Sale price set smaller than the original price: +3.0% conversion
Test run byClean CommitCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsSetting the sale price in smaller type than the struck-through original price lifted conversion rate 3.0% and revenue per visitor 7.3%.
Clean Commit ran this 33-day test for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library.
The signal is modest: the variant had only a 68.2% probability of beating the original.
- Conversion rate: +3.0%, with a 68.2% probability of beating the original. That is a weak signal.
- Revenue per visitor: +7.3%, helped by a 4.2% rise in average order value.
- Orders: +1.6%.
- Flag: add-to-cart rate fell 5.0%, so the styling did not bring more shoppers to the cart.
- Desktop moved most, with revenue per visitor up 20.1% on 4,512 desktop visitors.
The change
The sale price is set in smaller type than the struck-through original price.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Product pages and product cards showed the sale price in normal or larger type next to the struck-through original.
Variant
The sale price appeared in a smaller font than the struck-through original, on both product pages and product cards.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Pricing research suggests people judge a number shown in smaller type to be lower. That may make the discount feel bigger.
- A larger original price draws the eye to the reference point and makes the saving clearer.
- The fall in add-to-cart suggests the effect is not simple. Some shoppers may have read the smaller price as less clear.
- With a 68.2% probability, part or all of the lift could be noise.
Caveats: A modest signal after 33 days, with add-to-cart down 5.0%. Total sample size was not shared, and the results are reported by the agency that ran the test.
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 the sale price in smaller type than the original price, then conversion on sale items will rise because the smaller number feels lower.
- Primary metric
- Conversion rate on sale items
- Guardrails
- Add-to-cart rate
- Average order value
- Who should test it
- Stores that run frequent markdowns and show compare-at prices. It does not apply if you rarely discount, and very small sale prices can hurt readability on mobile.
Questions
Should the sale price be bigger or smaller than the original?
Most stores make it bigger. Some research suggests a smaller sale price feels lower, and this test showed a small lift, but the signal was weak.
Does price font size really affect sales?
It can change how a discount feels. Effects tend to be small, so you need plenty of traffic to measure them.
Has this idea been tested more than once?
Clean Commit published a second run of the same idea on collection cards and product pages.
It showed a larger lift that was also not significant.
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