Does your logo make a difference? I tested my original logo that I made myself and a new one and found that it DOES!

1. mat t hewwoodward.co.uk
http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/experiments/is-your-logo-costing-you-money-revealing-split-test-results/
Matthew Woodward
Is Your Logo Costing You Money? Revealing Split Test Results
As my blog has grown in the last f ew months I wanted to polish up my branding online.
Branding really is everything and allows you to stand out f rom the crowd 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 ef f ect-
Does Having A Good Logo Really Matter?
When I f irst launched the blog I created 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 f eel 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 f ind out I got a logo designed and set up a split test!
Finding A Logo Designer
So how do you go about f inding a decent logo designer?
Forums
The f irst thing I did was jump over to some popular internet marketing f orums to see who was of f ering logo
design services.
I shortlisted a f ew 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 af ter trying to work with a f ew designers I still
couldn’t f ind one I liked better than the original one I made myself .
Logo Contests
During this time I came across a post on Traf f icPlanet that recommended logo design contests.

2. Essentially you create a contest with a prize f und; people submit entry’s that you can rate and f eedback until
you select a winner.
At f irst I looked at 99Designs but the prices were shocking and then I came across 48HoursLogo.com which
was much more budget f riendly.
Within a f ew days I had loads of logos to choose f rom!

4. 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!
Af ter all, it’s you guys that will have to look at it all the time
In the end I settled on this-
I also asked the designer if he would mind doing
another version with the character f acing the other
way.
Which looked like this-
So now I have the original logo, the lef t f acing logo

5. and the right f acing logo to split test!
Will it actually make a dif f erence?
Setting Up The Split Test
To setup the split test I used the SES Theme Split
Test plugin which is f ree 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 f older name to ‘meleft’ and swapped out the logo f or the new
one.
Then open up the stylesheet and change the Theme Name to meleft.
Then do exactly the same but this time f or the right f acing logo called ‘meright‘
So at this point I had 3 themes installed and the only dif f erence 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 is setting up Google Analytics to track the dif f erent 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 melef t theme-

6. You need to create a new custom segment f or each theme you are split testing.
It will take about 24 hours f or 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 ‘f irst impression impact’ of the logo with people that have never seen the site bef ore.
Split Test Results
I ran the test f rom February 8th-26th through a total of 5,459 unique users.
I’m just going to let Analytics do the talking here-

7. click the image above for a full version
To make it a bit easier to digest let’s f ocus 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%
Lef t Facing 2.52 00:04:01 55.70%
Right Facing 2.67 00:04:12 54.64%
Digesting The Results
As you can see both the prof essionally designed lef t f acing and right f acing logos of f ered better engagement
all round.
However what is interesting is how the lef t f acing and right f acing logos perf ormed dif f erently.
They are essentially the same logo with the character f acing the other way, yet one perf ormed signif icantly
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 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 bef ore 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 af f iliate links and subscribing!
You can start a logo contest f or just $99 but I decided to of f er $130 f or 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 bef ore! WINNER!
Wasn’t even hard work either =D