Browser shopping extensions gives shoppers easier access to the best information, deals, and pricing on products and services. A shopping extension alerts customers to product information and available deals and offers. When customers arrive on a website, they have immediate access to potentially appealing information and offers without visiting a deal aggregation or other online web presence.

The most popular shopping extensions include Paypal Honey, Rakuten Rewards, Wildfire, and Capital One Shopping, but there are many others. Google Chrome, the most popular browser worldwide, offers many different shopping apps and extensions through the Chrome Web Store.

Our study tracked shopping and transaction activity across merchant websites in multiple categories across users of 35 different extensions and 67 million customer journeys. CJ partnered with the customer journey continuity platform, Namogoo, to get comprehensive and reliable data for this study. Namogoo’s unique platform enables brands to track all activity occurring in a customer journey, to help predict and shape the buyer experience, and flag any unwanted interruptions in the customer flow.

We compared the actions of an extension audience that saw proactive pops with an extension audience that did not see proactive pops. With our study’s design, we isolated the incremental business value of extension activity and messaging before checkout. We also studied the impact of pops where a deal or other value-add was present from those that delivered product information but no discount or other value-add.

Our study shows that users who download extensions are more prolific shoppers, spending 185% more than customers without extensions. This is true regardless of whether they interact with an extension or not. They exhibit higher add-to-cart rates, conversion rates, and AOV. This underlying difference in customer value was an important consideration as we designed our testing methodology.

We compared the actions of an extension audience that saw proactive pops with an extension audience that did not see proactive pops. With our study’s design, we isolated the incremental business value of extension activity and messaging before checkout. We also studied the impact of pops where a deal or other value-add was present from those that delivered product information but no discount or other value-add.

We measured cart loads, conversions, average discount applied, and AOV for:

– A simple schematic explaining the experience of our two extension user groups.

Our research primarily focused on the sales impacts of browser extension pops proactively delivered pre-checkout. Extensions may also increase conversion rates when they deliver messages in the cart. While this is an important consideration, users in-cart (by definition) already have extremely high buying intent, and so seemed a less impactful group to test. Studying the impact on pre-checkout interactions focuses on how extensions can drive more customers into and through their purchase journey.

Our findings showed that exposure to pre-checkout shopping extension pops significantly increased cart load and conversion rates while driving little change in the average discount applied at checkout.

Drive 65% more revenue per session

Most extension messages contain discounts, cashback offers, or other deals to stimulate purchases. When users saw a proactive pre-checkout pop, add-to-cart rates increased by 38% and conversion rates increased by 64%. This amounts to an increase of 65% more revenue per session.

Cause a minimal 0.5% increase in discount amount

Comparing that group to extension users who did not see a pop to did see one, the difference in discount is negligible. Extension users who received a pop at any point in their journey only received 0.5% point more discount than users who received no proactive pop.

25% more likely to purchase when shown a pre-checkout pop

Extension messages seem to increase consumer confidence to purchase when no discount is available. Extension users who only had non-discounted products in their shopping cart and did not receive a discount via coupon were still 25% more likely to convert when they received a pre-checkout pop.