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Are you right-brained or left-brained? Does your brain lateralization affect how you interact with websites? These were burning questions for SearchAdNetwork and Westwood College. To find the answers, SearchAdNetwork tested contact form placement—right side of page versus left—on Westwood’s numerous degree program landing pages in an effort to link the type of program and brain hemisphere dominance to contact form location.Discovering a connection between brain lateralization and contact form location could have had a major impact on the search and web design industries, deciding on form placement based on the common characteristics of one’s target audience. SearchAdNetwork did not find a universal correlation between brain lateralization and form locations; however, they did succeed in optimizing Westwood’s program landing pages, lifting conversion rates by 39.87% on averages, with 83.1% being the greatest improvement.
Citation preview
Presented by:
Angie Pascale
Copywriter & Marketing/PR Coordinator
Brainy Days: Lateralization & Website
Optimization
Background
• Westwood College, along with Redstone College and Westwood College Online, are a system of higher education
institutions powered by Denver-based Alta College, Inc.
• 19 campuses in six states, six schools, numerous degree programs, 17 online degree programs
• Location3 Media has been managing Westwood’s paid search for over five years
• During that time, we have created tons of landing pages for the campuses, schools and degree programs for all three
colleges
Objective
• After five years, we’d optimized nearly every aspect of PPC campaigns, all were performing well
• Next logical step was to focus on landing pages
• Due to the many landing pages, creating a GWO test for each was an extremely daunting task
• Instead, we focused on the degree program landing pages only
• Increasing conversions is always the ultimate goal, but we wanted to really learn
something about the users and take a creative, psychological approach
Contact Forms
• Why are contact forms always located on the right side of the page?
• In English, we read from left to right
• Approximately 90-95% of individuals are right-handed and prefer performing
activities with or on their right side
• What about the lefties?
• If the right side of the body is controlled by the left side of the brain, does that mean 90-
95% of people are left-brained?
• What could this mean for landing page design?
Hypothesis
• Lateralization of brain function (i.e., right-brained or left-brained)
dictates which side of the page a user prefers to complete a form
on
• Brain lateralization of users can be determined by degree program
they are interested in
• Right-brain degree programs will perform better with form on left
side; left-brain degree programs will perform better with form on
right side
GWO Experiment
• We conducted A/B split tests using original page with contact form on the right versus new page with contact form on the
left
• Created new version for all 56 degree program pages
Original Landing Page New Version of Landing Page
Brain Lateralization
Left-brained Traits
Logical, detail-oriented, practical
Responds to verbal instructions
Planned and structured
Prefers established, certain information
Sees cause and effect
Right-brained Traits
Artistic, visually-oriented, risk-taking
Responds to demonstrated instruction
Fluid and spontaneous
Prefers elusive, uncertain information
Sees correspondences and resemblances; analogical
Source: Bastable, S. B. (2002). Nurse as educator: Principles of teaching and learning nursing
practice. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.
Brain Lateralization & Career Choice
• These characteristics help define an individual’s career goals:
Right-brained
Interested in literature and Humanities; become
entrepreneurs, athletes, sales executives, artists,
musicians and craftsmen.
Left-brained
Interested in math and science; become lawyers,
accountants, engineers and scientists.
Brain Lateralization & Career Choice
Left-brained Degree Programs
Right-brained Degree Programs
Criminal Justice Game Art
MBA Marketing & Sales
Airframe and Powerplant Construction
HVAC Interior Design
Healthcare Management Graphic Design
Paralegal Fashion Merchandising
ISS
Game Software
E-business Management
• We associated each Westwood degree program with a dominant hemisphere of the brain
Results
Degree Program Winning Form Side Confirmed Hypothesis?
Criminal Justice Right
MBA Left
Airframe and Powerplant Right
HVAC Left
Game Art Right
Construction Left
Marketing & Sales Right
Conclusions
• Although a compelling experiment, we did not find a conclusive link between contact form location and brain lateralization.
Reasons for the discrepancies:
• Too many outside variables
• Those seriously interested in the program would complete the form regardless of its location
• Brain lateralization simply has no connection to online conversion activity
• Experiment was based on a hypothesis created by right-brained individuals!
Conclusions
• We did, however, succeed in optimizing Westwood’s many degree program landing pages:
• Average 39.7% conversion rate improvement
• 83.1% conversion rate improvement for HVAC page
• Winning form location has been applied to all landing page designs since
If you would like a copy of this presentation, please provide a business card or contact me:
Angie Pascale
720.881.8528
To view online case study, visit:
www.searchenginemarketingstrategy.com/wwcs
