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As my blog has grown to make money in the last few months I wanted to polish up my branding online. So I decided to put together a quick logo test to see if a different logo design had an impact on the numbers.
Branding really is everything and allows you to stand out from the crowd, from your brand name and logo to your brand purpose and especially when you consider how competitive the internet marketing niche is.
As you can see I use a distinctive blend of blue and pink throughout my brand which is certainly having the desired effect-
Does Having A Good Logo Really Matter?
When I first launched the blog I designed the logo myself in Photoshop which looked like this-
Not too shabby considering I suck at Photoshop but it still had a very amateur and unpolished feel to it.
I decided I needed a new logo!
Not only that but I wanted to be able to measure exactly what impact a new logo would have on key metrics such as bounce rate, time on site and pages per visit.
So to find out I got a logo designed and set up a split test!
Finding A Logo Designer
So how do you go about finding a decent logo designer?
Forums
The first thing I did was jump over to a popular blackhat forum to see who was offering logo design services.
I shortlisted a few I liked and got in touch with them and got a set of concepts created by one of the designers.
The only problem was I didn’t like any of the concepts and after trying to work with a few designers I still couldn’t find one I liked better than the original one I made myself.
Logo Contests
During this time I came across a post on TrafficPlanet that recommended logo design contests.
Essentially you create a contest with a prize fund; people submit entry’s that you can rate and feedback until you select a winner.
At first I looked at 99Designs but the prices were shocking and then I came across 48HoursLogo.com which was much more budget friendly.
Within a few days I had loads of logos to choose from!
Not too shabby huh? I actually had a hard time picking the one I liked most!
Choosing The Winner
Choosing the winner was easy, there is a really cool system on 48HoursLogo.com that makes it easy to setup a vote. So I created one and asked the readers themselves!
After all, it’s you guys that will have to look at it all the time :P
In the end I settled on this-
I also asked the designer if he would mind doing another version with the character facing the other way.
Which looked like this-
So now I have the original logo, the left facing logo and the right facing logo to split test!
Will it actually make a difference?
Setting Up The Logo Test
Testing logo designs is really easy with split tests. I used the SES Theme Split Test plugin which is free to use.
This allows you to split test themes and then track custom variables in Google Analytics.
Duplicating The Theme
I took a copy of the original theme, changed the folder name to ‘meleft’ and swapped out the logo for the new one.
Then open up the stylesheet and change the Theme Name to meleft.
Then do exactly the same but this time for the right facing logo called ‘meright‘
So at this point I had 3 themes installed and the only difference between each of them was the logo.
Configuring SES Theme Split Test
This has got to be the easiest plugin in the world to use.
Just choose which themes you want to split test and hit Save Settings.
Setting Up Google Analytics
Last but not least you need to setup the logo test in Google Analytics to track the different themes. Don’t worry this is really easy!
From your main visitor dashboard click on Advanced Segments and then New Custom Segment
Have a look at this screenshot to see how I track people using the meleft theme-
You need to create a new custom segment for each theme you are split testing.
It will take about 24 hours for the new data to start appearing in your analytics account once you have set everything up.
Note: You will see my segment only includes new visitors. Repeat visitors are already engaged with my brand, the trust is already built.
I wanted to measure the ‘first impression impact’ of the logo with people that have never seen the site before.
Logo Test Results
I started testing logo designs from February 8th until the 26th with a total of 5,459 unique users.
I’m just going to let Analytics do the talking here-
click the image above for a full version
To make it a bit easier to digest let’s focus on the 3 important metrics – pages per visit, average visit duration and bounce rate.
| Logo | Pages/Visit | Visit Duration | Bounce Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original | 2.08 | 00:03:43 | 57.82% |
| Left Facing | 2.52 | 00:04:01 | 55.70% |
| Right Facing | 2.67 | 00:04:12 | 54.64% |
Digesting My Logo Test Results
As you can see both the professionally designed left facing and right facing logos offered better engagement all round.
However what is interesting is how the left facing and right facing logos performed differently.
They are essentially the same logo with the character facing the other way, yet one performed significantly better than the other.
This is why I love split testing :) You can settle most arguments with data!
So Was It Worth It?
