A Norwegian Online Cosmetics Retailer Improved UX To Increase Conversions

BliVakker.No’s site attracted an average of 20,000 visits per day. Given the widespread belief that an easy eCommerce checkout experience results in better conversion rates and increased sales, its site also offered the Facebook login to speed up checkout.

A developer pointed out that supporting a Facebook login added significant complexity to internal systems and processes, and wondered if it was really worth it. That question spurred the team to research Facebook login best practices as well as how they were used in other eCommerce stores.

BliVakker.No used VWO to run a split URL test on 8,000 visitors. About half the visitors saw a login page with an email field and a Facebook login button; the other half saw only the email field.

This is what the original page with the Facebook login (control) looked like:

This is what the variation (checkout page without the Facebook login) looked like:

The hypothesis (and best practice) that checkout with the Facebook Connect would increase conversions was disproved. It was the variation without the Facebook login that delivered 3% more conversions. At BliVakker.No’s scale, this translated to incremental weekly sales of about US $10,000.

An important learning from this test is to use other ecommerce sites only as a guide while initially setting up your own checkout process. It is always best to test if those “best practices” apply to your business context. And run those tests before you start paid campaigns so that you don’t lose money.