# Cart icon on the add-to-cart button: -10.6% conversion rate

- Outcome: Lost
- Page type: Product page (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Add-to-cart & CTA buttons
- 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/adding-a-cart-icon-to-the-add-to-cart-button-impacts-user-engagement-and-conversions/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/cc-adding-a-cart-icon-to-the-add-to-cart-button-impacts-user-engagemen/

Adding a small cart icon to the add-to-cart button lowered conversion rate by 10.6% and orders by 11.9%. Clean Commit ran this test on product pages for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library. The sample was small, so the drop is a warning sign rather than a proven loss.

## Result

**-10.6% conversion rate**

- Conversion rate: -10.6%. Fewer visitors who saw the icon went on to buy.
- Orders: -11.9%, and revenue per visitor: -9.5%. Every sales metric moved the wrong way.
- Average order value: +1.2%, so buyers spent about the same per order.
- Mobile conversion rate fell 13.1%, the bigger drop of the two device types.
- Not significant: the original had a 73.8% probability of being better, well short of a confident call.

## Control

The product page had a standard add-to-cart button with text only.

## Variant

The same button with a cart icon added next to the text. Nothing else on the page changed.

## Why it likely lost (our reading)

- Shoppers already know what an add-to-cart button looks like, so the icon added nothing they needed.
- An icon can make the button look busier or closer to the header cart link, which may blur its purpose.
- On small mobile buttons, an icon takes space from the text and can make the label harder to read.
- Part of the drop may simply be noise, given the small sample.

## Caveats

The test ran 16 days on 5,609 visitors and was far from statistical significance. Results are reported by the agency that ran the test.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we add a cart icon to the add-to-cart button, then more shoppers will add to cart because the button will be quicker to recognize.
- Primary metric: Conversion rate
- Guardrail: Add-to-cart rate
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor
- Guardrail: Mobile conversion rate
- Who should test it: Stores whose add-to-cart button is unusual in style or hard to spot. If your button already looks like a standard buy button, this test is unlikely to help and may hurt.

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Credit: Clean Commit ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/cc-adding-a-cart-icon-to-the-add-to-cart-button-impacts-user-engagemen/).
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.