Money-back guarantee and app store icons on sign-up: +32.57% sales
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding large icons for a money-back guarantee and the Apple App Store above the plan buttons lifted paid sign-ups by 32.57%.
Understand Quran Academy, an online course subscription, ran the test itself, published as a VWO case study.
Both benefits were already on the page as plain text.
- Sales (paid sign-ups): +32.57% against the control.
- Reported at 98% statistical significance over 11 days.
The change
The variant adds large guarantee and App Store icons above the plans.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The sign-up page offered a $10 monthly or $99 annual plan. It listed seven benefits as text, including the refund guarantee and the included iPhone app.
Variant
Two large icons, one for the money-back guarantee and one for the Apple App Store, sat prominently above the plan buttons. The orange guarantee icon contrasted with the green buttons.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- A visible guarantee lowers the perceived risk of paying for a course before trying it.
- The App Store icon signals that lessons work on a phone, a convenience benefit buried in text before.
- Placing the icons above the buttons meant visitors saw them right before deciding.
Caveats: The test ran for 11 days and the sample size is not shared. The two icons were added together, so the lift can't be split between the guarantee and the app badge.
Who ran it
Understand Quran Academy 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 Understand Quran Academy →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we turn our guarantee and app availability into large icons above the plan buttons, then more visitors will subscribe because the risk-reducing benefits are seen at the moment of decision.
- Primary metric
- Paid sign-ups
- Guardrails
- Refund rate
- Annual vs monthly plan mix
- Plan button click-through
- Who should test it
- Subscription and online course businesses that already offer a guarantee or mobile app but only mention it in text. It won't help if the guarantee is weak or hard to claim, or if your audience rarely uses mobile.
Questions
Does showing a money-back guarantee increase sales?
It often helps by lowering perceived risk. In this test a guarantee icon, shipped with an App Store icon, lifted sales 32.57%.
Where should a guarantee badge go on a pricing page?
Near the plan buttons, where visitors decide. Understand Quran Academy placed it just above them.
Is text enough to communicate a guarantee?
Not always. The guarantee was already in the text here; making it a large, high-contrast icon is what changed.