# Klarna pay-later messaging beat a 4.5-star Trustpilot rating

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Product page (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Payment icons, express checkout & BNPL, Reviews & star ratings
- Test run by: [Gym King](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/gym-king/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.shoplift.ai/case-studies/gym-king
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/gym-king-klarna-vs-trustpilot-messaging/

Gym 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.

## Result

**Klarna messaging beat the Trustpilot rating**

- 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.

## 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)

- 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.

## How to run this test

- 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
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor
- Guardrail: Return rate on pay-later orders
- Guardrail: 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.

---

Credit: Gym King ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/gym-king-klarna-vs-trustpilot-messaging/).
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.