Painted Door Tests, also known as fake door tests or smoke tests, are a powerful method for innovation, product, and consumer insights teams to evaluate the market desirability, willingness to pay, and potential success of new products or variants robust purchase-intent data from real consumers. They are typically applied before a product or variant exists and significant resources are committed. These tests involve creating a seemingly functional representation of a typical customer journey that consumers can interact with, through ads and landing pages showing the product or feature to test.
This approach offers several advantages, including assessing market demand, validating ideas, gaining customer journey insights, and ultimately saving time, money, and resources by identifying the potential for market success of early product concepts and decisions.
While Painted Door Tests can be beneficial, understanding and avoiding the most common mistakes while designing a landing page for a Painted Door Test, can significantly enhance the effectiveness of a test.
#1 Mistake | Misleading Messaging
A common error is creating misleading or overly enticing messages that don't accurately represent the tested objective. This can result in skewed data, as users might click out of curiosity or misunderstanding rather than genuine interest.
Example:
Suppose you are testing consumer interest in a new premium subscription service for your app. If your message reads, "Unlock Unlimited Access Now!" without mentioning that this is a premium service that will require a subscription fee, users might click thinking they are accessing a free feature. This would result in data that doesn't accurately measure willingness to pay or genuine interest in a paid subscription.
Correct Approach:
Craft a message that clearly communicates the nature of the offer. For example, "Interested in our upcoming premium subscription service? Click here to learn more." This messaging ensures that users who click are genuinely interested in a paid service, leading to more accurate data on market demand and willingness to pay.
#2 Mistake | Poor User Experience
Poor UX design, characterised by a cluttered layout, multiple pop-ups, and slow load times, leads to user frustration.1 Visitors may leave the page before engaging with the content, resulting in inaccurate test results and a negative impression of the product.
Example:
Imagine a landing page test with a new model of headphones. The page is cluttered with multiple columns, excessive text, and various distracting elements like auto-playing videos.
Correct Approach:
Use a single-column layout with clear headlines, brief descriptions, and prominent CTAs to guide users naturally through the page. Compress images, use lazy loading for media, and minimise the use of complex scripts to ensure the page loads quickly. Ensure text is readable without zooming and buttons are large enough to tap easily on mobile screens. Remove unnecessary pop-ups and reduce distractions, using a single, well-timed pop-up if necessary to engage users without overwhelming them.
#3 Mistake | Inconsistent Design
Inconsistent design across different landing page variants can lead to biased results and incorrect data interpretation. When testing a specific element (such as price, feature, brand design, or value proposition), it’s crucial that all other aspects of the landing page remain identical. Variations in design, layout, or content can influence user behaviour and skew the results, making it difficult to isolate the impact of the specific element being tested.
Example:
Suppose you are testing two different prices for a new set of headphones. On one landing page, the price is $79, while on the other, it is $99. However, if one page has a different colour scheme, additional testimonials, or a different layout, the results may not accurately reflect the users' response to the price change alone. Users might react more favourably to the page with the better design, regardless of the price difference, leading to biassed data.
Correct Approach:
To ensure accurate and unbiased results, maintain consistency across all landing page variants except for the specific element being tested. For instance, if testing two different prices for the headphones, keep the same layout, colour scheme, images, headlines, descriptions, and CTAs on both pages. Only the price should differ. This approach isolates the variable and ensures that any difference in user behaviour can be attributed to the change in price rather than other factors.
Additionally: Focus on only one variable per test - see more on that in our fake door testing guide.
Before: Inconsistent Design
Page A: $99 price, blue colour scheme, three testimonials, standard layout.
Page B: $79 price, green colour scheme, four testimonials, different layout.
After: Consistent Design
Page A: $99 price, blue colour scheme, three testimonials, standard layout.
Page B: $79 price, blue colour scheme, three testimonials, standard layout.
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Ethical considerations are crucial in the design and implementation of a Painted Door Test. Consumers should never feel deceived or manipulated by the test. Failing to handle this aspect properly can harm your brand's reputation and trustworthiness. Ethical considerations involve being transparent about the test's purpose and ensuring consumers understand that the feature or product being tested is not available. This maintains user trust and upholds your brand's integrity. When users feel tricked or misled, it can lead to negative perceptions and damage long-term relationships with your audience. Therefore, it's essential to balance the need for valuable data with respect for user experience and trust.
Example:
Suppose you are testing again market desirability of a new pair of headphones. When consumers click the Call-To-Action on the landing page, they are taken to the next page or lightbox that informs them that the product is not available and asks them to sign up for updates with their email. However, this page did not clearly state more information or that the product was still in development and not complying with legal requirements, i.e. to disclose the purpose of the test before collecting personal data. This lack of transparency can make users feel misled, and they might leave the site frustrated, impacting your brand's trustworthiness.
