The Pant Project × OptiPhoenix:9.20% Revenue Uplift by Adding Search to Mobile Navigation

The Challenge

The Pant Project is a D2C fashion brand specializing in ready-to-wear and custom-made pants, offering different styles for different occasions and preferences.

Its mobile hamburger menu relied on category-based navigation. Customers looking for a specific product had to browse through multiple categories to find what they wanted.

For shoppers who already knew what they were looking for, there wasn’t a direct search option within the menu.

The opportunity was to make product discovery more straightforward without removing the existing category navigation.

Finding the Missing Signal

The existing menu helped customers browse products by category, but it didn’t offer a direct route for shoppers with a specific product in mind.

Those customers still had to navigate through categories, even when they already knew what they wanted.

Adding search within the hamburger menu could give these shoppers a faster way to reach relevant products.

The Hypothesis

OptiPhoenix proposed adding a search bar directly inside the mobile hamburger menu.

The idea was to let customers search for products without leaving the menu, while keeping the existing visual category navigation available for those who preferred browsing.

This would create two ways to discover products: searching directly or exploring categories.

The Experiment

The original hamburger menu was compared against a variation with search integrated into the navigation experience.

Variant A (Control): The existing hamburger menu, where customers navigated through product categories to find specific items.

Variant B (Test): A modified hamburger menu with the following changes:

• Added a search bar at the top of the hamburger menu.
• Kept existing visual category navigation below the search bar.
• Made search accessible without leaving the menu.
• Created a direct product discovery path for customers with specific product intent.

The variation focused on making search more accessible while preserving the existing browsing experience.

The Result

The PDF reports a 9.20% uplift in Revenue among users interacting with the hamburger menu.

It also reports an 8.56% uplift in Conversion Rate.

Impact

The experiment showed that adding search within mobile navigation could improve performance for users interacting with the hamburger menu.

The variation gave customers with specific product intent a more direct way to find products, while retaining category-based navigation for browsing.

The reported results were a 9.20% revenue uplift and an 8.56% Conversion Rate uplift.

Lessons Learned

Search can be useful inside navigation. Customers who already know what they want shouldn’t necessarily have to browse through multiple categories to find it.

Direct search and category browsing can work together. The variation introduced search without removing the existing visual category navigation.

Product discovery is worth testing beyond category structure. Adding another way to find products within the same menu was associated with improvements in revenue and Conversion Rate.

Partnership Snapshot

What Matters

The Pant Project’s hamburger menu already offered category-based browsing. What it lacked was a direct search path for customers who knew what they wanted.

By introducing search at the top of the menu and keeping category navigation available, the variation made product discovery more flexible.

The experiment reported a 9.20% Revenue uplift and an 8.56% Conversion Rate uplift.

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