Redesigned my checkout form with larger buttons and got fewer completions?

I run a small Etsy shop for handmade bookmarks and last week I made the checkout buttons bigger and added more space between fields to help people with motor issues. After 3 days I checked my analytics and conversions dropped from 12% to 7%. Customers started abandoning at the shipping step instead. Turns out the bigger layout pushed the address fields below the fold on mobile and people thought the form was longer than it was. Has anyone else seen accessibility changes backfire like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

mitchell.shane9d ago

Three days of data on a 12% conversion rate is probably too small a sample to call it a real trend. I'd give it at least two weeks before drawing conclusions, because seasonal traffic fluctuations or a single bad ad click could be messing with those numbers. @tara345 made a good point about well-meaning changes backfiring, but this might just be bad timing rather than a bad design.

grant5699d ago

...and then you find out "helping people" actually punishes you. Classic. Sounds like you made the form feel like climbing a mountain on mobile. Bigger buttons don't mean squat if nobody can find the damn thing without scrolling. I redesigned my shop's brake pad order form once. Made the color picker huge for old guys with bad eyes. Same thing happened - completions tanked. Turns out nobody wanted to scroll past three giant color swatches just to pick a size. Lesson learned - test every little change on a phone first. Even if it looks good on your monitor.

tara3459d ago

Three giant color swatches is exactly the kind of well-meaning disaster I'd expect from someone who also puts ketchup on their hot dog. @grant569 I feel like you learned this lesson the hard way on a Tuesday at 2pm with a customer yelling on the other line. Real talk, sometimes the "fix" makes the problem worse than the original glitch ever did.