Simple changes and sound testing can massively improve your website’s effectiveness. Often the greatest benefits occur from simply removing unnecessary features.

A recent case study by Tim Ferriss shows how iterative improvements to a homepage made a big difference. We’ve summarised his article so you can see the remarkable benefits at a glance.

Case study: Gyminee

This is the original homepage of Gyminee, a premier diet and exercise tracking site:

In the first round of improvements, a large number of superfluous options were simply removed, particularly the options ‘below the fold’ (the part of the screen most users would see before scrolling down):

The results? The simplified design improved conversion by an average of 20.45%.

In the second round, the new simplified design was ‘split tested’ against two new concepts. A split test (also known as an A/B test) is where two or more variations of a design are shown randomly to different members of your audience, and the performance of each is measured and compared. On the web, tools can automate this process, making it a hugely efficient way of optimising your webpages.

Concept B:

Concept C:

The final results may surprise you. Despite having less ‘polished’ designs and no “Take the tour” facility, both Concept B and Concept C outperformed the original. Concept B performed best: 16.2% better than the simplified original. Concept C was a slight improvement: 4.5%.

There could be many reasons why, but we suspect the removal of the “Take the tour” button was most significant. Interestingly, the latest version of their website is actually less effective than Concept B, despite looking more polished, and re-introduces this button.

What can we learn from this?

• Regular experimentation and testing can deliver huge benefits
• Removing unnecessary features can be a big win, and is easy to do
• Testing may challenge your own assumptions about what really works

The original case study is well worth a read if you want to delve into the process in more detail.

What would a 20% increase in your conversions be worth to you?