# 'Our Pick' badge on product images: +1.2% add to cart

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Collection page (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Bestseller badges & product labels, Product cards & quick add
- Test run by: [Optimizely](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/optimizely/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.optimizely.com/field-notes/articles/experimentation-use-cases-retail-category-page
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/optimizely-retailer-our-pick-badge-overlay/

Overlaying an 'Our Pick' badge on images of popular items on category pages raised add-to-cart rate by 1.2%, but purchases did not change significantly. Optimizely ran the test for an online retailer and published it as an Optimizely Field Notes use case. A 'Featured' badge was also tested, and 'Our Pick' did better.

## Result

**+1.2% add to cart**

- Add-to-cart rate: +1.2%. This is the headline number.
- Checkout clickthrough rate: +1.3%.
- 'Our Pick' did better than 'Featured', though the gap between them was not shared.
- Purchases: no significant change. The badge moved early-funnel behavior, not final sales.

## Control

Product images on category pages had no badge overlay. A 'Featured' badge was tested as another version.

## Variant

Popular items carried an 'Our Pick' badge overlaid on the product image.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- 'Our Pick' reads as a personal recommendation from the store, which may carry more weight than a neutral label.
- 'Featured' can look like paid placement, so shoppers may give it less trust.
- A badge on the image is seen while scanning the grid, before shoppers read any text.
- Purchases stayed flat, perhaps because the badge shaped which item shoppers chose but not whether they bought.

## Caveats

Anonymized vendor summary with no sample size, duration or confidence level, and the exact test arms were not described. The purchase effect was not significant.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we overlay an 'Our Pick' badge on images of popular items, then add-to-cart rate will rise because shoppers trust a store's own recommendation.
- Primary metric: Add-to-cart rate
- Guardrail: Purchase conversion rate
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor
- Guardrail: Clicks on unbadged products
- Who should test it: Retailers with large category pages where shoppers need help choosing. Test the badge wording too, as this test shows the label matters. Small catalogs with few choices will see less effect.

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Credit: Optimizely ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/optimizely-retailer-our-pick-badge-overlay/).
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.