Small Business

Significantly Increase Customer Response with Careful Word Choices

By Dave Johnson

Updated on: July 16, 2009 / 11:55 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Can you bend customers to your will just by carefully choosing the right combination of words on your Web site? Looks like the answer is yes, based on a study that showed how clickthrough rates varied by making almost negligible changes to link text.

Developer Dustin Curtis tested statements like these:

I'm on twitter
Follow me on twitter
You should follow me on twitter
You should follow me on twitter here

The result? Commands worked better than statements, and giving the link a destination ("here") jacked up clickthrough rates even more. Here's how each version performed:

The moral of the story? Language matters, and you can have an almost supernatural level of control over your customer if you pay attention to the details.

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