The quick version

A gemstone jewelry brand has many pieces on sale or being retired, but the product pages only showed a plain discount line. The brand tested making it clearer: a bold "Last chance" badge next to the price and an "Only a few pieces left" note above Add to Bag. Shoppers responded well! About 15% more of them bought, orders stayed the same size, and profit per visitor rose about 15% too.

The setup

Much of this brand's catalog is made up of pieces that won't be restocked once they sell out, but the product pages didn't make that clear. Apart from a small line of discount text, a retiring piece looked just like one that would be around for months.

The brand wanted to see whether letting shoppers know a piece was going away would encourage them to buy it now, so they added a "Last chance" badge and a low-stock note to those pages.

What they tested

Two groups ran at the same time, on the product pages for sale and retiring pieces:

Control: The existing page, with the discount shown as plain text.

Variant: The discount shown as a bold "Last chance" badge, plus an "Only a few pieces left" message above Add to Bag.

The results

The test ran for two weeks, with more than 530,000 visitors and about 5,000 orders split evenly between the two groups.

• Gross profit / visitor: +15%

• Revenue / visitor: +15%

• Conversion rate: +15%

• Checkout start rate: +5%

• Add to cart rate: +5%

• Checkout abandonment: -5%

• Average order value: flat

The takeaway

More shoppers bought when they saw the badge and stock message. They added items to their cart and started checkout more often, and fewer left before finishing their order. With the same amount of traffic, the variant group placed about 300 more orders over two weeks. Those shoppers spent the same amount per order as everyone else, so each extra sale added straight to the brand's profit.

Why it worked

• Urgency gave shoppers a reason to buy now. Knowing a piece might sell out soon made interested shoppers more likely to buy it instead of waiting.

• Success was measured by profit per visitor, because it shows whether more people buying at the same order size actually made the brand more money.

Test your own urgency messaging

With Smart Content, you can A/B test changes to your product pages, like badges, stock messages, and copy, the same way this brand did. Add an urgency cue to the pieces that are really running low, run it against your current page, and compare profit per visitor. Once you have a winner, you can roll it out to everyone or show it only to specific audiences.

Get started here.