http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html

Interesting from a web development perspective and given the recent discussion about twitter.

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Do it for the Lobster

Sigh, damn the statistics, I will NEVER make hyperlinks with "here" or "click here" in them! Hide this article from the editors at my job, they will go back to webpages full of blue underlined "here" "here" "here" everywhere! (though I think his experiment is very misleading, as most people scan a webpage and the links stand out, and you don't want a bunch of "here"s otherwise people cant find stuff)

Also, I think a short reason why to follow would have a bigger effect on getting people to take action: "Follow me on twitter for updates on new features" or something, instead of just the blind command. Though if you actually said why someone should follow you on twitter it would probably become apparent why they should not.

Funny, I was just reading a different article about A/B testing

http://www.two-tribes.com/blog/2009/05/31/ab-testing-download-form-50-conversion-increase/

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Hide this article from the editors at my job, they will go back to webpages full of blue underlined "here" "here" "here" everywhere!

Agreed completely. I think, in this case, he's not a "here-idiot", putting here on every link, and "here" does sound very 10-years-ago.

But an interesting experiment, nonetheless. The progression from "I'm on twitter" to "You should follow me on twitter here" leading to improved conversion ratio is interesting.

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Do it for the Lobster

In order for the test to be valid though, he would have had to work out of order. There could have been any number of reasons he saw a higher clickthrough rate. Maybe he managed to increase traffic through twitter, or maybe he managed to get more people who used twitter to his site. I'd like to see some attempt to move backwards and see if the clickthrough rate follows. Or, do something like stevo suggests and add WHY people should follow him.

Still, pretty interesting. I wonder if you had the whole text a link if it would make a difference. Then, whether you include here or not, people could still quickly find the links.

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no fat chicks

I'm thinking the best way to have tested it for reasonably true statistics would be to run all of them randomly for each user. That way there are no possible changes in trends (popular blog posts, etc)

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Do it for the Lobster

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Maybe he managed to increase traffic through twitter

hahaha, that's a good one!

sorry, I had to