# 'Selling fast' badge on product cards: +5.9% conversion, unproven

- Outcome: Flat / inconclusive
- Page type: Collection page (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Bestseller badges & product labels, Low-stock & scarcity messaging
- 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/selling-fast-badge-added-to-product-cards/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/cleancommit-selling-fast-badge-added-to-product-cards/

Adding 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.

## Result

**+5.9% conversion, unproven**

- 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.

## 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)

- 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.

## How to run this test

- 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
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor by device
- Guardrail: Average order value
- Guardrail: 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.

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Credit: Clean Commit ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/cleancommit-selling-fast-badge-added-to-product-cards/).
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.