Countdown timer for a Memorial Day sale: positive, figures not shared
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsA countdown timer during Ursa Major's Memorial Day sale was reported as a winner, though no figures were published.
The agency UN/COMMON ran the test for the skincare brand, and it was published as a Shoplift case study.
The main finding was that new and returning visitors responded very differently.
- Overall result: positive, according to the source. No metric or number was given.
- New and returning visitors had very different outcomes. The source does not say which group did better.
- No sample size, duration or confidence level was shared.
The change
The variant adds a countdown to the sale's end; exact placement not published.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The Memorial Day sale ran on the site with no countdown timer.
Variant
A countdown timer showed how long the Memorial Day sale had left.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- A timer makes a real deadline visible, which can prompt shoppers who planned to buy to do it now.
- Returning visitors may already know the products and only need a nudge on timing, while new visitors may need more reasons to trust the brand first. This is our guess; the source does not say.
- Because the deadline was genuine, the urgency was honest, which matters for a brand that guards customer trust.
Caveats: No figures were shared, not even the metric used, so we can't judge the size of the effect. Holiday sale traffic also differs from normal traffic.
Who ran it
UN/COMMON ran this test for Ursa Major and published the results (Shoplift case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on UN/COMMON →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we show a countdown to the real end of our sale, then more shoppers will buy during the sale because the deadline is clear.
- Primary metric
- Conversion rate during the sale
- Guardrails
- Conversion rate for new vs returning visitors
- Average order value
- Conversion in the days after the sale
- Who should test it
- Stores running time-limited sales with a real end date. Report new and returning visitors separately. Skip it if the deadline isn't real, since fake timers can damage trust.
Questions
Do countdown timers work for holiday sales?
Ursa Major found a positive overall result for a Memorial Day timer, but shared no numbers.
Effects can differ a lot by visitor type.
Why segment a timer test by new and returning visitors?
The two groups can react in opposite ways.
In this test the outcomes varied widely between them, which an overall number would hide.
Are countdown timers misleading?
Only if the deadline is fake. Tie the timer to the real end of the sale.
Similar tests
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen
Visually@DaveDiederen