# Moving try/buy CTAs above the fold: +956% clickthrough

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Landing page (SaaS)
- Elements: Cta placement, Cta copy
- Date shared: 2014-05
- Test run by: [VMware](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/vmware/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingexperiments.com/a-b-testing/cta-test-simple-changes
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/vmware-smb-page-cta-above-fold/

Moving the try and buy calls-to-action above the fold on VMware's SMB solutions page lifted clickthrough by 956%. VMware's digital marketing team ran the test, and it was published by MarketingExperiments from a Web Optimization Summit 2014 talk. Small copy changes shipped with the move, so placement and copy share the credit.

## Result

**+956% clickthrough**

- Clickthrough up 956% on try, buy and engagement clicks.
- The test was a three-way 33/33/33 split: control and two variants. The post does not say in text which variant produced the 956%.
- Confidence level, sample size and downstream trials or purchases were not shared.

## Control

An SMB solutions page featuring several products, with the try and buy calls-to-action buried among links at the bottom.

## Variant

CTAs for vSphere Essentials and vCenter Log Insight moved above the fold, with subtle copy changes. Two variants were tested.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- Visitors who wanted to try or buy no longer had to scroll to the bottom and hunt through links.
- A clear, visible action next to the product pitch makes the next step obvious.
- The starting point was weak, which makes a very large relative lift easier to reach.

## Caveats

Copy tweaks were bundled with the placement change. The result measures clicks, not trials or sales, and dates from 2014.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we move our main try and buy CTAs above the fold, then more visitors will click through because the next step is visible without scrolling.
- Primary metric: Clickthrough on try and buy CTAs
- Guardrail: Trial starts or purchases from those clicks
- Guardrail: Engagement with other products on the page
- Guardrail: Bounce rate
- Who should test it: SaaS companies with multi-product or solutions pages where the main actions sit low on the page. If your CTA is already prominent at the top, this won't help much.

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Credit: VMware ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/vmware-smb-page-cta-above-fold/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.