version A produced a 15.00% CTR.

Version B produced a CTR of 32.26%.

A 200% improvement!

In terms of viewing pricing (a sign that the visitor actually read the copy and displayed interest):

33.3 of visitors from Version A viewed our pricing options.

60.0 of visitors from Version B viewed our pricing options.

In Summary

Don’t underestimate the importance of a good call to action and the importance of using testimonials to garner interest.

What we just saw was how a simple trick to make your testimonials stand out better could create dramatic boosts the number of people reading and taking action on your copy.

PS – for details on CSS and the styling code we used for displaying the fancy testimonials, take a look at our ecommerce course >>