Gift category dropdown in a cleaner layout: +57% ARPU
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsPaltalk's cleaner virtual gift store, with a left-side dropdown of categories that showed every gift in the chosen one, raised conversion rate by 11.32% and average revenue per user by 57.32%.
Wingify Services ran the test with Paltalk's team, and it was published as a VWO case study.
It ran 30 days with a 50/50 split.
- Conversion rate: +11.32%.
- Average revenue per user (ARPU): +57.32%.
- Total revenue: about USD 21,000 extra during the 30-day test. The new version is now live for all users.
- No confidence level was shared.
The change
Hidden categories and sideways rows become a category dropdown with a full grid.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Gift categories were hard to see, and users had to scroll sideways to view all gifts within a category.
Variant
A cleaner layout put a dropdown of gift categories on the left. Picking one showed all gifts in that category at once.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Heatmaps and recordings showed users weren't finding categories. Making them visible lets users reach more of the range.
- Showing all gifts at once removes sideways scrolling, so gifts that were hidden off-screen can now be seen and bought.
- The ARPU jump is much bigger than the conversion lift, which suggests users who bought spent more, perhaps on gifts they hadn't seen before.
Caveats: This is an in-app digital purchase flow for a social platform. The layout was also cleaned up beyond the dropdown, and results are vendor-reported without significance figures.
Who ran it
VWO ran this test 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 site
- Hypothesis
- If we list all categories in a visible menu and show every item in the chosen category without sideways scrolling, then more users will buy and spend more because they can see the full range.
- Primary metric
- Revenue per user
- Guardrails
- Purchase conversion rate
- Time to first purchase
- Who should test it
- SaaS and app businesses with an in-product store, add-on catalog or template gallery that uses carousels. It matters less when the catalog is small enough to show on one screen.
Questions
Are carousels bad for in-app stores?
They can hide items. When Paltalk replaced sideways scrolling with a full grid per category, conversion and revenue per user both rose.
Why did revenue per user rise more than conversion rate?
The source doesn't say. One likely reading is that buyers found and bought more or pricier gifts once everything was visible.