Correct Approach:
Transparency: Clearly communicate that the product or feature is not available. In some cases, even including a message on the landing page that states the test is to gauge interest and that the product is still in development, is also possible.
GDPR Compliance: Ensure that your landing page includes an Imprint and a Data Privacy statement, especially if collecting consumer information. Explain which and how their data will be used, and emphasise it is protected.
Clear Exit Resolution: If consumers click on a CTA indicating purchase intent, provide a clear message explaining that the product is not available and reassure them that no purchase has been made. Offer the option to sign up for updates or join a waitlist only after disclosing this.
#5 Mistake | Inaccurate Call to Action
An inaccurate Call to Action (CTA) can confuse consumers and reduce the effectiveness of your painted door test. A CTA that does not align with the consumer’s expectations or the content of the landing page can lead to lower engagement rates and inaccurate test results. An unclear or misleading CTA may cause consumers to abandon the page or become frustrated, negatively impacting their perception of your brand and the reliability of the data collected from the test.
Example:
Suppose again you are testing market desirability in a new wireless headphone model. The landing page features a CTA button labelled "Learn more". When users click the button, they are taken to a purchase page to buy the headphones. The term "Learn more" does not clearly communicate that users would be making a purchase, leading to confusion and potential drop-off.
Correct Approach:
Clarity: Ensure that the CTA accurately reflects the action consumers will take throughout the steps in your test’s customer journey. Use specific, action-oriented language that clearly communicates what will happen next.
Consistency: Align the CTA with the content and purpose of the landing page. If the objective is to gauge purchase intent data, use CTAs like "Select Now".
Relevance: Make sure the CTA is relevant to the consumer’s journey. Avoid generic phrases that do not match the consumer’s potential intent, you would like to understand with the consumer clicking the button.
Design: Use a high-contrast colour scheme for the CTA button to make it stand out. Ensure the text is large and readable. The button should be prominently placed above the fold and easily clickable.
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A non-responsive design fails to adapt to different screen sizes and devices, significantly impacting the user experience. In today's mobile-centric world, more than 50% of users typically access landing pages through mobile devices, especially from social media ads. Studies and reports show that around 90% of the ad revenue comes from mobile users. If your landing page is not optimised for mobile, it can lead to high bounce rates, lower engagement, and inaccurate test results. Users may struggle to navigate the page, read the content, or interact with CTAs, leading to frustration and abandonment.
Example:
We are testing the market desirability for the new headphone concept through a Painted Door Test again. The test landing page looks great on desktop but is poorly formatted on mobile devices. Texts are too small, images are misaligned, and buttons are difficult to click. As a result, mobile users, who constitute the majority of your traffic from social media ads, find the page unusable and leave without engaging, leading to a lower conversion rate and potentially skewing your test results.
Correct Approach:
Responsive Design: Ensure your landing page is fully responsive, meaning it adapts seamlessly to various screen sizes and devices. Use flexible grids, images, and CSS media queries to create a mobile-friendly layout.
Mobile-First Approach: Design the landing page with mobile users in mind first, then scale up for larger screens. This ensures that the primary user experience is optimised for the majority of your audience.
Readable Text and Images: Use legible font sizes and high-quality, appropriately sized images that load quickly on mobile devices. Ensure buttons and interactive elements are large enough to be easily tapped with a finger.
Test Across Devices: Regularly test your landing page on different devices and screen sizes to identify and fix any responsiveness issues.
Prioritise Speed: Optimise the page load speed for mobile users by minimising file sizes, using efficient coding practices, and leveraging browser caching.
Conclusion
Painted Door Tests are a powerful tool for gauging market desirability and validating product ideas via robust purchase-intent data from real consumers, before committing significant resources. By carefully designing your painted door test with clear messaging, logical next steps, and a meaningful metric for measuring test success and purchase intent by consumers, you can gain valuable insights to make the right product decisions.
However, it's also important to be aware of other common mistakes that can arise during designing the landing pages. For instance, misinterpreting the results due to a lack of context, too many test variables, or statistically insignificant result data can lead to incorrect conclusions. By keeping these potential pitfalls in mind and planning accordingly, you can maximise the effectiveness of your Painted Door Tests and build better products that truly meet consumer needs and increase revenue.
Sources:
1 Bad UX: 20 Common Mistakes in User Experience, by Evelyn Taylor in August 2023.
2 General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR (EU) 2016/679.
3 Meta’s advertising resources, using the latest available data in April 2023.
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Daniel is the Founder & CEO of Horizon. He is driving the strategic development of the organization, establishing a thriving company culture with a team on a mission to help teams build products that customers really want. Daniel has a strong record in sales, marketing and building startups from zero to one. Before Horizon, he successfully founded and co-founded multiple companies, i.e. Candylabs, BikeBeat and Venture Advisory Partners.
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