# Vacation cart cut to one Checkout button: +36.5% completions

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Cart (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Add-to-cart & CTA buttons, Upsells & cross-sells
- Test run by: [MECLABS](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/meclabs/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingexperiments.com/e-commerce-marketing/e-commerce-simplified-cart-increases-completions
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/gap-meclabs-vacation-cart-single-cta/

Replacing three equally weighted cart buttons with one main "Checkout" button raised cart completions by 36.5% for a B2C package-vacation company. MECLABS ran the A/B test and published it on MarketingExperiments in January 2013. The extra options stayed on the page as small plus-sign add-ons inside the product details.

## Result

**+36.5% completions**

- Cart completions rose 36.5%.
- No sample size, test length or confidence level was shared.
- MECLABS ran it as a variable cluster test, which means button layout and option placement changed together.

## Control

The cart gave three options of equal weight: "View Lodging Options", "Add More Activities" and "Checkout Without Lodging". Visitors had to choose between them to move on.

## Variant

The extra options were played down and moved into the product details as plus-sign links: "Add Another Activity" and "Add Lodging to Your Activities". One main "Checkout" button became the focus.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- Three equal buttons made visitors stop and decide. One clear main action removes that choice.
- The old "Checkout Without Lodging" label may have made checking out feel like missing something. The new design kept lodging as an optional extra.
- Add-ons stayed on the page, so people who wanted more could still add it.

## Caveats

Travel booking from around 2013, with no sample size, duration or confidence level shared. It may be related to MECLABS's separately published vacation-rental checkout test (+36%).

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we turn competing cart buttons into small add-on links and keep one main Checkout button, then more carts will complete, because visitors have one clear next step.
- Primary metric: Cart-to-order completion rate
- Guardrail: Add-on attach rate
- Guardrail: Average order value
- Guardrail: Return visits to the cart
- Who should test it: Stores and booking sites whose cart offers several next steps of equal weight. If your cart already has one obvious checkout button, there is little to gain.

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Credit: MECLABS ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/gap-meclabs-vacation-cart-single-cta/).
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.