These 24 eCommerce Split Tests Will SKYROCKET Your Profits (14)
12-23-2016 12:33 PM
#1
shishev (Moderator)
These 24 eCommerce Split Tests Will SKYROCKET Your Profits
These 24 eCommerce Split Tests Will SKYROCKET Your Profits
For your reading and viewing pleasure, In this very article I’ve hand-picked and curated a total of 24 interesting eCommerce conversion optimization case studies or split tests from various sites/blogs and I’ve also added a few comments of my own.
You can find all of the sources at the end of this post or you can click each headline to go to each article directly. I highly recommend you read the entire case studies yourself. They’ll give you TONS of ideas on how to optimize your own sites` conversion rates which in turn can lead to huge ROI boosts, without even touching your ads. Yes, you can push your campaigns to the green side just by optimizing your sites(been there, done that).
Not all of the case studies are necessarily eCommerce ones, but I’ve included them just because I think they’re some proper food for thought.
You may have seen some of them out there in the wild already, but a little repetition wouldn’t hurt for your next round of CRO. There’s no need to even perform proper split-testing in some cases - simply, if you’re missing any of the elements you see here, add them in and see if they help! Disclaimer: Obviously though take this with a grain of salt, you should try and study your data and your customers before attempting anything silly - i.e. use your head.
This post serves as a simple reference sheet that is easy to crunch through with a cup of coffee and you can always get back to it in case you’re out of testing ideas. If you've seen any super interesting split tests let us know and they shall be added to the list.
Off we go! (in no particular order)
1. Updated Design Increases Conversions by 33%
Even though the redesign of this page is old by today’s standards, the added clarity and order does indeed boost conversions.
Control |
Variation |
It is more than obvious where the headline, CTA and images are, plus there are some very clear bullet points and logos. Properly structured in an ‘F’ pattern (here’s a [still relevant] article from 2006 on the so-called F browsing pattern https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-s...g-web-content/).
On a side note, always consider visual “weight” no matter what sort of a project you might be working on. Visual weight simply means how much attention an element might have, and whether it should have that attention in the first place. Perhaps an article focused purely on visual weight and the theory behind it will appear on STM at some point?
Back to the point - we’re all painfully familiar with this sort of layout and the truth is that it just works and it has been working for a very, very long time. This site has yet another more up to date redesign though I couldn’t find any info on whether it’s performing better, though I would guess it is.
2. Making Copy Action Oriented Causes 93% More People to Click
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Variation: |
“Feel fresh without sweat marks” (Very vague and boring) vs “Put an end to sweat marks!” (action oriented). There really isn’t all that much I can add here - switch your writing to active voice, make it personal, direct and be sure it hits those pain points accurately.
Time to reconsider your vague headlines and do some testing!
3. Adding a Picture of a Person Increases Highrise Signups by 102.5%
Control and Variation:
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Even though I am not a huge fan of humans, we all know that “human = good” when it comes to ad and landing page performance.
It’s another old case study and they have a new design too, that I bet has already been tested to perform even better (that Tim Ferris testimonial must be killing it):
4. Changing a Simple Icon on a Homepage Makes Visitors 2-3x More Likely to Buy
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Variation: |
Another “old but gold” case study. These guys got 2-3 times more conversions by replacing a simple icon with something more relevant to their main value proposition. Having an icon of a globe doesn’t exactly match the “Safe, Secure and Reliable” part, does it? Seems rather open and free if anything.
The simple lock icon is relevant to the main UVP and it actually makes you feel safe and secure.
No excuse for being lazy, test your images/icons!
5. 400% Conversion Rate Improvement by Removing One Image
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Variation: |
“A-ha! I knew that having a secure badge doesn’t always improve conversion rates!”
While this is true, the badge on this site looks downright scammy - what exactly does it secure, what is secure? Would you trust it? I certainly wouldn’t. Pretty much as useful as me adding a random “SECURE” badge right here in the middle of the post. Given the context it would actually raise some red flags with visitors. A badge more in the lines of McAfee or Truste would yield much better results.
