Sport Chek lifts transactions 7.3% by using AI predictive heatmaps to optimize free shipping banner visibility
Canada's largest sporting goods retailer used Attention Insight's AI-powered predictive attention tool — trained on millions of eye-tracking studies — to redesign their shopping cart page, nearly tripling the visibility of the free shipping banner and achieving a 7.3% increase in transactions with 99.5% statistical confidence.
Background
Sport Chek was working to increase conversions on its shopping cart page. A free shipping offer — standard but undersold — was receiving disproportionately little attention despite its potential to drive checkout completion. The challenge was to optimize the page before committing to development changes, ideally using pre-test prediction rather than waiting for live A/B data.
What Was Implemented
- Attention Insight's AI predictive heatmap tool applied to the existing cart page design to model where visitors' attention would be directed
- Three optimization insights identified: increase free shipping banner prominence; reduce distraction from trivial elements; restructure layout for smoother attention flow
- Winning redesign included: red text and border on free shipping banner, vehicle icon added, trivial column labels and micro-links removed, "Promotional Code?" merged with "Order Summary" section
- Multiple design variants A/B tested; winning variation selected based on transaction performance
Results
- 7.3% increase in transactions achieved on the optimized cart page (vendor-reported, A/B tested) - Statistical confidence: 99.5% - Free shipping banner attention share: 9.2% → 22.2% (nearly 2.5× increase) - Clarity score improved by 2%
Lessons
- Pre-launch AI attention prediction can de-risk UX design changes before committing to development resources — changes can be validated against predicted eye-tracking data first
- Reducing cognitive noise (removing trivial elements) is as important as adding visual weight to priority elements; attention is a zero-sum resource on a page
- Statistical confidence reporting (99.5%) is essential for justifying design investments; UX teams should track transaction lift with proper statistical rigor, not just directional improvements
- Free shipping messaging is high-leverage but frequently undersold; ensuring it is visually prominent at the cart page is a simple, high-ROI optimization