For a one time investment in a logo contest & setting up a logo test, I was able to-
- Increase pages per visit by 0.59
- Increase time on site by 29 seconds
- Decrease bounce rate by 3.18%
So this means that every other visitor will now browse 1 extra page than they would have before giving me extra opportunities to convert them.
This also leads us into visitors spending an extra 29 seconds on the site than they would previously!
And that decrease in bounce rate means more people are moving around my blog, sharing my content, clicking on my affiliate links and subscribing!
You can start a logo contest for just $99 but I decided to offer $130 for my contest.
So was the $130 worth it? Hell yeah it was!
All day every day while I’m working, sleeping or eating more new visitors are getting reeled in with my blog than ever before! WINNER!
And the best bit? Testing logo designs isn’t hard work, anyone can do it!
94 Responses
This is a great post, really informative. Split tests are something everyone should do.
Couldn’t agree more!
I completely agree. Logo design is a lot to do with branding, at https://regionsmarketing.com we went through several brand names, logo changes and some completely redesigned colors on our website and everything. Although I do tend to agree also that the logos that were split tested in this example all look very similar but in the end, data generally doesnt lie. If you split test them and found one performed better over the other, then it obviously did make a difference. Great article.
Data certainly doesn’t lie! Thanks for your comment Adam
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! would like to look for similar post in near future
watch this space
I don’t have a logo on my blog yet but I will soon.. thanks for the tip
No problem Temi
Thank you mattehw
No problem!
Hey Matthew,
Wow, a logo can do that? Awesome case study, I’ll take note of this and mention this article in one of my future articles.
BTW, have you read/done any case study about having a blog with/without a sidebar?
Cheers,
Ryan
I have tested left/right sidebar here https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/conversion/left-vs-right-sidebar/ and I am currently testing different blog post layouts/font combinations
Hope I’m not too late to the comments party but I just found your blog (love it!) Thanks for another inspirational post. I’m not sure what I like better, the ideas on where and how to get a good logo, or the split-testing concept. I guess both! Thanks!
Hahaha welcome to the blog Anne :) Plenty more of that to come for you!
Great post, i bought a software today to create logos and just saw your post in my email about logos, really helped me, Thanks. I wanted to ask something its not related to this post but you have experience, is there any software online that can create social media accounts auto pilot? i have come across a few but some have Facebook missing, some have pinterest missing anything that can create all account?
thanks.
Do you need to create the accounts or can you just buy premade ones?
I need something that i can use to create the major social media and/or bookmarks and web 2.0 accounts. I have seen a few tools that do that but i am not sure which one to go with and almost every tools is missing something so i wanted to ask you if you know of anything that can create almost all of those accounts? I mostly concentrate on social media and video because thats what i am very good at so i need something that can get me a good amount of accounts on daily basis because buying accounts and then waiting and then sorting and adding to different tools is a lot and pretty expensive if i need a lot of accounts so a tool would help me in the long term and i can just hire someone to keep adding the accounts to my different tools i think that would be a lot cheaper for me.
Honestly off the top of my head I don’t know anything that would just do that and you know your requirements better than I do, personally I would just buy premade accounts to save a bunch of time
Hello Matthew, congrat’s for the awesome blog !
I’ve got a pretty simple question for you but couldn’t find the answer myself.
Which plugin are you using for Social Buttons and how do you set it up differently for top of post and bottom of post (I like the big count on the bottom ;) ) ?
Thanks a lot for the answer.
– Valentin
PS: Do you have high engagement rates on these buttons ?
They are part of my theme sorry =/
Oh Ok, thanks for the fast answer anyway ;)
No problem :)
These “contests” are one of the reason so many of us designers are having to throw out years of training, schooling, etc out the window and find new careers. All of our business is now going over seas. Of course we cant do logos for $25-$100 here, with market research, design time, customer correspondence, file preps, revisions, etc…. That’s an average of 16 hours of work (16/100 = That comes out to less than minimum wage, but in some countries $100 is a big deal!
Welcome to 2015! Previously as a design customer we were forced into expensive work that was often limited by a handful of peoples creativity. Now as a customer, we have fair prices and great choice.
The design and specifically design agency world in my corporate experience were a necessary evil and they knew it – not any more.
