# Adding a wishlist: +4.2% conversion, revenue per visitor flat

- Outcome: Flat / inconclusive
- Page type: Site-wide (Ecommerce)
- Elements: 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/wishlist-feature/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/cleancommit-wishlist-feature/

Adding a wishlist to product cards and product pages lifted conversion rate 4.2%, but revenue per visitor stayed flat. Clean Commit ran this test for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library. We treat it as inconclusive: the lift was not statistically significant, and lower order value cancelled it out.

## Result

**+4.2% conversion, revenue per visitor flat**

- Conversion rate: +4.2%, with an 83.9% probability that the variant was better. Not significant.
- Add-to-cart rate: +4.3% and orders +3.1%.
- Average order value: -3.9%. Negative.
- Revenue per visitor: +0.1%, effectively flat. Desktop looked strongest, with conversion up 10.5%.

## Control

The store had no wishlist.

## Variant

A heart icon on product cards and product pages let shoppers save items to a wishlist, with a wishlist link in the header or account menu. Guests had to log in or create an account to save.

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

- Saving items may have brought shoppers back to finish a purchase they had already considered.
- Shoppers may have used the wishlist to narrow down to one item, which could explain smaller orders.
- Requiring a login to save may have put off guests, which could have limited the upside.

## Caveats

The test ran for 48 days on 113,055 visitors but did not reach significance, and revenue per visitor was flat. The desktop gain is a sub-segment and less reliable than the overall result.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we let shoppers save products to a wishlist from product cards and product pages, then more will buy because saving items encourages return visits.
- Primary metric: Revenue per visitor
- Guardrail: Average order value
- Guardrail: Conversion rate
- Guardrail: Account sign-up rate
- Who should test it: Stores with considered purchases and returning browsers, such as furniture or fashion. For low-price impulse buys, a wishlist is less likely to matter.

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Credit: Clean Commit ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/cleancommit-wishlist-feature/).
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.