Case Study: Checkout Urgency Message
Optimizing conversion rate by igniting a sense of urgency in the checkout.
Project Overview
Once the user has added one or more items to the cart, the final step of the purchase journey is to get the user to complete the checkout flow. In general, the cart abandonment rate is one of the key focus areas to improve the performance of a webshop. Thus, finding a way to get the user to complete the journey is extremely valuable.
The Challenge
At Miinto, the items in the cart is not reserved for the user. Thus, the user might experience that the cart items run out of stock before they complete the checkout. Currently this risk is not displayed for the user during the checkout flow on the Miinto platform - i.e. Miinto is potentially losing out on quite a few transactions due to this lack of information.
The Approach & Solution
To try to solve the information gap, and hence drive a higher checkout flow completation rate (conversion rate), I designed a new checkout flow variant with an info-bar displaying an urgency message, if one of the products in the user's cart are particularly popular (based on definition from recent transactions history). The info-bar in the new variant is displayed both in the cart overview and in the checkout pages. The text of the info-bar is: "Hurry up! These products are very popular. They might run out of stock." The test was launched on miinto.no for both desktop and mobile users entering the cart/checkout flow.
The Results
The test proved successfull in boosting the conversion rate (+4.9%). The info-bar has effectively ignited a sense of scarcity and urgency in the users to trigger them into action. Thus, the test users have been 'manipulated' to complete the checkout flow instead of staling the purchase decision. This test is very simple and the results significant with a multi-million EUR performance uplift with full deployment across all Miinto sites. Based on this, the checkout urgency message feature is on the tech roadmap for full implementation in 2022.
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