# Best-selling collections on the 404 page: +6.8% conversion rate

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Other (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Layout, fonts & visual design, Navigation & mega menus
- Test run by: [Clean Commit](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/clean-commit/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://cleancommit.io/ab-tests/404-page-featuring-best-sellers/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/cc-404-page-featuring-best-sellers/

Listing the store's most popular collections on the 404 error page lifted conversion rate by 6.8% and orders by 7.1%. Clean Commit ran this test for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library. Average order value fell 6.0%, so revenue per visitor rose only 0.3%.

## Result

**+6.8% conversion rate**

- Conversion rate: +6.8%, with a 97.3% probability of beating the original across 140,427 visitors.
- Orders: +7.1%.
- Average order value: -6.0%, a negative result.
- Revenue per visitor: +0.3%, close to flat, because the order value drop cancelled most of the gain.

## Control

A plain 404 page telling visitors the link was broken, with no clear next step.

## Variant

A 404 page that listed the store's most popular collections as a route back into the catalog.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- Visitors who hit a dead end got a clear next click instead of leaving.
- Popular collections are a safe bet for people who arrived without a set target.
- Recovered visitors may have bought single, cheaper items, which could explain the lower order value.

## Caveats

Revenue per visitor barely moved because average order value fell. Test duration was not shared.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we show our best-selling collections on the 404 page, then conversion rate will rise because lost visitors get a clear way back into the store.
- Primary metric: Conversion rate among visitors who see the 404 page
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor
- Guardrail: Average order value
- Who should test it: Stores with many old links, expired products or ad traffic to removed pages. If few visitors ever land on a 404, the impact on total sales will be tiny.

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Credit: Clean Commit ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/cc-404-page-featuring-best-sellers/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.