Whether your a designer or music band – you have to evolve with the times.
My latest logo contest is for $297, I provided the market research and the brief – all the designer had to do was design to spec and upload then make a few tweaks here and there, very quick and simple work for any skilled designer.
You have to adapt Larry. It sucks for some people (not for others), but business owners can use it to their advantage. I have seen thread after thread of skilled designers/programmers complaining over the years, and just laughing at how cheap some people will work for. This is just trying to make themselves feel better but solves nothing. If you don’t adapt you’re going to just sit around crying with your other buddy’s “Oh yeah these damn Indians and freelancer sites have wrecked me”. The reality is as time goes by the 1st world countries are going to give more and more of their money/lifestyle to developing countries because so many occupations can be done from a distance and its not like everybody can have money and be doing well in this world, somebody got to be poor or else we will all be the same, and this is only going to get worse for things like design and computer programming or anything else that can be done from a distance as high speed internet gets into the provinces of developing countries. Of course you can always try to stand out from the crowd, and you can try (futile to some degree) to not compete based on price and offer Superior quality and customer care (something very lacking in freelance world).
I don’t hear people from developing countries complaining all there much, there using their college skills and working at home are doing just fine and dandy, in fact more dandy then they ever have been. So take solace in the fact that at least somebody is benefiting and feeding their family’s better than ever while developed nations designers go hungry.
My question is whether you are split testing the right things?
The reason a logo would make a difference here is the feeling it creates. Yet I see 24 logo designs that create pretty much the same feeling – pink, blue and a somewhat geeky cartoon character.
Maybe there’s an identity there you aren’t prepared to give up, but some completely different design could well make a much larger change to your visitor perception and engagement. Surely you would want to split test those kinds of things before the minutiae.
Yes that is right but that is an identity I don’t want to stray to far from :)
Thank you so much for sharing for this article this is really nice about logo subject
No problem Amad :)
Great post. I have read many times that having the person look either at the thing you want them to look at (often your call to action) makes a difference.
I would have expected a similar result but it’s really nice to see it tested. I split test landing pages and find similar results but I generally stick with having people look at the important bits.
If someone is turning their back to the act now button then it’s a subtle but powerful way to reduce conversion.
Hmmmm… Think I’m going to do this type of Logo split test with any of my customers that request I “make the logo bigger”!
I would expect that the bigger logo would = worse performance (since I’d rather make it smaller and use the saved space to get a CTA above the fold) but who knows, maybe I will be shocked and start making everyone’s logo bigger! LOL
Thanks for another great write up… split testing now added to my ever growing list of things to do… wait, on second thought, screw this write up – you just made me have more work to do! :)
Opinions are irrelevant when there is data :)
FYI, the page for downloading SES Theme Split Test has two 1-star reviews.
One of them from 7 March 2014 says
“The guide for setting up Custom Analytics Segments is way out of date, and so there is no way to track the changes, which means the plugin is worthless.”
and the other review from 13 August 2014 says
“This version does not work with the latest Google Analytics”
Yeah that just means that people leaving the reviews were not capable of working out how to setup up custom segments with the new user interface of Analyics, and well if they can’t figure that out that speaks for itself.
Sadly, even just doing pairwise comparisons of the original with each alternative individually the test results are nowhere near statistically significant. the ones I looked at were in the 55-65% range – miles of the 95%+ you’d be looking for.
So right now you can’t really make anything of these results. there’s a very high probability they’re just random.
Overall, what I’d do though is I’d focus a test on optins, not time on site, bounce rate etc. Your main goal is email optins and getting an optin can actually decrease time on site if they quickly opt in then head off to their email box.
Ian
Ahhhh thats a seperate test https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/blogging/email/email-marketing-part-1/
Well, yes and no. You should surely also be testing these changes for optins. It’s great if you get more pageviews and more time on site. But if it doesn’t turn into optins do you really care?
The point about statistical significance still stands I’m afraid too. Right now you’re still miles away from proving anything with this test :(
But be interesting to see where it ends up.
Hola Matthew,
I recently hired a logo designer and he was charging too much for the logo design. And then I saw your post and it helped me a lot for my logo. Saved me bucks and got the best logo.
