Systematic CRO Programme Driving 85% Revenue Uplift for Malta's Favourite Bookshop
Client: Agenda Bookshop
Agenda Bookshop had strong traffic but disappointing conversion rates. We implemented a systematic experimentation programme that turned browsers into buyers through rigorous A/B testing and data-driven optimisation.
The Challenge
Agenda Bookshop is one of Malta's most beloved retail brands, with a strong physical presence and a growing online store. The eCommerce site attracted healthy traffic from SEO and social media, but conversion rates lagged well below the retail eCommerce benchmark of 2.5-3%. Cart abandonment exceeded 75%, and the path from product discovery to checkout was losing customers at every step.
Previous optimisation efforts had been ad hoc and opinion-driven -- the team would make changes based on gut feeling, with no measurement framework to know whether those changes actually improved anything. There was no testing culture, no analytics infrastructure beyond basic Google Analytics pageviews, and no systematic way to identify where the biggest conversion leaks were occurring.
The team knew they were leaving revenue on the table but had no clear roadmap for which optimisations to prioritise or how to measure their impact with statistical confidence.
The Solution
We implemented a full-stack CRO programme starting with a comprehensive analytics overhaul. We deployed GA4 with enhanced eCommerce tracking, server-side Google Tag Manager, and Hotjar heatmaps and session recordings to build a complete picture of user behaviour from landing to checkout.
Using this data, we built a prioritised experiment backlog scored by potential revenue impact, implementation effort, and statistical power. We launched Optimizely as the experimentation platform, running 2-3 A/B tests concurrently across the most impactful pages: product detail pages, category navigation, cart, and checkout.
Key winning experiments included: redesigned product pages with social proof and urgency signals (+18% add-to-cart rate), a simplified two-step checkout replacing the five-step funnel (-40% cart abandonment), personalised book recommendations powered by browsing history (+25% cross-sell revenue), and a smart search redesign with typo tolerance and category filtering (+32% search-to-purchase rate). Each test ran to 95% statistical significance before implementation.
The Results
Revenue Uplift
Over 6 months
Conversion Rate
Up from 1.8%
Less Abandonment
Cart to checkout
Tests Run
14 winners shipped
Over six months, the CRO programme delivered an 85% increase in eCommerce revenue on flat traffic -- every euro of growth came from converting existing visitors more effectively. The conversion rate rose from 1.8% to 3.4%, well above the retail eCommerce benchmark. Cart abandonment dropped by 40%, the personalised recommendation engine drove a 25% increase in cross-sell revenue, and the programme established a permanent testing culture within the Agenda team. We ran 22 statistically rigorous experiments with a 64% win rate, and the compounding effect of 14 winning changes deployed in sequence created the outsized revenue impact.
Technology Stack
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