Case Study: Novica.com Product Page

Once a serious shopper is ready, their attention shifts to ADD TO CART area.  Novica has a 5 course meal laid out for them (numbered in screenshot below)-

Course 1: Today’s Price- 99.9% of shoppers pay attention to the product price, which means they notice this hyperlink.  Novica.com uses that click to tell their story.

Suddenly the price becomes a little less important and the human behind the rug comes into focus.

Course 2 and 3: How can a shopper know if $162.99 is a good price? The site does mention ‘real value’ for the item is $305.95, but as a shopper I know this is marketing talk.  I know retailers mark up prices and then give discounts.

What I am familiar with are shipping costs.  Look at what happens when I click “calculate shipping”-

I believe the shipping price of $2.99 is much more effective than making shipping free.  Here’s why: when a retailer makes shipping free my skeptical mind immediately throws this argument, “Why is this guy absorbing all shipping costs? Something doesn’t add up.”  Giving a $2.96 discount is different; in this case my mind imagines, “If the retailer was being sneaky he would have taken the whole shipping price off.  The fact he only took off $2.96 must mean this is the best they can do.”  Note: this is how my mind is interpreting this information.  You should run a test between ‘free shipping’ and ‘discounted shipping’.

Course 4: Only 1 left at this time- This line introduces a sense of scarcity, and scarcity lubricates conversions.

Course 5: “Why are quantities limited?”-

In course 4 novica.com made a claim.  Now they’re explaining it.  I can’t tell you why this works so well on shoppers but it really does.  I did a test where we added a “price explanation” link next to product price.  On click a pop-up described our manufacturing facility and quality ingredients.  We didn’t change the price in any way.  Yet, page conversions shot up 41%.  General conversion rule: the more shoppers are informed, the more they feel they are driving the shopping experience and the better they convert.

At this point the shopper is ready to ADD TO CART.