Font Readability matters for Conversion Rates -- and other Results
With enough time, you can literally test everything and see if it makes a difference. I recently concluded a massive multivariate test at media.io that tested:
- Three different fonts.
- Five different background colours.
- Three different logos.
- Three different line styles.
- Two different button styles.
Overall, over 140 different variations were tested on half the traffic of media.io.
Some of the test results include:
- Chosing Arial over Verdana and Tahoma increased conversion rates noticeably. Personally, I would rate the font readability of Arial lower than Verdana (especially at 12 px) but it seems that users prefer Arial.
- Background colours and logos affected conversion rates a lot, too, whereas…
- …link styles didn’t.
- The impact of button styles in this design didn't make a lot of difference either.
In response to the multivariate test, I have redesigned the media.io website slightly – and made it even faster. Below this post, you’ll find the usual “before” and “after” screenshots. I can’t comment yet on what the net gain in conversion rate of this redesign was but we’re looking at a number of around 5–10 %.
Reliability Updates
On 2010-08-17, I implemented a subtle change with massive implications for media.io. I did some deep analysis on crash dumps and configured the application so that the seemingly random crashes should be a thing of the past.
Server Migration
I’m also working on moving media.io to a new server that features more up-to-date software. Many people are trying to convert audio that the old software I’m using now can’t convert (this includes floating-point WAV or Windows Media v9).
A new server with more up-to-date software is now 90 % set up. In the next couple of days, I will redirect half the traffic of media.io to the new server. When you convert audio online at media.io, you will soon be randomly routed to one of the servers.
