We all know the importance of testing. Everything else is mere conjecture.

One of the big ecommerce brands that continues to test and learn is RS Components, a huge distributor of electronic components.

The brand was winner of a Masters of Marketing Award in 2015 for user experience. We‘ve previously detailed some of this award-winning UX work on the blog.

Improvements included:

• Image-supported predictive search.
• Surfacing popular categories in search, above returned products. This has increased clickthrough.
• Increasing the speed of faceted search by 70%, with a 40% increase in conversion.
• Extended sort and compare functions.
• Express checkout and ‘remember me‘.
• Large and more dynamic product pages with embedded video.

As such, conversion growth (year on year) is at a four-and-a-half year high, up 10%.

In this post, I thought I‘d bring you one extra titbit.

It‘s an A/B test that implemented no drastic changes to the RS Components UI, but one that yielded impressive results and was a winner of the WhichTestWon Competition at 2016‘s Adobe Summit in EMEA.

Stock levels - visual cues test

The RS Components website displayed product listings with no clear indication of stock levels, only a call to action allowing the user to ‘check stock levels‘.

Customer feedback and best practice wisdom told the RS team that this was a frustrating experience, as customers want to know an item is in stock before they go to add it to their basket.

So, the team knew that adding a visual cue in product listings would likely generate an improvement in conversions to basket.

An A/B test was conducted to demonstrate the impact of improving this area of the site, in order to create a business case for rolling out this change across all products.

The pre-existing RS Components site, showing product listings with ‘check stock levels‘ call to action.

Test A

Version A placed an ‘In stock‘ marker in green on each product listing, with a grey link to ‘check qty‘.

This was a fairly subtle change, I think you‘ll agree, but an improvement on the pre-existing UX.

Test B

Version B was a little bolder, with an ‘In stock‘ green flag in the corner of each listing and a tick for good measure.

The ‘check stock levels‘ call to action becomes clearer, taking up the full space beneath the quantity field and ‘add‘ button.

As is fairly obvious from the emblazoned screenshot below, this version was the winner, increasing add-to-basket clickthrough rate by 159%.

Conclusion

This is a snappy little test but one I thought deserved publishing, just to re-emphasise that although the concept of customer happiness is in vogue (and rightly so), focusing on small and tangible improvements is still the bedrock of ecommerce.

我们都知道测试的重要性。但很多都是单纯的推测而已。

其中一个电子商务巨头，RS Components (欧时电子是电子配件分销商中的佼佼者）就是利用测试不断学习的。他也是2015年营销大师大奖中用户体验模块的优胜者。

他们的改善包括：

＊支持图像预测的搜索

＊将搜索中的流行的目录放置在退换商品上面，这样会增加点击率。

＊提高70%的分页搜索速度，那么转化率将会增加40%

＊增加分类和功能比较

＊快速结账和“记住我”功能

＊更大更具有活力的产品页面，并附上视频。同样地，年转化率比去年提升了10%

库存水平－虚拟提示测试

The RS Components官网的产品目录并没有很明显的指标显示库存水平，只有用户点击“检查库存水平”按键才能找到这个指标。

客户的反馈和实践的证明告诉RS团队这是一个糟糕的体验，客户需要先知道库存里有没有商品才能够把商品加入到他们的购物篮里。

所以团队意识到增加虚拟提示在产品目录里极有可能提高用户把商品加入购物篮的转化次数。

这里我们就用A/B测试来证明改善网站这个地方所带来的影响，为了通过创建商业案例然后将这一变化扩散到整个产品列里。

如图所示，之前的RS Components网站中的产品目录保留着“检查库存水平”的按钮。

测试A

版本 A的网站中产品目录里显示着的是“有库存”的绿色字样，然后旁边有个灰色的“检查数量”的连接。

这个只是细微的变化，我想你会同意这个改变，但这只是对以前的客户体验的细微改善。

测试B

版本 B是在每个产品表的右角落放了一个“有库存”的绿色旗帜，并放上一个大大的勾来显示这里有库存。

那个”检查库存水平“的按钮还是和以前一样放置。我们可以很清楚地在下面截图里看到，这个版本会更棒，因为加入购物篮这一动作按钮的点击率比以前提升了159％。

总结

这只是一个非常小的测试但我觉得很值得分享给大家，想要强调地是虽然客户幸福感这个概念现在非常流行，但是关注小而明显的改变仍然是电子商务的基础。大家可以在留言里说说自己利用A/B测试的相似经历，让大家一起学习学习。