6. Proving Authenticity Increases Sales 107%
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Variation: |
There are tons of fake watches out there and this is an industry specific result, as stated in the original article, but definitely something worth considering for your own sites and products nevertheless. Would you rather buy an iPhone from an Apple authorized reseller or the flea market?
7. Showing Price on Landing Page Doubles Lead Generation
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Why? Because users thought this was an expensive product and they had to take the tedious step of contacting the company in order to find out a simple price tag. Having it in their face eliminates objections and reduces friction. Researching your targeted market and studying your data thoroughly can reveal some CR gems.
8. eCommerce Site Removes a Filter and Increases Site Engagement by 27%
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Variation: |
Think about whether your product pages have too many distracting elements and if your potential customers are given one too many choices - form a hypothesis and start testing!
“But people want more choices, they want to be in control!” - Wrong! You should want to apply to same methodology you use when designing landing pages to any section of your site - simpler, more streamlined goals, without any distractions; you don’t want people getting carried away by too many choices, it’s bad for conversions.
9. Reduced Shopping Cart Abandonment by 26%
Control and Variation:
This is a very common problem for a lot of eCommerce sites.
These guys have added safety badges, support stuff, testimonials and they shortened the entire form. The abandonment rate went down to 54% all the way from 80%. Look to simplify the user experience and solidify their purchase decision be it with badges, some extra copy, more info about their purchase, an extra discount or just about anything to do with getting them to click "Checkout Now and Get Your %PRODUCTNAME% Tomorrow!" (wink wink).
10. Bigger Product Images Increase Sales By 9%
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Variation 1: |
Variation 2: |
Variation 1 has bigger images + descriptions, where Variation 2 has bigger images + descriptions appearing when hovered which yielded a 9% increase in sales - think about it, just just by changing your IMAGES you can get a significant boost in sales.
Always use big, high quality images! This combined with simplicity almost always works better.
11. Overcoming Objections Earned Flower Shop 44% Boost in Sales
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As usual the added urgency helps. They made yet another test, that helped bring the sales boost up to 44%:
Instead of boasting about your half a million followers, rotating simple customer testimonials might yield better results for you too! This is where the huge number of followers only serves as an extra “boost” and a reaffirmation for the testimonials.
12. 58.69% Increase in Sales After Adding Testimonials/Reviews
Control and Variation:
Remember these watches? Adding a Trust pilot widget full of testimonials means you can guess what happens next. The added benefit comes from Trust pilot itself, I bet it wouldn’t convert as well if it was full of plain old testimonials.
13. 148.3% Improvement on Product Page by Adding -15% OFF
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Variation: |
This one is more than obvious, no need to even comment further. Just a reminder.
14. Homepage Conversion Rate Increased by 106% Thanks to a New Design
Control and Variation:
A typical winning formula here: the new headline has a clear value proposition, proper description, a nice contrasting CTA above the fold and an image. Simple and focused on one single goal is always better than having something cluttered and confusing that gives visitors too many choices and is more of a distraction.
Not only does the control have 5 different links you can click but the copy doesn’t seem all that strong either - “Market-leading document delivery solutions for the enterprise”, whatever this may mean.
The variation has a nice straight to the point headline, and (thankfully) one main CTA.
15. weBoost sees a 100% lift in year-over-year conversion rate
Control and Variation:
A brand new design can most certainly increase your revenue dramatically. The main problem with weBoost’s old homepage was the length of the page - around 9000px with mostly empty, purposeless sections.
The new design summarizes all of the content in just a few smaller, simpler and more accurate sections with very clear CTAs. Definitely check out the full case study, it’s super interesting.
16. Newly Designed Homepage Boosts Monthly Revenue by 256%!
Control(original page):  |
Variation 1(initial redesign): |
The initial redesign, lead to a 31% improvement in bounce rates, conversion rates increased by 66%, and sales increased by 89%. Still a very significant improvement
Variation 2(final redesign):
This is the big boost, but only after careful data analysis.
