When it comes to boosting e-commerce sales and revenue, there’s no substitute for good data. And the best way to obtain this data is to run experiments.

Since Endless Gain was founded seven years ago, the company has conducted over 12,000 experiments on e-commerce websites. The data collected from these experiments is fed into a machine learning algorithm to predict the outcomes of future tests, which lets businesses concentrate their efforts in the right areas.

We thought we would share some of the interesting insights that have come from the data.

Psychological principles and commonly tested pages

There are three psychological principles that lie behind the experiments we run:

• Drawing users’ attention to specific areas of a website.
• Motivating users to keep moving through their purchase journey on the site.
• Persuading users that making a purchase is the right decision for them by removing any doubt or anxiety.

Although we track all of our experiments down to the elements of the page we affect, for the sake of this analysis we focused on the pages only. We tend to concentrate on 6 pages that are common to almost all e-commerce sites:

• Home page
• Product listing page (PLP)
• Product details page (PDP)
• Basket
• Checkout
• Site wide (or more than one page)

Product details page experiments

More than a quarter of Endless Gain’s experiments are conducted on the PDP. It is the most commonly tested page and we have delivered more winning experiments for clients on the PDP than any other page. More than half of these experiments are focused on persuasion — or in other words, encouraging more users to add products to basket and proceed to the checkout.

The reason we focus so much attention here is because the PDP is so important to the user journey — whether as the key page in product selection or as a key landing page mainly driven by searches for specific products or from acquisition channels such as Google Shopping.

Here are some examples of the types of tests we have run on the PDP and the successes delivered for clients:

To boost sales, an online catalogue retailer added triggers around the main call to action on its PDP to reinforce confidence and remove any doubt customers might have about making a purchase. These included things like emphasizing their generous return policies, how long they’ve been in business and how many customers they have.

This was information customers could find if they looked, but by adding it to a key action area, we were able to alleviate customers’ concerns and persuade them to carry on with the action we wanted: adding the product to basket and completing the purchase. This resulted in a 2.3% increase in the conversion rate for this retailer and boosted annual sales by £5 million.

Another online men’s wear retailer highlighted some well-recognized payment providers (such as Klarna) on its PDP to build trust among customers. Again, using this as a bit of reassurance in a key area, this built trust and persuaded the customers to continue. This resulted in a 5.7% increase in the conversion rate.

Basket page experiments

About 11% of Endless Gain’s experiments to date have been conducted on the basket page. The main goal of the basket page is to make it easy for customers to continue their journey toward making a purchase.

Many of the tests we run here are about making UX improvements, but we also find this is another area of the site that requires further persuasion. Again this can be in the form of reassuring messages and social proof to highlight offers and incentives to help get them over the line.

As an example, an online home furnishing retailer we worked with was experiencing a high volume of basket abandonment due to a lack of urgency among users. They didn’t feel like they were in a rush so they could take their time making a decision. To change this, we added a popup window to customers who showed an exit intent that offered an time sensitive discount. This resulted in a 25% increase in the conversion rate.

Checkout page experiments

The checkout is our third most tested page. Here, it’s all about motivating the customer to keep going and complete their purchase journey.

We often refer clients to the idea of ego depletion. This concept considers that users have a finite pool of energy and every task we ask them to complete depletes that pool.

This means that by the time they get to the checkout we could have already significantly eaten away at their energy. As a result, something in the checkout that may seem small and insignificant, such complicated field entry or even decisions around which payment provider or delivery options to choose, could be enough to make a user give up.

By eliminating these challenges and keeping the users in a smooth progression, we keep their energy levels up and motivate them to continue. This can be why methods such as self-efficacy (green ticks when you complete a field correctly) can be great ways to push users along.

In a recent example we helped an online women’s fashion retailer who had a high drop off in the checkout. We discovered that customers were experiencing a high rate of errors on the checkout page and fixing these errors led to a 2% increase in the conversion rate.

In another example, an online men’s sportswear retailer suspected that they were offering too many payment options at checkout, which was confusing and overwhelming some customers. By reducing the number of payment options presented to customers, they increased the conversion rate by 4%. This seemed counter intuitive because the common belief is that offering more choices will mean everyone is happy, but this could actually cause paralysis by choice.

Home page experiments

Many people are surprised to learn that the home page is the least-experimented page on e-commerce websites. While it might a high visited page, in many cases it’s not the most important page from a sales and revenue standpoint — this would be the product details page.

The home page is typically more tactical-based and nuanced to specific audiences that are already brand aware. Therefore, our efforts are typically focused on experiments that alter the user’s attention and boost awareness of new information or new offers that we want the users to see.

An online UK retailer learned that its customers didn’t associate their business with a number of key consumer brands and they typically went to competitors’ retailers for branded products. To increase customer association of these brands with the retailer, we ran an experiment that emphasized the brands that were available in their store by increasing their visual hierarchy on the page. We made their logos more prominent and gave them a place on the page above the fold. This resulted in a 1.8% increase in the conversion rate.

Experimentation = Higher conversion rates

Experimentation is essential to obtaining the data needed to increase conversion rates and boost online sales and revenue. Use data to determine which experiments will yield the best results for your e-commerce business.

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