Thanks a lot.
Glad to be of service :)
I’m a design so I design my logo myself. But I’m not sure the effect of it. Can you tell more about the analytic?
Just follow the guide here to learn how to measure it
Which content lock plugin are you using to get my tweet and email before showing? Great way to drive some extra traffic.
All will be revealed in the future :)
Wow, soy de El Salvador y pienso ser su suscriptor a partir de ahora. Aunque sea usando G Translate :)
Wow, ;) no estamos muy lejos
es un mundo pequeno
Love your reporting style, easy to follow steps that always make the task you’re describing seem eminently doable.
Then get it done :P
I agree with this. I’m targeting a competitive niche and spent about 5 hours dicking with photoshop to make a good logo. Seriously the second I see a site with a low quality logo, I automatically and almost subconsciously assume the site is shit.
Appearance is everything!
This is very intetesting and I am not negative toward your comments but offer a different perspective.
I would never crowsource a decision on creative material either infotrmally or more formally through a self managed research exercise. There are just too many variables to nr able to draw any conclusion and I would rate the opinion of someone with zero stake in the outcome as very low value.
Doing this will probably prevent you making a shocking mistake (but you shouldn’t need that guidance) but will also almost certainly prevent anything really excellent from getting past the crowd – which will always steer towards the known, predictable and absolutely ‘safe’ – which so often means ho-hum.
I hate the whole idea of a ‘competition’ to come up with a winning design. Across the entire creative and comm’s landscape those with talent and reputation will shun this idea because they know the client lacks professionalism (no sleight intended) and the outcome will be decided on highly subjective grounds which makes time invested little more than a lottery.
Even the capable and experienced designer going through a lean patch which happens to the best is going to decline to take part firstly because he or she would think their capability would probably not be recognised and secondly because of the damage to their reputation if it became known their level of desperation to clutch at such straws.
Your case may very well be an exception but as a general rule I believe people who think they have achieved a great outcome by promoting a contest based pitch don’t realise how wrong they are.
Lastly I am not a fan of this approach because I believe it exploits those at the bottom of the pool of talent which I am sure most of the promoters of the contest would not realuse. For behind the scenes having perhaps dozens of people in third world countries desperate for a few dollars spend fruitless hours with no chance of getting picked in order to make some westerner think they are doing the smart thing doesn’t sit well with me.
Matthew I am not having a crack at you – just pointing out to your readers that there is another perspective to this question and from that angle there isn’t so much to be excited about.
Hi,
Well people are free to participate as they wish. And trust me – they do! Lots of them.
After working with many designers in a 1 on 1 situation, not a single one impressed me. These were not bottom end designers either =/
Additionally my final choice was based off raw data – not opinion. Data > Opinion.
Since this logo I have passed the winning designer thousands of dollars of work and refer every single person that asks me where I got my logo done to him.
I wish we had the option to do this in the corporate world for big money clients instead of relying on expensive rigid inhouse designers.
I think it’s a great idea! I’m a relatively new blogger that started blogging in search of a creative outlet and to connect with like-minded people . I’m not looking to change the world with my blog, sell products or make lots of money off my blog.
With that said, I’d still like to grow my readership and would like a personal, unique logo that captures my character, passion and creativity. I’d been toying with paying for a unique logo but don’t possess the skill set to do it myself and don’t want to spend a ton of money. This would be great for me…thanks for the article!
One question…generally speaking, how established or how much traffic should a blog have to start a contest like this?
Thanks,
Melanie
Hi,
Well when I got my logo redone, I had to re-edit every single video I had ever published to incorporate the new logo into the intro and update all the watermarks.
I had to update it across all of my office file templates/invoices etc etc
So in answer to your question, zero :)
Have to agree with David on this. Competitions to earn pennies from creative work for a company such as yours is not the best way to go about it.
I can’t understand how people can make a living from producing work like this, maybe its just a bit of pocket money for the kids that produce them. As a design pro with over 20 years experience, working like this is not sustainable, you can’t bring up a family in the UK on the amount of money you earn from contest websites.
I have to disagree, there is a huge amount of money to be won out there by designers that transition and adapt to the new way of things.
