The “Best Practice” That’s Secretly Killing Your Conversion Rate
You’ve done everything by the book.
The sticky “Add to Cart” button on your product pages? Check. Removed the euro sign next to your prices? Check. Those trust badges at the bottom of the page? Double check.
Job well done, you’d say.
But here’s the kicker: what if those ‘best practices’ are actually costing you money?
The problem with best practices
This is something that always gets me a bit irritated – and as a Shopify store owner, it should irritate you too.
The internet is packed with articles telling you what you must do to increase your conversion rate. “Add sticky CTAs!” shouts one guru. “Remove friction with trust badges!” screams another. So you dutifully implement all of it.
But nobody tests whether it actually works. For your audience. On your website. With your products.
Because here’s the thing: what works for Store A can completely backfire for Store B.
Take that euro sign, for example. Makes sense, right? Removing the ‘pain of paying’ by letting out the currency symbol 29.99 instead of €29.99. But in one of our tests, we saw a conversion drop of -23% from simply removing that euro sign.
Why “best practices” often aren’t that great
The thinking behind many of these practices is logical. Sticky buttons make it easier to buy instantly. Trust badges provide reassurance. Social proof shows that others trust you.
But here’s what happens in practice:
More elements = more visual clutter = more cognitive load
Your visitor suddenly has to process more. More buttons. More badges. More information screaming for attention. And while you think you’re helping, their brain is actually working overtime.
The psychologist in me knows: the more choices and stimuli, the greater the chance someone chooses nothing at all.
(This is called ‘choice overload’ – but I digress.)
The only way to truly know if something works
And this is where A/B testing comes in.
The basics are simple:
- Version A (control): your current page with the element
- Version B (variant): the same page, but without the element
- You show both versions to different visitors
- After a while, you see which version performs better
If version B (without the element) converts better? Then you know that ‘clever’ element was actually costing you money.
The only problem is that A/B testing is traditionally a hassle. You need developers. Code that needs adjusting. And by the time everything finally goes live, you’ve already forgotten why you wanted to test it in the first place.
Enter Cloak
The thinking behind Automagic – Cloak is actually ridiculously simple: what if you could just click on an element to hide it in an A/B test?
No code. No developers. No hassle.
You click on the element you want to test. We handle the rest – setting up the A/B test, splitting your traffic, measuring the results. Everything automatic.
And then after a while, you simply see in black and white: does this element increase your conversion, or is it actually costing you money?
What you can discover
Take that sticky CTA on your product pages. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Always a buy button in view.
But in practice, the results are… mixed. Some stores see improvement. Others actually see a decline. And the weird thing is: without testing, you simply don’t know.
Or those euro signs I mentioned earlier. For one store, it makes no difference. For another store, it causes a massive drop. The only way to know? Testing.
And that’s exactly what Cloak was built for. Not to either embrace all best practices or throw them all away. But to discover which ones actually work for your store.
The hidden costs of not testing
Let me give you a quick calculation.
Say you have 10,000 visitors per month with a 2% conversion rate. That’s 200 orders.
If you have one element on your site pulling your conversion down by 0.5% (from 2% to 1.5%), you’re losing 50 orders per month.
At an average order value of €50? That’s €2,500 per month. €30,000 per year.
And we’re talking about one element. Just one.
How many “best practices” do you have on your site that you’ve never tested? 🤔
Simple testing, big impact
The beautiful thing about Cloak is that you don’t need to go on a massive testing spree. You don’t need to overhaul your entire site or set up an enormous testing strategy.
Start with one element you have doubts about. Maybe that trust badge that looks a bit cluttered. Or that pop-up you added ‘just to be safe’ because all the blogs said you should.
Hide it by clicking on it (in the app). Start the test. And see what happens.
If the element actually helps? Fantastic, you keep it. If it’s costing you money? You know that too. And then you remove it and watch your conversion go up.
It’s actually quite bizarre that in this day and age we’re still building websites based on what a blog from 2019 told us, instead of looking at what our own data is telling us.
From best practice to best for you
Here’s what I’ve learned over the past few years: there’s no such thing as a universal best practice. There’s only “what works for your audience, on your site, with your products”.
And the only way to discover that is by testing.
Not endless testing for the sake of testing. Not testing until your developers go crazy. But smart, targeted testing of the things you have doubts about.
Because sometimes less really is more. Sometimes that extra button, that extra badge, that extra element is exactly what’s standing between your visitor and a purchase.
The question is: do you want to know, or do you want to keep guessing?
Ready to discover which “best practices” are actually costing you money?
Automagic – Cloak is currently running in private beta. We’re keeping it simple: you get early access to the tool (free), we get your feedback to make it even better.
The only investment? A few clicks and the time to check your results. The potential return? Finding the elements that are dragging down your conversion and finally being able to remove them.