'Customise' badge and lifestyle photo on cards: -5.0% conversion
Test run byClean CommitCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding a 'Customise' badge and a real-life use photo to cards for customizable products cut conversion rate by 5.0% and revenue per visitor by 6.5%.
Clean Commit ran this test for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library.
The drop came from mobile, and the size of the loss is uncertain.
- Conversion rate: -5.0%, a negative result. The original had a 54.0% probability of performing better, so the size of the loss is uncertain.
- Revenue per visitor: -6.5%, and orders: -3.0%.
- Mobile conversion rate: -16.3% on 7,406 mobile visitors. Desktop had too few visitors to read.
- Add-to-cart rate: +5.1%, so the cards drew interest that did not turn into orders.
The change
Customizable product cards gain a badge and a real-life main photo.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Standard product cards for customizable products.
Variant
Cards for customizable products showed a "Customise" badge and a real-life use photo as the main image. Cards for other products stayed the same.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Two things changed at once, the badge and the main photo, so we can't credit the loss to either one.
- A lifestyle photo on a small mobile card can make the product itself harder to see.
- A customization cue may raise effort concerns, adding a step some shoppers did not want.
Caveats: The badge and the photo changed together, so the result can't be pinned on one element. The test ran 16 days on 8,236 visitors, mostly mobile, and the loss was not significant.
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 label customizable products with a badge on their cards, then conversion rate will rise because shoppers spot personalization options sooner.
- Primary metric
- Conversion rate
- Guardrails
- Mobile conversion rate
- Revenue per visitor
- Add-to-cart rate
- Who should test it
- Stores that sell both standard and customizable products. Test the badge and the photo separately, and watch mobile closely, since that is where this version lost.
Questions
Do product badges help sell customizable products?
Not in this test. A 'Customise' badge plus a lifestyle photo cut conversion by 5.0%, mostly on mobile.
Should product cards use lifestyle photos?
It depends on the product. On small mobile cards a lifestyle shot can hide product detail, so test it on its own rather than with other changes.
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