Small/medium businesses are ditching agencies and picking up freelancers more than ever before, whether that is design or programming – there is just no need to hire a creative agency/development house for most small/medium businesses in 2016 (or 2010). The same is true for other industries like accounting.
With that shift in the market, a shift is also required by service providers. Just looking at the design competition is a very narrow view, the design competitions are essentially client generators. I use the designers that have won my contests every week and have built a long term relationship with them.
The same when I am hiring a content writer, I post up a job on freelance site and if someone really nails it – they become long term. It’s the same way I hired my programmers.
Then you have to consider services like http://www.kapa99.com/ which in my opinion makes traditional design agencies 100% irrelevant unless you are a large/enterprise business.
Irrespective of having 20 years design experience, the world has changed significantly across a number of industries. Evolve or die!
This confirms my personal theory that people are as shallow as hell online *smirk* Very visually driven and motivated, it makes sense because the internet is essentially anonymous so the only ques you have are visual-and textual but people do not read much, so they form an opinion by the graphical elements of your site…great post Matt
Most people are visually driven, especially in consumerist societys that drive that.
Sometimes I feel like you can read my mind! I was just thinking at the beggining of the year that maybe my logo needed a touch up! But I had no idea where to start.Thanks for the tips! I loved all the different logos by the way its interesting to see how different people cam re imagine the same concept from different angles.Now to find people I could afford .Oh well the information is still and I will save in it my back pocket!
Yeah its certainly the best way to get a logo done, I wasted a bunch of time and money hiring people before that.
I’ll admit as a designer myself I hate contests. The amount of free work you often have to do just to be in the running for the final is really tough. As with your contest, you were happy with a lot of the logos. So those designers have done quality work and have nothing but lost time to show for it.
But I understand the benefit to the client, to get all those concepts and ideas for free. Personally I think the contests so have a tiny prize pool for all runners up who get beyond the first round.
I love the fact that the split testing yielded such different results. I will have to start split testing elements when my new blog is up and running properly.
Hi Forest,
Actually I disagree with what you say. Since the initial logo contest I have passed the designer hundreds and hundreds of dollars of work. He now does every single piece of design work I need and I pay him very well, most of the award logos were made by him and I paid him $40 a pop. He also made my business card design at https://plus.google.com/108557308721097082569/posts/Uu9tQN3FvZN
Anyone who sends me an email asking about graphics, gets passed onto him.
I think you have a very short sighted view of contests.
I have tried to work with a lot of designers and he is the only one I have ever worked with that just gets it and produces what you actually ask for. He turns things round within 24 hours and makes tweaks/revisions quicker than you can blink. I often pay him +50% of his quote for that.
Hi Matt,
I think Forest meant the poor luck of those designers who have lost the contest – all but one just lost their time and only the winner got it all ;)
But your are right, that once a designer wins a contest, he or she will likely get follow-up tasks in future.
Hi,
Thats just business, doesn’t matter if your a designer, blogger or whatever – not every opportunity leads to a pot of gold.
Great post, Matthew.
I’m curious about one thing, though. Are the left vs right differences really statistically significant? Thanks!
Not as much as between the original/new logo – but I’ll take any conversion increase
From the contest do you get to keep all those logos? or do you have to choose one?
Just choose one
Madness! who would have thought it would have that much of an impact!
Well worth it tho! Nice test!
Yeah out of all of my tests so far this has had the biggest impact!
Hi Robert,
Yeah I was impressed with not only the quality of the entrys but the huge variety in style.
I’ve got to say, your logo does hurt :P
Love your reporting style, easy to follow steps that always make the task you’re describing seem eminently doable.
On the to-do list!
Well its easy when you know how – took me a bit of trial and error to come up with a decent way to do the actual testing =D
well done and thank you for the walk through of how to do all this.
What is surprising is that designers so often create images of people looking away from the midline of the page and not towards it.
Alex
Thats an interesting observation – I hadn’t thought that you could use the direction of the eye to lead people
Great post, thanks. The info on split testing was great – easier than I thought too.
Incidentally, I used to work (in telesales, briefly) for a logo design company. For those that happen to be looking, I’d have no hesitation in recommending them (if you don’t mind Matthew). TheLogoCompany.net*. Cheers.
