#17: Do you use scarcity triggers? (relevant for stores with limited stock or limited offers)

Cart page guidelines

Created: 15.07.2021. Last update: 04.10.2022. Contains 2 A/B testing results.

When a product or service is limited in availability, then it becomes more attractive to shoppers. When they understand that it's limited and others also desire it, it creates fear of missing out, persuading shoppers to act fast. Human psychology is such that we are prone to purchase something when we know that it's the very last one or that a special offer will expire soon.

Suppose you have a limited quantity of products or special offers for a certain amount of products. In that case, you can highlight that not only on product pages but you can also show that on the cart page to build a consistent experience.

Recommendations:

Place scarcity elements close to relevant sections: price, CTA-button;
Make it prominent enough (use different colors, sizes), so users will pay attention to it;
Don't create a fake sense of scarcity. It can hurt your business in the long run if you have many returning customers.

A good example from the Amazon cart page:

As you can see, it shows a pretty prominent scarcity trigger (using red color) for the Logitech keyboard - "Only 11 left in stock - order soon."

An excellent example from Backcountry shopping cart:

I'm buying a product with 20% off (which is highlighted on the cart page too) and they display a scarcity element "Only 4 in stock" above the pricing section. These 2 elements work together and the main purpose of them is to persuade a shopper to buy right away, otherwise it can be out of stock or discount will end.

An example from FashionNova

Here's the product with a very big discount and you can notice the "Final Sale" badge notifying users that they can miss this product if they don't buy it right away. It's quite a subtle scarcity trigger, but anyway it can motivate someone to complete the purchase.

A/B testing results

In this A/B test in Variation 1 (2nd in the line) we added both urgency and scarcity elements: low in stock notification and countdown timer (since we had discounts
on products).

Results of the 1st A/B test:

Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Users increased by 8.19% from 35.79% to 38.72% with 90% statistical significance;
Revenue per User increased by 14.39% from $17.79 to $20.35;
Average Order Value increased by 5.78% from $49.69 to $52.56

*Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Users and Revenue per User were calculated based on Custom reports in Google Analytics, so the numbers from the screenshot are not the most accurate. The screenshot is shown so you can see the graphs.

In this A/B test, we did similar changes. A prominent Low in Stock element was added near the discounted product price and also we added a notification that today users save 50% on products in their cart.

Results of the 2nd A/B test:

Ecommerce Conversion Rate by Users increased by 21.37% from 17.49% in Control to 21.23% in Variation (99% statistical significance)
Revenue per User increased by 25.7% from $5.72 in Control to $7.19 in Variation (99% statistical significance)
Average Order Value decreased by 2.5% from $32.24 in Control to $33.06 in Variation.

Previous Guideline

#16: Do you use urgency triggers? (relevant for stores with discounts, special offers, next day shipping)

If you give your shoppers time to think, they can delay making purchases. Sometimes the delay will be short, sometimes it will be long so they even forget about the product and the offer altogether.

A very effective way of persuading users to make a purchase right now is by creating a sense of urgency. If you have any discounts or special offers in your store, you can always make them time limited and notify users about that. That way you will add sense of urgency.

Next Guideline

#18: Do you have relevant cross-sell or upsell section?

This is a controversial thing and this, of course, is not suitable for all stores. But if done wisely and in a suitable context, it can significantly increase average order value and overall revenue.