Adding a picture of me to your site will improve conversions by 788%

I'd like that better if the images in the sprite weren't cutting off your arms when you flail them. Maybe you can make an image where you look less rectangular.

&#62; Unless you’re Madame Tussaud, you can’t delight through reproduction.<p>I beg to disagree :)

You could also measure what happens when you introduce just a normal image beside the icon, to separate "what do you look like" and "fun effect" factors.

Are people just clicking to see what happens though?<p>I shouldn't have to spell out the obvious to HN: an increase in clicks because of blind curiosity rather than an increase in clicks because the value proposition is better understood is <i>meaningless</i>.

Yep, it really does seem to work. At least it worked for 2 of our customers who increased their conversions by 50% and 100% respectively just by adding human faces.<p>Here's the detailed case study: <a href="http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/human-landing-page-increase-conversion-rate/" rel="nofollow">http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/human-l...</a>

Thanks to 37 Signals publishing their split test results for Highrise's landing page, we learned that adding a picture of individuals will in fact increase conversions [1].<p>If you're interested in learning about the importance of personality in branding and marketing, check this book out - Personality Not Included [2]<p>[1] <a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-testing-part-3-final" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-tes...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Personality-Not-Included-Companies-Authenticity/dp/0071545212/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#38;qid=1319503795&#38;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Personality-Not-Included-Companies-Aut...</a>

I love the idea. Might want to make the radius a bit bigger though. I didn't realize it was going to do anything until you explicitly told me to check it out (my mouse was ~200px from the left side, scrolling w/ the wheel).

Now that you've set the expectation that your buttons are fun, I was pretty disappointed when nothing happened with the Twitter button :)<p>I agree, fun really is OK. I liked that point. Pointless fun is still fun.

I'd argue that the real kicker is motion associated with mouse location to draw the user in... This trick has been around for ages, though you definitely did apparently find a crafty implementation.

I think the reason there's a sudden interest/spike is coz it's it's strange/new/funky.<p>It's kind of similar to the "You should follow me on twitter." which supposedly inc. ppl. doing it. But I think the initial increase was just interest coz of the strangeness/quirkiness of the statement. Once everyone starts doing it, it will loose it's uniqueness flair and ppl. will just start liking/following as they normally did.

Minus the crazy font, cursing, and pictures Dave McClure has a point in his article: It's all about the Faces &#62; <a href="http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/05/the-faces-the-faces-its-all-about-the-fking-faces-or-the-avatars-icons.html" rel="nofollow">http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/05/the-faces-the-fa...</a>

This assumes people roll over the RSS button. What about putting in the image regardless?

Another and well written article on the same subject: <a href="http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter....</a>

8 times what?

That masking is criminal.

What if I'm ugly?