*I am not an affiliate and have no incentive, financial or otherwise.
Hi,
Yeah its easy when you know how :)
Absolutely stellar post, I love it… the idea of a logo contest is great. Your results just goes to show how much difference design can make to engagement.
I used to work for a company called Interwoven and they had a Multivariate Testing product called Optimost, which simply tested a rearrangement of multiple design elements on registration/conversion pages (such as text boxes, buttons, images etc) and found out what design converted best. Basically the next step up from A/B testing. The customers were mostly big ecommerce brands and some were able to get a decent percentage increase in conversions or registrations using MVT (which meant big increases in revenue for them – I think Love Film experienced a multimillion £ increase in revenue using MVT back in 2008). Interestingly Google had a free MVT product called Website Optimiser which did something similar but it was discontinued in 2012 and replaced by a function in Google Analytics called Experiments, which can now be found under the Content menu. …so Matt maybe a nice idea for a new post would be doing some Registration/Conversion page optimisation testing using Experiments in GA?
Hi,
Experiments suck with GA – the older website optimizer was much more dynamic and allowed for multi variate testing where as now it is just Page A and Page B, which actually makes split testing your logo across the entire site impossible.
Still not found a decent solution that plays nice with Wordpress for the multivariate voodoo!
You are truly the master of the split test – absolutely love it and wish I had quite the scientific dedication you have Matthew! I will definitely be blogging about this and split testing Wordpress in general – great tip on the plugin.
Hahaha I would say I’m the master, this is low level testing really. I much prefer multivariate stuff but its a reeeeet pain with Wordpress.
The next split test is left aligned or right aligned sidebar :)
The F-shaped eye tracking monkeys might argue that they have that already figured out but I love a debate and hope you come out with a completely different answer. Controversy always smells good in the morning.
Hi,
Well I’ve actually got a bit of experience in that field and I can already tell you what the results are going to be :) You know as well ;)
Hi Matthew. You should try Google Optimize for multivariate (and all split testing really). It removes the WP headaches from it. I hardly did split testing on my WP sites before, but now we’re running all kinds of tests on https://ghostbrowser.com. You make the changes to the site inside of Optimize, so it literally takes us about 5 minutes to set up tests for anything (of course this was after doing a few to figure out how the tool worked). Anyway, give it a shot.
great stuff as usual Matt specially the case studies and tutorials. graphics indeed play a important role it isn’t just limited to logo and this post has given me an idea that i’ll be trying using facebook ads =)
Oooo Facebook ads – do tell :)
Now who would have thought that a logo could have that much of an impact?
Great stuff Matthew. I am definitely going to put that on my things to do list.
Well first impressions count and you have a split second to make a great first impression!
The logo is one of the most prominent design features and the first thing that hits the eye!
Nice case study on how a log change can make a big difference. Also, I had been looking at 99designs and always thought their pricing was pretty crazy too. Thanks for the link to an alternative.
Another interesting split test would be to change out your picture in the “Welcome to my Blog” box on the upper right of the page. My first thoughts when seeing that picture is you look like a punk and your drinking a beer. After reading your content for a few months I’m pretty sure the first isn’t true and not sure about the second, but in my opinion that picture had more influence on my first impressions of your brand than your logo did.
Just food for thought, but it might make for an interesting followup to this post.
Hi Ryan,
Funny you should mention that – I have had similar feedback from others but hadn’t thought about split testing it. I was going to get a better image done on a red background to improve CTR from SERPS as well.
Next I’m going to test sidebar position but once thats locked in, this is next – thanks for the tip!
Very interesting! I’ve been looking into different graphic designers for my own branding, but so far there’s been tons of schedule conflicts so no actual roughdrafting has been done. I like the idea of turning it into a contest because it gives a lot more to choose from (assuming a lot apply.) The split test results were also interesting but I wonder if the numbers were too close to really distinguish whether it’s coincidence or actual results.
Hi,
Yes the contest was great because you got lots of design minds involved instead of just 1!
The split test ran enough data to be conclusive
You would have to know the standard deviation or variance of the data in order to determine if the results are different. Minitab will do it all for you in seconds. Just need to enter the data.
Feel free to drop me a mail with that data and I’ll update the post :)