Are you noticing a pattern with these redesigns, can you connect the dots? I’ll give you a few hints - relevant product images, hero shots, prominent clearly visible CTAs combined with simplicity and accuracy seem to yield very good results every single time no matter what you’re trying to sell.
17. 60% Increase in Visitor Signups by Removing Opt-in Form
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Variation: |
A 60% increase in signups by REMOVING the opt-in form? “What! This is unheard of!”. Of course it’s not, If you give it some thought though you’ll realize that an opt-in form is actually on obstacle because the visitors need to do the tedious act of typing on their keyboard. Not only that, but the form is on the left side, directly in your face.
The variation focuses entirely on the UVP and removing the form allows the use of larger product images, and as we already know, images can have quite the impact on conversion rates. Triggering a pop-up/overlay with your opt-in form after a click seems to be a somewhat recent trend - definitely worth testing!
18. Removing Zeros From Price Tag Increases Add-to-Cart Clicks by 9.3%! Yields 29% Rise in Visits/Order
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We’ve all head of pricing psychology, check https://www.helpscout.net/blog/pricing-strategies/ and http://www.nickkolenda.com/psycholog...ng-strategies/ for TONS more ideas to test.
These guys essentially tested having $29.00 vs $29 with the latter being the clear winner. Why? Perceived value. Having no zeros subconsciously “tricks” customers into perceiving a lower price. It’s much easier to process $29 instead of $29.73, for example. The price just “feels right” which makes it an emotional purchase.
However, if you’re after rational purchases you might want to leave those zeros in there, or in case you want to emphasise how much a visitor can save on a purchase.
19. Adding Gamification Increases Clicks by 49.8% and Opt-in Rates by 25%
Control(image lost, was just your usual opt-in form): |
Variation: |
(Unfortunately by the time I wrote this post, the original images are now nowhere to be found. Only managed to extract this blurry cached variation off of Google images. Pretty much the users are asked to click on the shark with the glasses (it’s a sunglasses store) which allows them to afterwards get the discount in exchange for their email).
This is easily one of my favorite split-tests! I think we can all figure out why gamification works, after all it’s being used heavily here on STM, especially by people running pops - you know, the wheel landers? The questionnaire landers?
Gamification works, period. Visitors get engaged into taking action, even if it’s an extremely simple game, which in turn increases opt-in rates or whatever “rates” you may be after. One bit you should NEVER forget though, is that the customer should understand the benefit to themselves before getting invested in your sneaky gamification tactics.
Want to learn more about gamification? Learn from the master, Yu-Kai Chou:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Qjuegtiyc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4acIpWrnzo
http://yukaichou.com/ - I highly recommend that you read about his “Ocalysis” gamification framework, it’s brilliant!
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20. Personal Story Copy Increases Sales by 10% (vs Industry Critique)
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In case you’ve been living under a rock you’d know by now that almost every copywriter will tell you to write copy as a story and on a personal level and this test proves it - 10% more sales is a huge boost.
The control’s headline and sub headline: “There’s something terribly wrong with the home security industry. SimpliSafe is on a mission to fix it.” are downright vague and salesy. I believe the subheadline immediately cuts off any curiosity because it’s not about the customer, but the company instead.
There’s something wrong with the industry and SimpliSafe is here to fix it, but what does this have to do with me wanting to buy a new home security system and how does it benefit ME?
The variation however seems to hit home immediately - “What happens when a harvard engineer gets robbed?” If I’ve been robbed or I know of someone who did get robbed I can definitely relate to that - not only did some random bloke get robbed, but he’s a Harvard engineer too? Tell me more! He designed a smarter system that doesn’t involve contracts, installation fees or sneaky salesmen. That’s just a yes in my mind, and the rest of the copy just seals it shut by touching the main pain points of having to buy one of these things. Good stuff!
If you have your own single product pages or landers you should definitely play around with the copy.
