Charcoal product badges on collection cards: +22% mobile sub orders
Test run byBlend CommerceCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsCharcoal New Arrival, Best Seller and Limited Release badges on collection cards raised mobile subscription orders per visitor by 22% and mobile conversion by 4% for Stone Creek Coffee.
On desktop, conversion fell 32%, which pulled the blended result negative.
Blend Commerce ran the test in Intelligems, and the badges were kept on mobile only.
- Mobile subscription orders per visitor: +22%. This is the headline gain.
- Mobile conversion rate +4% and revenue per visitor +7%. Product-page view rate fell 4%.
- Desktop conversion rate: -32%, and revenue per visitor -31%. This is a large negative result.
- Desktop subscription orders per visitor fell 57%, so the badges worked against subscriptions on larger screens.
- Blended across devices the test was negative. It counts as a win only for mobile.
The change
Variant cards carry charcoal New Arrival, Best Seller and Limited Release badges
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Collection page product cards showed the existing experience without the New Arrival, Best Seller and Limited Release badges. Sold Out and Sale badges worked as before.
Variant
The three new badges appeared on product cards in charcoal. This was a retest of an earlier blue version, made to check whether the colour caused the earlier desktop drop.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- On a small screen, a short label can help shoppers spot new or popular coffees without opening each product.
- On desktop, more cards are visible at once, so many badges may have added noise.
- The earlier blue badges showed the same device split. That points to device behaviour, not colour, as the main factor.
Caveats: No sample size or confidence level was shared, so treat the gains as directional. The desktop loss was large enough to make the combined result negative.
Who ran it
Blend Commerce ran this test for Stone Creek Coffee and published the results (Blend Commerce A/B test). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Blend Commerce →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we add New Arrival, Best Seller and Limited Release badges to collection cards on mobile, then more visitors will buy because they can spot relevant products faster.
- Primary metric
- Conversion rate, split by device
- Guardrails
- Revenue per visitor
- Subscription orders per visitor
- Product-page view rate
- Who should test it
- Stores with large or rotating ranges, such as coffee or food, where newness and popularity matter. Check desktop separately: in this test the same badges lost badly there.
Questions
Do product badges increase conversion on collection pages?
They can, but results may differ by device.
Here badges lifted mobile conversion 4% and cut desktop conversion 32%.
Does badge colour matter?
It may matter less than you think. Stone Creek Coffee saw the same mobile gain and desktop loss with blue and with charcoal badges.
Can I show a change on mobile only?
Yes. Many themes and testing tools let you target by device.
Rolling out only where a change wins is a common outcome of split tests.
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