Eric Ries does a fantastic job of sharing his experiences on his blog: Startup Lessons Learned.  Following his example, I'm going to start regularly posting a "Lesson Learned".  At the advice of Hiten Shah, I'm going to structure the lesson into a template that others can follow to avoid re-inventing the wheel.

Hypothesis:

People are more comfortable submitting information to a website that has a smiling face on it.

Rationale:

Websites frequently use stock photos to prevent bounces and increase sales.  People are more likely to trust a person with their email address than a faceless website.

Methodology:

I split tested two versions of the landing page for Lean Startup Circle, one that included my bio with a picture, and one that did not.  To encourage traffic, I posted a tweet that linked to the landing page.

Results:

Within 24 hours, 274 unique people had visited the website.  Of those, 151 were presented the landing page absent the bio.  The other 123 were presented the landing page with the bio.  46% of the people that viewed the bio-less page submitted their email address.  Only 35% of the people that were presented the bio submitted their email address.

Bio w/ Portrait 35%

Bio w/o Portrait 46%

Analysis:

We can say with over 99.7% confidence that people presented the landing page with my bio are less likely to submit their email address than people who aren't.  Some possible explanations:

• The bio was too detailed and removed focus from the proposal.
• Smiling faces work well for some audiences but not others.
• A friend suggested that people might have assumed that the site was about me, rather than about something relevant to them.
• A more handsome picture (highly unlikely) would have performed better.

Lesson Learned:

The assumption that faces improve conversion isn't always valid.

I encourage you post your own "Lesson Learned".  The faster we learn, the faster we will create things that people love.

Discuss At the Lean Startup Circle