Does a preselected subscription option lift product page sales?
The product page listed one-time purchase first and selected it by default. We tested putting the subscription option first and preselecting it. Conversion rate fell 16.4% over 9 days, and the drop did not reach our confidence bar.
Not significant Responsive 9 days Not called
The hypothesis
By putting the subscription option first and preselecting it, we will get more shoppers to choose it, resulting in more purchases from the product page.
What we changed
We moved subscription above one-time purchase and preselected it.
On the control, the one-time purchase option came first and was selected when the page loaded. In the variation, we switched the order so the subscription option came first and made it the default choice. Everything else on the page stayed the same.
- Subscription option moved above one-time purchase
- Subscription selected by default on page load
The result
Conversion rate fell 16.4% when subscription was preselected.
Across all devices, conversion rate fell 16.4% over 9 days. We paused the test early because the drop was large enough to cost real sales. It did not run long enough for the gap to reach our 90% confidence bar, so we did not call a result.
What we would do next
A default subscription did not help and trended the wrong way.
Preselecting subscription asks a shopper to commit to repeat orders before they have tried the product. On this page the early trend went the wrong way, so we would not implement it. A next test could keep one-time purchase as the default and make the subscription savings easier to see.