Percent-off savings next to prices: +2.57% conversion rate
Test run byGrowthRockCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsShowing the percent saved next to was and now prices lifted conversion rate by 2.57% and revenue per visitor by 2.54% for a high-traffic apparel retailer.
GrowthRock ran this A/B test on listing and product pages and published it on its blog.
An earlier version of the same test showed no difference, because every product then had the same 30% discount.
- Conversion rate: +2.57% at 99% significance, across 700,000 visitors and 18,000 conversions.
- Revenue per visitor: +2.54% at 95% significance, so the lift did not come from shoppers picking cheaper items.
- Mobile: +3.61% conversion rate at 99% significance, the strongest segment.
- Desktop: +2.22% at only 89% significance, so treat the desktop lift as unproven.
- Earlier test with a uniform 30% discount on all products: conversion rates in all three versions were within 0.3% of each other, a flat result.
The change
The variant adds a savings percentage beside the was and now prices.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Listing and product pages showed a was price and a now price, with no savings percentage. Discounts varied from product to product during the test.
Variant
A savings percentage was added next to the two prices on both listing and product pages.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- When discounts differ, a percentage makes the deepest deals easy to spot without doing mental maths across a full listing page.
- When every product shows the same percentage, it carries no new information, so shoppers likely skipped over it.
- Mobile screens make comparing two prices harder, which may explain the bigger mobile lift.
Caveats: This was a follow-up to an earlier flat test that ran with the same 30% discount on every product. The test date was not shared, and the desktop result did not reach 95% significance.
Who ran it
GrowthRock ran this test for a high-traffic apparel retailer and published the results (GrowthRock blog). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on GrowthRock →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we show the percent saved next to was and now prices while discounts vary across products, then more visitors will buy because the best deals stand out at a glance.
- Primary metric
- Conversion rate
- Guardrails
- Revenue per visitor
- Average order value
- Product listing click-through rate
- Who should test it
- Stores that show was and now prices and run discounts of different sizes across products, such as apparel and department-style retailers. It probably won't help if every product carries the same discount, as this store's first test showed.
Questions
Does showing percent off increase ecommerce conversion rate?
It can, but context matters. In this case it lifted conversion rate only when discounts varied by product.
With one uniform discount, it made no difference.
Should I show the discount as a percentage or a dollar amount?
This test added a percentage on top of was and now prices rather than replacing them.
Which format works best varies by store and price point, so test it on your own pages.
Can adding more price information hurt conversions?
It can add clutter and pull focus from the buy button.
Here the extra number did not hurt, but the earlier flat test shows it may simply be ignored.
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