
How I increased conversion on my checkout form - wasd
http://pud.com/post/87930228516/how-i-increased-conversion-on-my-checkout-form-by-60
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larrys
Noting that on the before the "you're one step away" immediately jumps out at
you.

Personally I don't like that it seems like overselling to me. I'd like an a/b
test just with that one phrase actually.

The ideas presented sound good in general and make sense. I'd guess you'd have
to tease out which of them actually did the trick.

Anyway, another possibility is that there was something negative on the sparse
form (like the "you're one step away") and by adding a few things to the page
it detracted from that.

In the same way that if you have a big nose it's less obvious if you do your
hair (and makeup if a woman) in a certain way. So it's not the fact that you
are adding makeup or hair as much as it is that the nose doesn't appear as
big.

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mmastrac
Now that these items are all in, it might be interesting to see him run a
multivariate test to see which of the factors actually contributed to the 60%,
and if all of them are net positive.

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andrewljohnson
I'd like to see performance vs. Stripe Checkout, which we use. Like this:
[https://stripe.com/img/blog/posts/checkout-new-
features/blog...](https://stripe.com/img/blog/posts/checkout-new-
features/blog-post-hero.png)

I would also like to see any analysis of which of these many changes made the
difference. Did only particular thing account for most of the difference?

~~~
eps
I'd like to see performance vs. PayPal.

I launched a project a month ago (a desktop Windows app) and only had the
Stripe checkout. Guess what? No one outside SV and HN has any idea what the
heck Stripe is and half of them "don't feel like giving you my credit card
info" even though it says right there that it goes directly to Stripe. So
after 2 weeks I grudgingly added PayPal and added itsy-bitsy hard to find link
to it on the checkout page... Drumroll... nearly 50% increase in sales!

~~~
DustinCalim
This post makes me sad, but reminds me just how big of a technical gap there
is between the valley, the early adopters across the country, the rest of the
population in the middle, and then the older/lagging adopter generations at
the tail. (I'm picturing a normal bell distribution here).

A lot of companies are creating solutions to problems the majority of people
don't have yet, and I think the gap is widening.

Bear in mind it wasn't long ago that nobody had any idea who Paypal was...

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brianbarker
Adding a credit card type dropdown seems unnecessary. There are standard
number patterns for each card provider, and making users select one is silly
since cc gateways don't typically ask (they use the number patterns). I'd like
to know if something about adding that step actually helped conversion or had
no affect at all.

~~~
brianbarker
Alright, I'm fucking done with HN comments. So damn tired of being down-voted
over nothing. It's like a hive of 5 year olds.

~~~
RobAley
I'm going to guess that you got downvoted as people felt your comment didn't
add anything to the discussion, which is the prescribed use for downvotes. The
article already explained the rational for adding it and that it wasn't
actually used. It's likely clear to you why your response was also downvoted.

~~~
brianbarker
I got downvoted -12 a few weeks ago for saying that an article mentioning John
Regehr was the professor from the University of Utah that I respected. What
the fuck is that? This website is overrun with nerds with small egos.

~~~
DanBC
You said "I saw Regehr and knew it had to be the U prof."

How did you expect people to respond to that comment? The comment adds nothing
to understanding of the article. The comment adds nothing to understanding of
the author of the article.

~~~
brianbarker
That's true for half the comments on any given article. I call bullshit.

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pbreit
Great info. It's beyond the call of duty but wonder if Pud or anyone else
could quantify any of the individual changes?

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kuyan
Why does the before form say "Secured with 256-bit SSL encryption" when the
after form says "128-bit SSL"?

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nhebb
He mentions that he was inspired by this article:

[http://baymard.com/blog/visually-reinforce-sensitive-
fields](http://baymard.com/blog/visually-reinforce-sensitive-fields)

From which it looks like he copied the "128-bit SSL" text verbatim.

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kosei
It's a bummer that all of these were shipped at once. Tough to tell what the
true takeaway is from this (security vs. reinforcing value proposition). I'm
sure this was quickly put together to ship, but it would have been nice to
have distinguished the valuable changes from the red herrings.

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pdenya
> Added card-type dropdown ... Their selection isn’t stored or used for
> anything.

I wouldn't have thought of on my own, adding extra fields that do nothing
except increase conversion.

~~~
gk1
> adding extra fields that do nothing except increase conversion.

Well, that's not certain. Any of the other changes could be responsible for
the increase, and not this particular change.

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Hoozt
Compared to how it looked before - great job!

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b0b0b0b
Did the strength of the ssl decryption change? Do some browsers not support
256 bit ssl encryption?

~~~
scott_karana
No kidding; I thought AES256 was present even in SSLv3.

