By: Tim Nash

A couple of weeks ago I came across an experiment which in brief suggested you could improve your click through rate on SERPs by making them stand out. This would seem to make sense and his figures suggested a staggering increase. So I set out to replicate the feat in a slightly more controlled manner.

You can read how the experiment was set up on the previous click through article. One thing I should add both sites are in the UK and we only monitored the click through from Google.co.uk and not .com or other regional, this makes the data set much smaller but also more reliable.

Remember this is nothing to do with higher rankings, merely attempting to improve click through rate from results pages once your already ranked.

UPPERCASE EXPERIMENT

So to recap we changed the case of the content in the title tag to be entirely upper case. In both experiments we had clients with 2 sites in the same SERP so that we could provide a norm, and experimented on the lower ranking of the two.

So the top blue line is our higher ranking site for the two weeks the uppercase was in effect (remember this is our norm and hasn't been changed in any way but ranks higher so will have a higher ctr), the cream brown line is the rate of the two weeks for the site we have uppercase, while the cyan blue/green is the previous two weeks.

The fluctuations may seem large but keep in mind the number of clicks from the highest peek and trough on the blue is just 8.

Clearly our UPPERCASE title has not done as well in the two weeks compared with the previous two and it's interesting to note its peeks and troughs are in a slightly different pattern to our higher ranking site. All in all for the two weeks it consistently under performed.

UPPERCASE and Click Me

In this experiment we added a Click here for wording before the title with the entire title in uppercase, the idea give some one a direct call to action and they will follow. To make life more interesting the product related to this SERP was featured on a TV program in Canada causing a small spike in CTR even on the .co.uk with a much larger one in google.com.

Like before the Blue is our higher ranking norm (notice the spike), the mocha brown line is the same week as the blue with our call to action and uppercase, while the cyan is the previous two weeks

Our call to action does not on first glance to be performing badly but keep in mind the 25% increase in the period for searches related to our product and the click through is looking less impressive.

What did visitors think

To assist with the experiment we asked a few visitors arriving via google.co.uk if the experiments had made a difference to them, we started by showing them a picture of the Google result for the site from the previous two weeks and the current look asking them which they had clicked on.

• Uppercase results - 90% remembered clicking through the uppercase version
• Click here results - 100% all remembered they clicked through the click here version

Next we showed a generic result, and asked which element first drew them to our site

• Uppercase results - 70% Said it was the title that had inspired them
• Click here results - 60% Said it was the title

Finally we asked if the site was the first site they had clicked on the search page?

• Uppercase results - 50% Clicked the test site first
• Click here results - 75% Clicked the test site first

What about sales?

Sales figures are only half available at the moment but the conversion rate has seen a slight performance increase in the click here experiment, but remember this is more likely to be related to the Canadian coverage.

So at the halfway mark what have we learnt?

• Neither experiment is showing improved results, indeed the click through rate is lower
• Both experiments were distinctive enough for people to remember the "odd titles"
• The survey indicates the titles do make the result stand out
• Far to many Brits watch Canadian TV!

Before I go, no I will not be revealing the keywords, site information or client info. A) the experiment is still on going, B) Both clients have been kind to let me run the experiments and deserve praise but both have asked for privacy. So come back in a couple of weeks for the full results.