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I am creating a landing page targeted to men of age 18 to 45 years. It's supposed to promote a nationwide recruitment effort of temporary workers needed in production plants.

The photo of a smiling factory worker will be used on the top of the page next to the main slogan.

What is better regarding conversion rate : a male worker or a female worker?

Same question asked differently : should I use the "identification to self" approach or the "sexual attraction" approach?

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    To my knowledge a female front figure/voice generally creates a calm and trust in the beholder (which in the scenario can be either a man or woman). So in the scenario you describe, where a visitor will in the blink of an eye determine whether they want to "go into business" with this recruiter or not I would from the top of my head argue that a female front figure would generally produce the higher conversion rate.
    – AndroidHustle
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 11:01
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    Perhaps you could argue that including such a photograph is only a distraction. You might well expect no photograph to outperform both male/female variants.
    – Brendon
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 11:34
  • @Brendon well, if you take a look at most of the slides from slideshare.net/ioninteractive/… , you'll notice that a model is almost always present on a landing page. And it's a woman most of the times.
    – majimekun
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 11:45
  • I'd have expected there to have been some relevent academic research on this topic - otherwise it would be an easy thing to A/B test.
    – PhillipW
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 11:52
  • @PhillipW Unfortunately, I can't A/B test for this project. That's why some proved facts/researches would be highly welcome.
    – majimekun
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 11:55

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I would rather go with actual workers than models. If you are asking this question on UX Q&A site, I would give you the UCD approach rather than the cogsci approach to marketing.

  • By using actual workers in actual working conditions, you run the advantage of being transparent and conveying much more information through the image than what you could have done using models.

  • If the 'teams' in the factory are composed of men and women, then show that. Else what is the point of showing a picture of female workers when they are working in isolation? Are you saying 'We have men and women workers. They do not work together, but, you can catch a sneak peak during lunch hours. Come work for us!'

Twitter made this video (not quite seriously) but it still went viral and did the job (arguably) better than a serious commercial would have.

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  • +1 I agree. Using real life pics rather than stock photos is always better in my opinion. More trustworthy and not as stale as a stock photo easily get.
    – AndroidHustle
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 13:06
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    How long until someone counters with "but real people are ugly!"?
    – crdx
    Commented Jun 12, 2013 at 9:49

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