Does an award trust badge in the cart lift checkout conversion?

Our cart page showed no outside proof that the store could be trusted. We tested adding a customer service award badge, and a business rating badge. Over 20 days, the award badge lifted cart completion 9.3%, but revenue per visitor fell 7.3%.

Not significant Responsive 20 days Not called

SURFACE

Checkout

DEVICE

Responsive

VERTICAL

Ecommerce (B2C)

PRIMARY METRIC

Conversion rate

VARIATIONS

2

The hypothesis

By adding a trust badge to the cart at a critical step in checkout, we will raise shopper confidence, resulting in more completed orders.

Shoppers in the cart are about to pay for a large order, often for an event. A badge from a known outside source can ease last doubts at that step.

What we changed

A customer service award badge or a business rating badge in the cart

Var A added a customer service award badge to the cart page. Var B added a business rating badge in the same place. The rest of the cart stayed the same.

VAR A: AWARD BADGE

Customer service award badge in the cart

VAR B: RATING BADGE

Business rating badge in the cart

The result

The award badge lifted cart completion 9.3%, but revenue fell

CONVERSION RATE

+9.3%

REVENUE PER VISITOR

-7.3%

VAR B CART COMPLETION

+6.6%

Over 20 days, more cart visitors completed an order with the award badge (Var A), up 9.3%. But those orders were smaller, and revenue per visitor fell 7.3%. The rating badge (Var B) followed the same pattern: completion up 6.6%, revenue per visitor down 4.7%.

Because the 2 measures pointed in opposite directions, we did not call a winner and paused the test.

What we would do next

Retest the badge earlier in checkout and track order size

The badges helped more shoppers finish, but the extra orders were smaller. The next round would place a badge earlier in the checkout flow and track order value closely, to see whether trust can lift completion without lowering order size.