I have a good one for you today! Some would even call it the most controversial A/B test in a long time. Are you ready?

As you know, I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how to improve online stores.

I question everything. Why do we build the hero section like this? Why do we put social proof here? Why do we write this in the announcement bar? I do this to find gaps in my knowledge.

If I can't answer the "why” and, even more important, why we're not doing some alternative, I have found a gap.

And that's exactly what happened with the A/B test, I want to show you.

More or less, all landing pages include a hero section with button(s). Most use the button(s) as a "Buy now" call to action sending visitors to a product page. Sometimes the button scrolls them down to a section where they can buy the product. And this is what I thought might be a mistake. Let me explain.

Do you really want to send people directly from the hero section to, e.g., the buy section? Or another page?

Think about it. You've made all this great marketing below your hero section. Marketing supposed to persuade people to buy your product. And now you're giving people an easy way to skip it all with the click of a button?

That doesn’t seem like the right move. So I decided to test it!

The Setup

To make this a test about general user behavior, not what works best on a single landing page, I decided to include all my landing pages in the test.

First, I went through all of them to make sure they had a meaningful button in the hero section.

Then I started an A/B test comparing the original variant with a variant where I hid the button.

Here’s an example of before / after.

Are you ready for the results? They're controversial, to say the least.

The results

More or less, everyone includes buttons in their hero sections. But in the test, the variant without buttons won. It increased revenue per session by 30% in the sample.

I honestly think it makes sense. Giving visitors a shortcut through all your great marketing doesn't seem like the right move. The marketing was made to persuade customers in the first place. So I guess hiding the button forces visitors to read more of your persuasive marketing instead of just skipping directly to the buy section or a product page.

And when I dive deeper into the results, I think the data back this up. The variant without buttons has a 29% higher bounce rate. So 29% more land on the page just to exit again. This makes sense. By hiding the button, we force visitors to engage and read the rest of the page, which is tiring.

So why are they buying more?

Forcing your visitors to "work" serves as a selection mechanism. Those that do read it are probably more interested in what you promised in your hero section.

And after reading it, they're hopefully even more interested than if they just skipped it by clicking a button.

What do you think?

Learn how to sell 25% more

eCommerce is hard. You need to know how to run paid ads, write great emails, and much more. Not to mention accounting 😴

But it doesn't have to be that hard. There's a way to make it a lot easier. Let me explain.

Your site is where all your marketing activities lead to. This is a fact. Whether you write a great email or run a persuasive Facebook ad doesn't matter. In the end, all your marketing leads to your website. And this can be a good thing, but it can also be the monster under your bed. Here’s why.

It’s good when your site is dialed-in to sell. Then your site makes all your other marketing work better. You sell more from all your paid ads, emails, and everything else. A good site is a turbo booster for all your other marketing activities. It’s almost like a cheat code!

But if your site isn't dialed in, you're in trouble. Then your site is a giant bottleneck killing your sales. Your pouring money into ads that don't sell. You're spending time writing emails that don't sell. And you're most likely extremely frustrated in the process.

And not because your emails or your ads aren’t great. You might think so. But it’s actually because your site isn’t designed to sell. Your own site is killing your sales!

But it doesn't have to be like that. You can build a top-selling online store, too. You just need a copy of my CRO Handbook on how to design a top-selling online store.

In the Notion book, you learn 81 guidelines for designing a top-selling online store. Each guideline teaches you how to design a specific part of your store to sell the most.

The guidelines fill more than 104 A4 pages when exported to PDF 🤯

Don’t worry. You don’t have to know how to code. Just start with the easy-to-implement guidelines that don’t require coding and work your way up.

If you're more experienced, dive into the more technical guidelines.

See a demo of the CRO handbook here and buy it here when you’re ready. It's currently only $99. But I’ll increase the price as I add more content.

Tip: You might be eligible for GumRoad’s Purchasing Power Parity discount. This means you’re getting a discount depending on where you live. See if you’re eligible on the right-hand side here.