Win Report: How usability improvements to a product page grew conversions by 23%

Published: May 2024

Win Reports help you to grow your business by showing our methodology at work. Each article highlights a real-world test, sharing the research, insights, and techniques that led to the win.

In the next three minutes, we’ll show you how subtly redesigning a product page increased an online pet supply store’s conversion rate by 23%.

The image shows the original and variation screens side by side.

Ferplast has been creating innovative pet accessories for over 50 years. From its base in Italy, it exports to 85 countries around the world.

Research: User-testing product pages

Although we user test every part of a client’s funnel, we pay special attention to elements that are “close to the sale”—like product pages.

The product page is a critical decision point in online sales. It’s the place where all the work—the product design, development, production, and marketing–collapses into a single question in the customer’s mind: Yes or no?

In Ferplast’s case, user testing showed that some participants stalled at the product page. To get a sense of why, let’s look at an example.

The original page (or control)

The top of Ferplast’s product pages looked like this:

The image shows Ferplast’s original product page. — The Control: The two purchase buttons caused problems for some users.

Here’s a list of observations we made during user tests:

Having two checkout buttons caused confusion. The first added the product to a traditional basket, the second invoked the alternative payment provider, Shop Pay, which required authentication with a mobile phone number. The process worked, but if a user clicked the Shop Pay button by mistake (or simply preferred not to share their number), there was no clear way back to the product page.
There was no mention of Ferplast’s return policy—which stalled visitors buying more expensive or complex products.
The SKU code added clutter but was not relevant for most users.

Each of these issues suggested an opportunity to improve the page.

The tested page (or variation)

For this test, we subtly reworked the sales page template, making it easier to “read” and resolving the issues mentioned above.

The image shows the variation product page.See notes below. — The Variation: The tweaked sales page is easier to understand and use.

Our full list of changes included:

Moving the navigation breadcrumbs to the left-hand side to reduce clutter.
Raising the star rating to beneath the title so more visitors see it.
Removing the ShopPay button to simplify the checkout journey. (ShopPay remains an option but is available when users check out.)
Consolidating copy for Klarna, shipping, and returns into a “tidier” shaded box.
Lifting some persuasive elements (like the PayPal logo) higher up the screen so more visitors see them.

Result: Sales rose by 23%

During the test, we observed a 23% rise in sales and a 42% increase in revenue per visitor.

Although each individual change was simple to implement, in accumulation, they made a big difference to the page’s usability. As we say on page 179 of our book Making Websites Win:

Almost every win has great usability woven into it—just like most successful books have “good grammar” in them. Usability underpins all of conversion. Along with readability, usability is a life skill that’s worth developing. The world has no shortage of things that are infuriatingly confusing to use. If you can make things easy to use, the world will love you.

To learn more, get a FREE copy of Making Websites Win (our Amazon #1 bestseller).

What next?

As usual, we added the test to our proprietary Wins Database, then looked for ways to apply its lessons to other parts of Ferplast’s business and then to other clients.

If you want us to grow your profits—quickly and efficiently—check if you qualify for a free one-on-one strategy session with one of our CRO consultants.

We’ll only work with you if we believe we can get amazing results together. Our success has come entirely from positive word of mouth, and we plan to keep it that way.

Thanks to Ferplast for letting us share these insights (and for being such a great team to work with).

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