Power Analysis is Essential: High-Powered Tests Suggest Minimal to No Effect of Rounded Shapes on Click-Through Rates
Abstract: Underpowered studies (below 50% power) suffer from the winner’s curse: A statistically significant positive estimate must exaggerate the true treatment effect to meet the significance threshold. A study by Dipayan Biswas, Annika Abell, and Roger Chacko published in the Journal of Consumer Research (2023) reported that in an A/B test, simply rounding the corners of square buttons increased the online click-through rate by 55% (p-value 0.037)—a striking finding with potentially wide-ranging implications for a digital industry that is seeking to enhance consumer engagement. Drawing on our experience with tens of thousands of A/B tests, many involving similar user interface modifications, we found this dramatic claim implausibly large. To evaluate the claim and provide a more accurate estimate of the treatment effect, we conducted three high-powered A/B tests, each involving over two thousand times more users than the original study. All three experiments yielded effect size estimates that were approximately two orders of magnitude smaller than initially reported, with 95% confidence intervals that include zero (i.e., not statistically significant at the 0.05 level). Two additional independent replications by Evidoo found similarly small effects. These findings underscore the critical importance of power analysis and experimental design in increasing trust and reproducibility of results.
