Share and email widgets on the right side won on newsletter sign-ups
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsMoving the fixed share and email widgets to the right side of the screen on desktop gave the most newsletter sign-ups, though no figure was shared.
Noble Studios ran this A/B test for Travel Nevada, and it was published as a VWO case study.
The impact on engagement metrics was described as minimal.
- Newsletter sign-ups: the right-side desktop variation performed best. The size of the lift was not shared.
- Engagement metrics: minimal impact reported.
- No figures were given for the mobile bottom-bar variation, sample size, duration or confidence.
The change
The fixed share and email widgets move to the right side on desktop.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Share and email widgets were fixed to one side of the screen on Travel Nevada's site.
Variant
Variations placed the widgets on the left or the right side on desktop, and along the bottom of the screen on mobile. The right-side desktop version won.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- on desktop, many sites keep key actions on the right, so visitors may look there for them.
- On the left, fixed widgets can sit close to the text people are reading, so they may get skipped as clutter.
- This was a placement test, so its main value was setting up the next test, which put the full sign-up form in the right-side widget.
Caveats: No figure was published for any variation, and the original side of the screen was not stated. Treat this as a directional result from a vendor case study.
Who ran it
Noble Studios ran this test and published the results (VWO case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Noble Studios →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we move our fixed sign-up widget to the right side of the screen on desktop, then more visitors will use it because it sits where people expect secondary actions.
- Primary metric
- Newsletter sign-ups from the widget
- Guardrails
- Social share clicks
- Pages per session
- Bounce rate
- Who should test it
- Sites with a sticky share or sign-up widget and enough traffic to split it three ways. Small sites will struggle to see a difference from position alone.
Questions
Where should a sticky sign-up widget go?
For Travel Nevada, the right side of the screen on desktop beat the left side.
On mobile, the team tested a bar at the bottom of the screen.
Is widget placement worth testing?
It can be, and it is cheap to build.
Here it helped shape a later test that lifted sign-ups by 385%.