📈A/B Test case study: How this online furniture retailer increased conversion by solving a weird problem

With more than 35,000 products included in their range, Home on the Swan is one of Australia’s largest online furniture retailers.

Their problem? 

The company wanted to create a more targeted approach to conversion, encouraging customers to purchase larger items (such as outdoor dining and lounge sets, couches or beds) and increase its revenue. 

Home on the Swan approached Conversionry to help turn their browsers into bigger-item buyers.

The Conversion Research team got to work, conducting a thorough analysis of the website and its current usability, as well as direct customer surveys to truly understand how users were navigating the site and the roadblocks causing them to ‘abandon cart’ for an alternative retailer.

The feedback all pointed in one direction – customers couldn’t easily find the measurements for larger items. When their target customer, primarily busy women, needed to know the dimensions of a piece of furniture to determine how it would best fit into their home, this lack of information was a major blow on their path to purchasing.

Further investigation by the Conversionry team revealed the dimension information was available on the product pages. Success!…right?

Not quite. While the information was available, it was tucked away as part of a product’s image gallery, meaning customers had to scroll through half a dozen shots of the item before their questions were answered. 

To make things trickier, the dimension details were difficult to see, and not immediately obvious to a scrolling shopper. 

The solution

The first adjustment would have been to alter the order of the images, so that dimensions were up front and easy to locate. But since this wasn’t possible, Conversionry’s experts developed a more innovative, user-friendly solution.

The testing team wanted to know if they could impact purchases by changing the location and accessibility of the dimension information. Could the team add a link below the item image in the shopping cart that would create a pop-up when users clicked on it, including item features and vital measurement information all in one easy-to-access spot?

Hypothesis:

By adding the all-important-dimensions directly into the cart page, Conversionry’s experts felt that increased visibility would make it easier for users to locate, and stop them from going back into product pages for more information or abandoning their cart. 

But would user-friendly dimensions potentially impact sales if shoppers could clearly understand an item’s size?

To definitively determine if the dimensions pop-up would boost or bust sales, the team devised an A/B test.

Testing Set-up:

The team developed a Google Optimize test, lasting 16 days.

Original: Without…
Variation: With popup…

The traffic was equally split across each test. 

The primary metric noted whether the dimensions pop-up encouraged more users to click through to the checkout. The secondary metric measured how many users completed their transaction. 

Results:

Winner: Variation – adding dimensions in the cart was the best way to boost bigger sales!

Compared to the baseline test with no link or cart pop-up, test B increased the company’s revenue by 33%, the Conversion Rate by 28% and the Average Order Value by 4%.

Results achieved statistical significance at a 98% level on the primary metric (more users continuing to the checkout) and a 92% level of confidence for users to make a transaction.

A/B Test Analysis:

After seeing a huge increase in revenue, we can glean some great insights into how Conversionry’s interventions changed users’ behaviour: 

1. Easier Access

– In some session recordings, users preferred to use the pop-up dimensions in the cart rather than reviewing dimensions from the product page

– The users did not have to swipe endlessly just to see the product dimensions in the product page; they simply clicked the link from the cart page

2. All in One Place

– The users found it unnecessary to abandon the cart page for dimension details

– The pop up provided users with all the relevant information they needed to make a decision to purchase

3. Customer Pain Points Addressed

– Initially, the ‘dimensions link’ came from user polls and highlights the value of listening to your users; user feedback is gold compared to testing random things on the website that may not improve the user experience

– The “See Dimensions” text link phrase was very targeted and is the same phrase users responded with in the polls. 

Final Thoughts:

For customers who need to know the basics about a furniture product – its dimensions – small changes from the Conversionry team made for a seamless purchasing experience, from one page to the next.  

This test emphasised the value of customer feedback, comparing vital feedback with the data to identify gaps in the user experience and providing an uncomplicated solution to address a seemingly huge purchasing roadblock.

What are your thoughts? Do you think this is something your website is also struggling with? Conversionry provides a complementary CRO audit to help you recognise what your website’s blockages are and what you can do to address them. 

Take advantage of our complimentary Website Conversion Audit today!

Charlotte Bomford is a Conversion Optimisation Specialist at Conversionry, a global conversion optimisation agency, that accelerate conversion rates and revenue for leading ecommerce and omni-channel retail brands, via data-driven optimisation and experimentation programs.