21. Overlay With Cross-Sales Increases Checkouts by 7.5% (vs Boring Dropdown)
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Variation: |
This is a crucial step for any eCommerce site. There’s no place for subtlety if you want your cart-to-checkout rates to be high. A lot of folks see a huge drop in checkouts at this point and you can clearly see why.
1. It’s just a boring dropdown telling you there’s something in your cart. Oh how exciting!
2. There are no incentives to push clients over to the checkout page whatsoever. “View Cart” isn’t exactly the the most brilliant approach to getting sales.
Versus:
Overlay that’s in your face with a black background which keeps which keeps your eyes glued to your cart, PLUS extra products you can purchase.
I do admit that the copy is very vague in both cases and if you work on that too you’ll likely see a boost in conversions. As in the previous split-test example, making the copy a lot more personal or fun and engaging (depending on your niche) can get more money in your bank account.
22. ZALORA’s Product Page Optimization Grew Checkouts By 12.3% Based on Customer Feedback
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Variation 1: |
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The key here is getting (or even having) customer feedback, and generally speaking data you can rely on and form hypotheses so your split tests aren’t coming out of the blue by pure guesswork.
This is ZALORA’s feedback from their customer service team:
“In this specific case, we received feedback from the customer service team that customers are not aware of our free returns policy.”
Based on this feedback they came up with split testing ideas that could potentially increase the visibility of their free returns policy (which they did). They just moved the word “Free” from right to left, because it’s the most important part of a FREE returns policy. Then they added “FREE Returns” just next to the price. A very simple test but with very noticeable results.
23. eCommerce Best Practices Yield a 250% Increase in Conversions
Control and Variation:
I want you to have a REALLY good look at this article (linked in the headline). It seems most
Here’s what was added to the otherwise boring, untouched template:
- A CTA, obviously.
- Headline centered around the main USP, and a subheadline coupled with the CTA.
- Testimonials on the bottom.
- A phone number in the header.
- Added security affirmations on the checkout page, this had a huge 98.4% increase in checkouts too too (do NOT, EVER neglect your checkout pages).
This should all be standard “equipment” for any eCommerce site. Would you like to see another article on say, “Must have conversion-boosting elements for any
24. Stock Photo vs Real Image? Yup, You Guessed It! The Real Image Increased Conversions by 161%!
Control and Variation:
Last but not least, this is actually a very popular case study and a perfect example of why you should use real images across your sites, ads, campaigns, landers and whatnot - as most of you have already heard this a million times.
The secondary goal of this split test was to increase registrations, and those jumped by an entire 38.4%! All because of one genuine, real looking image - talk about impact!
Sources:
https://vwo.com/blog/
https://www.behave.org/test/
https://fakecrow.com/
https://www.widerfunnel.com/case-studies/
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/100-con...-case-studies/
So there you have it! 24 eCommerce Split tests that really did SKYROCKET people’s profits. I sincerely hope you got some useful info out of this post or at least a tiny spark of creative and/or curious thoughts!
Let us know in the posts below if you’ve done any split tests recently. Cheers!
Wow shishev thank you!
A lot of these tips don't just apply to ecommerce - they apply to any type of selling text as well, such as pre-landers/landers, salespages, and opt-in pages.
Bookmarked!
Amy
nice ones! (Y)
Really epic collection! 
Love this kinda stuff. Split testing variations and seeing the results is one of my fav things.
Andrew
Originally Posted by vortex
Originally Posted by mrpayne
Thank you so much! Saved it 
This is without a doubt one of the Best contributions EVER on the stackthatmoney forum!
A-ma-zing. Thanks a lot Shishev.
Thank you ! Amazing stuff here !
Thanks for your tips.
i runs couple e-commerce apps.
Except for what you've mentioned,i wonder if there are recommended affiliates or publishers can promote my apps?
FUCK YEA! This is honestly my favorite part of AM. This and the copy. I just love sales and like to see how i can out do my other creatives and other little things.
Just saved this. Will now be studying this and looking back at it when setting up different tests.
THANKS BOSS!
- Jeremiah
Originally Posted by jeremiahandor
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
- Jeremiah
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