Klarna pay-later messaging beat a 4.5-star Trustpilot rating
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsGym King found that messaging about Klarna buy-now-pay-later beat messaging about its 4.5-star Trustpilot rating.
No lift figure was shared. Gym King's in-house team ran the test, which was published as a Shoplift case study.
- Klarna messaging won. The case study says it outperformed every other trust message, including trust badges.
- No percentage lift, metric or confidence level was shared.
- Later, 45% of Gym King's purchases used buy-now-pay-later, though that figure is not a test result.
The change
Trustpilot rating message swapped for a Klarna message; real placement not shared.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The messaging highlighted Gym King's 4.5-star Trustpilot rating.
Variant
The messaging highlighted paying with Klarna buy-now-pay-later instead.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- For streetwear shoppers, the price of an order may be a bigger worry than whether the brand is trustworthy.
- Splitting payments makes a basket feel cheaper right when the shopper is deciding.
- Returning customers already trust the brand, so a rating tells them nothing new.
Caveats: The source gives no figures, metric, sample size or placement for this test. The 45% buy-now-pay-later share is a later business figure, not a measured lift.
Who ran it
Gym King ran this test for Gym King and published the results (Shoplift case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Gym King →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we swap our review-rating message for a pay-later message, then conversion rate will rise because cost is a bigger barrier than trust for our shoppers.
- Primary metric
- Conversion rate
- Guardrails
- Revenue per visitor
- Return rate on pay-later orders
- Share of orders using pay-later
- Who should test it
- Fashion and apparel stores with a younger audience and mid-range basket sizes. It probably won't help where orders are very small or where shoppers don't know the brand and need trust proof first.
Questions
Does showing Klarna on product pages increase sales?
It did for Gym King, where Klarna messaging beat a Trustpilot rating.
No lift figure was published, so test it on your own store.
Is buy-now-pay-later messaging better than reviews?
It depends on what holds your shoppers back.
If price is the main worry, payment options may matter more than ratings.
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