Great point, the goal we talk about in this blog post is the number of people who click that button.
One nice feature of Optimizely is that we can test as many goals as we like-- you can add goals even after the experiment has started running and we retroactively measure the conversion rate!
After I read your comment I went in and added a goal to see whether there was a change in the number of people who ended up starting a free trial later down in the funnel after seeing each of these variations. Turns out there was a +2.5% increase for the "Give it a try" variation. :)
I'm curious how far you're able to follow them down the funnel (e.g. conversions from that free trial to paying member? or effect on the cancel rate of those members?). I ask because I've been looking at Hubspot, and find their ability to connect the lead gen into the CRM a big selling point (I guess they call this "lead nurturing"). Are you focusing narrowly on the lead gen half of it?
I think tools like Optimizely can track to the final sale if you have an online (ecommerce only) transaction. This works well when the user is expected to complete the transaction online and without changing computers or deleting their cookies during the consideration process.
If you have an offline sales process (where a salesperson takes an order in person or on the phone) or customers who pay by invoice, or a longer and more considered sales process (bigger ticket items), you need a closed loop marketing tool that connects your marketign leads database to the CRM that the sales team is using. HubSpot does this, and connects to Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Highrise, Sugar CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, ACT, Goldmine, or pretty much any CRM.
So, Optimizely for small ticket / ecommerce, and HubSpot for large ticket / offline sales.
One nice feature of Optimizely is that we can test as many goals as we like-- you can add goals even after the experiment has started running and we retroactively measure the conversion rate!
After I read your comment I went in and added a goal to see whether there was a change in the number of people who ended up starting a free trial later down in the funnel after seeing each of these variations. Turns out there was a +2.5% increase for the "Give it a try" variation. :)