Buy 3 get 1 free ball offer in the cart drawer: -2.8% revenue/visitor
Test run byConvertiblesCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding a buy 3 dozen, get 1 dozen free golf ball offer to the cart drawer cut revenue per visitor by 2.8%, and only 2.3% of shoppers who saw it took the deal.
Convertibles ran this test for a golf equipment brand over 19 days. The agency stopped it as not promising.
- Revenue per visitor (shoppers who opened the cart): -2.8% against control. This is a loss.
- Take rate: 2.3%, or 94 of the 4,078 shoppers who saw the offer added it.
- Probability to beat control: 27%. Earlier in the test the gap was wider, about -8.5%, and it never turned positive.
- About 1,400 to 1,500 orders per version, so the flat-to-negative read is not just a lack of data.
The change
A buy 3 get 1 free golf ball block replaced the existing upsell widget below the cart items.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Below the cart items, the drawer showed the store's existing upsell app widget.
Variant
A 'Complete your setup' block replaced the widget. It showed the brand's golf balls with a photo, short pitch, three benefit bullets, the buy 3 get 1 free deal, a struck-through price, a per-ball price and a one-click add button.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Three dozen balls is a sizeable purchase on its own. Asking for it on top of a club order adds a second big decision right before checkout.
- The same deal already existed on the ball's product page, so shoppers who wanted balls had a way to get it.
- The offer replaced an upsell widget that was already doing some work, so the test was offer versus widget, not offer versus nothing.
Caveats: The variant was tested against an existing upsell widget, not an empty drawer. The test ran 19 days and was stopped early as not promising.
Who ran it
Convertibles ran this test for a golf equipment brand and published the results (Convertibles case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Convertibles →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we show a multi-buy offer for a related product in the cart drawer, then revenue per visitor will rise because shoppers can add the deal in one click before checkout.
- Primary metric
- Revenue per visitor among shoppers who open the cart
- Guardrails
- Conversion rate
- Offer take rate
- Average order value
- Who should test it
- Stores where the add-on is small and closely tied to what is already in the cart. It probably will not work when the offer is a large purchase in its own right, or when the same deal already sits on the product page.
Questions
Does a buy 3 get 1 free offer work in the cart drawer?
Not in this test. Only 2.3% of shoppers who saw it added it, and revenue per visitor fell 2.8%.
Where should multi-buy offers go instead?
Usually on the product page of the item being bundled, where shoppers are already choosing how many to buy.
In the cart, the offer competes with the checkout decision.
Is 2.3% a good take rate for a cart offer?
For a deal this generous it is low.
It suggested shoppers buying clubs were not looking for a large ball order at that moment.
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