Distraction-free mobile cart redesign: +23% revenue

WinnerSeveral changes tested togetherCart

A redesigned mobile cart with no header or footer navigation, no poor reviews and automatic quantity updates lifted revenue by 23% for weighted blanket brand Hush Blankets.

Wingify Services ran this A/B test, published as a VWO case study.

Three changes shipped together, so the result belongs to the redesign as a whole, not to any one of them.

+23% revenue
  • Visits to the checkout page: +10.52%, so more shoppers moved past the cart.
  • Purchases (thank-you page visits): +15.48%.
  • Revenue: +23%. The source estimates this at about $337,000 a year, which is a projection, not a measured figure.

The change

Control (A)
Hamburger menuREPLACED
Manual quantity updateREPLACED
cart summary
Includes poor reviewsREPLACED
Checkout
Variant (B)
Logo only, no menuNEW
Auto-updating quantityNEW
cart summary
Checkout

Menus, poor reviews and the manual update step are removed from the mobile cart.

Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.

Control

The mobile cart had a hamburger menu in the header and navigation links in the footer. It showed some poor customer reviews, and shoppers had to update the cart by hand after changing a quantity.

Variant

The header menu and footer links were removed, the poor reviews were taken off, and the cart updated itself as soon as the quantity changed.

Why it likely won

Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.

  • The cart had many links back to top-of-funnel pages, and those links drew a lot of clicks. Removing them left checkout as the obvious next step.
  • Shoppers in the cart are close to buying. Poor reviews at that moment can plant doubt right before checkout.
  • Auto-updating quantities removed a small but annoying extra tap on mobile.

Caveats: Three changes were bundled, so we can't say which one drove the lift. The test ran for 14 days on all mobile cart traffic; sample size and significance were not shared, and the data dates from around 2020.

Who ran it

VWO ran this test for Hush Blankets and published the results (VWO case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.

Read the original case study on VWO →

How to run this test on your store

Hypothesis
If we remove navigation and other exit links from the mobile cart and make quantity changes update instantly, then more shoppers will reach checkout because there are fewer distractions and less effort.
Primary metric
Cart-to-checkout rate
Guardrails
  • Purchase conversion rate
  • Average order value
  • Cart page exit rate
Who should test it
Stores whose mobile cart has lots of outbound links or extra content that pulls people away. If your cart is already lean, or shoppers often go back to keep browsing and add more, removing navigation may cut order value.

Questions

Should I remove navigation from my cart page?

It is worth testing if analytics show many cart visitors clicking away to other pages.

Hush Blankets saw more checkout visits after removing those links, though other changes shipped at the same time.

Should I show reviews on the cart page?

If you do, show ones that build confidence.

Negative reviews at the point of purchase can raise doubt just when a shopper is ready to pay.

Does an auto-updating cart matter?

On mobile, every extra tap is friction. Updating totals as soon as the quantity changes saves a step and avoids confusion about the price.

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