Adding a picture of me to your site will improve conversions by 788%

I added a picture of myself to my RSS button. Subscriptions are converting at roughly 9x the previous rate. If you’re unconvinced, give it a press and tell me you aren’t seduced.

On the other hand, I spent the whole weekend converting this blog to WordPress and adding a pretty theme. My bounce rate has become 3% worse (ie. higher).

The conclusion is clear: your buttons needs more Rob and WordPress is worthless!

I mention this to raise two points.

First, fun is okay

We need an antonym to “gamification” which means adding pointless fun instead of functionless points.

I heard a GM at Bloomberg the other day say:

Never follow best practices. That’s what everyone else is doing! It will never work.

He got ragged on a bit because in some fields (e.g. surgery) you obviously do want to follow best practices. But I catch his drift.

Unless you’re Madame Tussaud, you can’t delight through reproduction.

Second, test stuff for yourself

Lean startup (or lean anything) can be boiled down to one sentence:

Reduce waste by considering, measuring, and improving your process.

Everyone loves to ignore the word “your” and pretend everyone’s process is identical enough that we can re-apply their lessons learned verbatim.

Upon consideration…

So maybe you shouldn’t add a picture of me to your website. Your process, product, and audience might be different than my own. But just in case, here’s the sprite sheet: