Success Story

Optimeria Increased Engagement And Add-To-Cart Ratio For SlideShop

34% Add-to-cart ratio

About Optimeria

Optimeria is a CRO agency with a tight focus on analysis of browsing behavior and psychology of customers versus non-customers. They use VWO for conversion rate optimization.

In this success story for their customers, SlideShop.com, they apply a usability best practice and help them increase conversions.

Goals

Optimeria analyzed the browsing behavior of the visitors on the SlideShop website and saw that they weren’t as committed to staying within a category or subcategory. Heatmap and clickflow analysis of multiple key pages indicated that visitors did not sufficiently engage with the top menu – specifically subcategories. This let to the hypothesis that improving engagement will increase activity in the more focused subcategories.

The aim was to also improve usability on the site, and see how it affects clickflow patterns.

Tests run

In the original version of SlideShop.com, all pages had a promotional bar on the right which had special offers, customer testimonials, and so on.

See how the original version looked like:

Original design of Slideshop.com

The goal of this A/B test was to increase user engagement (on-site), and also create a better flow from categories to subcategories and across main categories.

Optimeria replaced the promotional right sidebar with a left navigation bar that did not have the heavy focus on single visual elements

See below how the variation with the left navigation menu bar looked like:

Navigation Menu on the Left: 34% Increase in Add-to-Cart Clicks

Note that all the subcategory pages are neatly displayed in the left navigation bar and it is much more intuitive to browse different pages on the eCommerce store.

Conclusion

The variation design for SlideShop saw an 8.9% lift in user engagement and a staggering 34% lift in visitors adding products to cart. Besides, a lot of key patterns emerged when looking at the new click-flow patterns.

They were impressed with the engagement lift, as SlideShop already had a good engagement rate, but they were surprised about the lift in adding to cart. (It was not expected – how adding a navigation bar could increase clicks on add-to-cart wasn’t clear.)

When asked for the lessons learned, Karsten Lund, CEO, Optimeria said:

“One should try to minimize browsing obstacles for visitors. Sometimes more clicks are better as long as they indicate a move forward in the conversion funnel. Better usability creates more motivated visitors.“

He also gives a lot of credit for that success to the tool used for testing, that is, VWO:

What I like the most about VWO is the fact it saves me a lot of time in the actual execution of the test phase, so that I can focus a lot more on the hard analysis, thesis and reporting phase. My clients don’t necessarily see the difference, but they get much more learning value from me using VWO because I can focus on what I do best. Decision makers often like the fact they can get feasible results before they need to involve IT department in doing changes to the website.

Karsten Lund
CEO