Stripping product categories to titles only: fewer product clicks
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsCutting Sage France's product category listings down to titles only made visitors less willing to click into products, so the test lost.
Sage France's CRO manager, Marion Ravel, ran the test, and it was published as a Wingify case study.
No figure was shared, but the data showed the bare titles did not give people enough to go on.
- Clicks into product pages: worse than hoped. Visitors still hesitated before choosing a category. No number was given.
- Negative result: the team dropped the idea and moved to a version with short guiding copy instead.
The change
Category listings cut down to bare titles
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Product category listings with plenty of text and several CTAs competing for attention.
Variant
Each category was stripped of its supporting text and CTAs, leaving only the title.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Sage sells several subscription products by business size, profession and sector. A bare title rarely tells a visitor which one fits.
- Removing clutter also removed the cues that helped people choose.
- the problem was unclear choices, not too much text. Simplifying without guidance made the choice harder.
Caveats: No figures, sample size or duration were shared for this version. It is reported as a learning step in a longer series of changes.
Who ran it
Sage France ran this test and published the results (AB Tasty / Wingify case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Sage France →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we strip product categories down to their titles, then more visitors will click into products because there is less clutter to process.
- Primary metric
- Click-through from category listings to product pages
- Guardrails
- Homepage bounce rate
- Transactions or trial starts
- Clicks on the wrong product followed by a quick exit
- Who should test it
- Sites with a few simple, self-explanatory products might gain from cleaner listings. If your products differ in ways a title can't explain, as at Sage, expect this to lose.
Questions
Does removing text from a page always improve conversions?
No. In this test, stripping categories to titles made visitors hesitate more.
Text that helps people choose is not clutter.
What worked better for Sage France?
Adding short guiding copy under each title. That version was linked to more traffic to product pages and more transactions.