# Smaller sale prices on product cards: +8.7% CR, not significant

- Outcome: Flat / inconclusive
- Page type: Collection page (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Pricing, discounts & savings display, Product cards & quick add
- 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/sale-prices-shown-in-smaller-type/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/cleancommit-sale-prices-shown-in-smaller-type/

Showing sale prices in smaller type than the struck-through original, on collection cards and product pages, lifted conversion rate 8.7% and revenue per visitor 10.0%. Clean Commit ran this test for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library. We count it as inconclusive because it did not reach statistical significance.

## Result

**+8.7% CR, not significant**

- Conversion rate: +8.7%, with a 90.2% probability of beating the original. Not significant across 27,383 visitors.
- Revenue per visitor: +10.0%, and orders +8.1%.
- Mobile drove the gain: conversion rate +9.9% and revenue per visitor +13.6% on mobile.
- Flag: add-to-cart rate fell 7.2%. Fewer shoppers added items, but more of those who did went on to buy.

## Control

Collection cards and product pages showed the sale price in standard type next to the struck-through original.

## Variant

The sale price was restyled to appear smaller than the original price, on product cards in collections and on product pages.

## Why it likely came out this way (our reading)

- Research on price perception suggests a number in smaller type is judged to be lower, which can make a sale feel better.
- Collection cards are where shoppers compare many prices fast, so a visual cue there may matter more.
- The drop in add-to-cart is hard to explain. It may mean fewer casual adds and more committed buyers, or it may be noise.

## Caveats

Not statistically significant across 27,383 visitors, and add-to-cart fell 7.2%. This looks like a separate run of the same idea as Clean Commit's 3.0% product page test.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we show sale prices in smaller type than the original on product cards and product pages, then conversion will rise because the discounted price feels lower.
- Primary metric: Conversion rate
- Guardrail: Add-to-cart rate
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor
- Who should test it: Stores with many discounted items on collection pages, especially with mostly mobile traffic. Skip it if you rarely discount or if small text would hurt readability.

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Credit: Clean Commit ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/cleancommit-sale-prices-shown-in-smaller-type/).
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.
