'Selling fast' badge on product cards: +5.9% conversion, unproven
Test run byClean CommitCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding a "selling fast" badge to selected product cards on collection pages lifted conversion rate 5.9%, but the result was not statistically significant, so we count it as inconclusive.
Clean Commit ran this test for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library.
Desktop looked strong, while mobile revenue per visitor slipped.
- Conversion rate: +5.9%, with a 94.2% probability that the variant was better. Promising, but short of significance.
- Revenue per visitor: +5.2% overall, and orders rose 5.8%. Average order value was flat at -0.6%.
- Desktop: conversion rate +8.3% and revenue per visitor +15.1%.
- Mobile: revenue per visitor fell 3.8% because average order value dropped 7.2%. A negative signal on the larger device group for most stores.
The change
The variant adds a 'selling fast' badge to selected product cards.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Collection pages showed standard product cards with no urgency badges.
Variant
A "selling fast" badge appeared on the cards of selected products. The store could switch the badge on per product, for example to push older stock or current bestsellers.
Why it likely came out this way
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- A scarcity cue can nudge undecided shoppers to buy now rather than later.
- On mobile, the badge may have pulled attention toward cheaper flagged items, which would explain the lower order value.
- Only some products carried the badge, which limits how much it can move store-wide numbers.
Caveats: 54,098 visitors over 34 days, and the result did not reach significance. Mobile revenue per visitor fell 3.8%, so the overall lift is not clean.
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 add a "selling fast" badge to selected product cards, then more shoppers will buy because the cue suggests the item may not last.
- Primary metric
- Conversion rate
- Guardrails
- Revenue per visitor by device
- Average order value
- Return rate on badged products
- Who should test it
- Stores with genuinely fast-moving stock and enough traffic to split results by device. Skip it if the badge would not be true, since false scarcity can damage trust.
Questions
Do urgency badges on product cards increase sales?
They can. In this test conversion rose 5.9%, but it was not significant and mobile revenue per visitor fell, so test it on your own store.
Should urgency badges go on every product?
Probably not. Here the badge was used on selected items only, which keeps the cue believable and lets you steer shoppers toward stock you want to move.
Why check results by device?
Desktop and mobile shoppers can react in opposite ways.
In this test desktop revenue per visitor rose 15.1% while mobile fell 3.8%.
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