One price-based shipping message on product pages: -5.5% conversion
Test run byClean CommitCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsReplacing two similar shipping messages with one message based on product price cut conversion rate by 5.5% and revenue per visitor by 9.0%.
Clean Commit ran this test for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library.
The drop was steepest on mobile, and the test stopped the store from rolling out a change that looked like a simple clarity fix.
- Conversion rate: -5.5%, a negative result. The original had a 75.1% probability of doing better.
- Revenue per visitor: -9.0%, a negative result, with average order value down 4.2%.
- Orders: -4.5%, a negative result.
- Mobile conversion rate: -10.5%, where most of the loss came from.
The change
Two shipping notes become one message that changes with the product's price.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Product pages showing two similar shipping messages.
Variant
One message that changed with price: a reminder of the free-shipping threshold on cheaper items, or a note that the item ships free on items above it.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- On cheaper items, a threshold reminder may highlight that shipping is not free, which can feel like a cost.
- Two messages may have made free shipping feel more prominent than one.
- Fewer shipping reassurances on a small mobile screen may have left some shoppers unsure.
Caveats: Across 20,974 visitors over 17 days, the loss did not reach significance, at a 75.1% probability that the original was better. The direction was consistent across conversion, orders and revenue.
Who ran it
Clean Commit ran this test for a Shopify store (anonymized) and published the results (Clean Commit A/B test library). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Clean Commit →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we show one shipping message based on product price, then conversion rate will rise because shoppers understand the shipping benefit without mixed signals.
- Primary metric
- Conversion rate
- Guardrails
- Mobile conversion rate
- Average order value
- Revenue per visitor
- Who should test it
- Stores with a free-shipping threshold and both cheap and expensive items. Be careful if most products sit below the threshold, since the reminder may draw attention to a shipping cost.
Questions
Should I show a free-shipping threshold on product pages?
Test it. In this case, a price-based threshold message cut conversion by 5.5%, mostly on mobile.
Is one clear message always better than two?
Not always. Here, merging two shipping messages into one looked like a clarity fix but lowered sales.
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