The correct handling of how to show and notify users about a privacy policy is a complicated matter since it is being handled differently everywhere. But we’d like to shed some light on a very different aspect of the privacy policy today: effects on conversion a privacy policy may have.
We’d like to highlight the findings Beem Digital made when testing 4 different privacy policies on a sign-up form on the home page for BettingExpert, an online betting community.
But before we go deeper into this, we would like you to just test your guts and see if you are guessing right:
The test: can privacy policies improve sign up conversions?
What Beem Digital set out to test was if it was possible to increase conversions from an original sign-up form that had no privacy policy at all to a sign-up form featuring a privacy policy.
The short answer is, yes it can improve conversions quite meaningfully: 19.47% signup increase over the control version.
However be aware that the actual copy accompanying the checkbox is critically important. Another test, 100% privacy – we will never spam you, a potentially light-hearted approach hurt the signups by a staggering minus of 18.70%.
The takeaway
The most important takeaway is the fact that the privacy policy (other than its often legally required presence) is actually able to help you turn your prospective users/commenters/”what have you” into converted customers.
The other takeaway is that copy is critically important. Test the explanatory sentence or two that goes with your checkbox.
Deeper insights into how the testing was performed and what the details of the four performed tests look like can be found on Beem Digital’s original post.
