WiderFunnel Conversion Optimization Blog

Posted: 27 Sep 2016 05:43 AM PDT

Reading Time: 2 minutes

TL;DR Canada's largest sporting goods retailer has a multi-faceted optimization program, but two recent tests revealed impactful insights about the company's ‘Free Shipping’ value proposition. Read the full case study here.

The Company

Sport Chek is Canada's largest national retailer of sporting goods, footwear and apparel. We partnered with Sport Chek just over a year ago and have been working together to optimize their e-commerce experiences, with the goal of increasing conversions in the form of transactions.

While Sport Chek's conversion optimization program is multi-faceted, two different tests recently revealed impactful insights about one of the company's value propositions.

What is a value proposition?

Value proposition can be thought of as a cost versus benefits equation that shows your prospects' motivation. But it's all about perception: if your perceived benefits outweigh the perceived costs, your prospects will be motivated to act.

Motivation = Perceived Benefits - Perceived Costs

All value propositions have varying degrees of value depending on how they're interpreted and how they're communicated. Your benefits hold different weight for different people―it's all about finding out which of your benefits are perceived to be most important to your prospects.
– Michael St Laurent, Optimization Strategist, WiderFunnel

The value of ‘Free Shipping’

Sport Chek offers free shipping on online orders over a certain dollar amount. Of course, offering some degree of free shipping is basically par for the course in today's e-commerce world. It's a Point of Parity―these are the features that are important to your prospects that you also share with your competitors (the basic entry requirements to the game).

The question in this case was: How can Sport Chek communicate this offer in a way that provides more value to their customers? How can they make this Point of Parity look like a Point of Difference―a feature that's important to the prospect and unique to your business.

Related: For more on Points of Parity, Points of Difference and Points of Irrelevance, check out Chris Goward's post "Use these 3 points to create an awesome value proposition“.

In this case study, you'll read about:

Two experiments, one on the cart page and one on the product page, that led to substantial lift for Sport Chek
An unexpected variable that revealed an insight about the company's ideal ‘Free Shipping’ threshold

The results of these experiments showed that ‘Free Shipping’ is an extremely elastic value proposition point for Sport Chek. At varying "you-qualify-for-free-shipping" price points, there are major swings in user behavior.

In the past, their ‘Free Shipping’ offer was an under-utilized value proposition because it wasn't being emphasized in the right way. Now, this value proposition point is more visible and being communicated with more clarity.