Even though landing page A/B testing is a hot topic in ecommerce, many merchants struggle to get it right. The result? Big business decisions end up being based on inaccurate data from poorly run tests.
We’ll break down everything you need to know to master landing page A/B testing—explaining it in a simple yet actionable way. When done right, A/B testing can transform your approach, helping you choose the right product to position, boost landing page conversions, and much more.
Why Testing your Landing Pages is Important
Landing pages are the first interaction many potential customers have with your brand, making them a critical touchpoint in your ecommerce strategy. But are they performing as well as they could? Without testing, it’s nearly impossible to know for sure. A/B testing provides a data-driven way to uncover what works and what doesn’t, ensuring your landing pages are optimized for maximum conversions.
The High Stakes of Landing Pages
Consider this: nearly 75% of visitors judge the credibility of a website based on its design (Stanford Web Credibility Project). If your landing page doesn’t resonate immediately, those visitors are likely to leave, costing you potential sales. Even small tweaks—like changing a headline or button color—can significantly impact how users engage with your page.
Proven Results from Testing
Prioritizing landing page A/B testing removes guesswork. Research indicates that acquiring a new customer can be five to seven times more expensive than keeping an existing one. By consistently refining your store’s user experience through regular testing, you increase the likelihood of driving more conversions from your current customer base. Instead of assuming what your audience wants, you make data-backed decisions that are far more effective. For example:
- Online furniture brand Wayfair experimented with product images in their rugs category. By switching to lifestyle images that showcased rugs in a room setting, they saw a remarkable 47% increase in conversion rates.
- Electronics retailer Best Buy tested adding customer reviews to their product pages and discovered that items with reviews converted 15% better than those without.
The Cost of Not Testing
Without A/B testing, you risk making decisions based on intuition rather than facts. This can lead to:
- Missed Opportunities: You might overlook simple fixes that could drive major improvements.
- Wasted Ad Spend: Driving traffic to an underperforming landing page means losing potential ROI.
- Lower Engagement: A poorly optimized page may fail to connect with your audience, leading to higher bounce rates.
How Testing Impacts the Bottom Line
Optimized landing pages not only increase conversions but also improve customer experience. A seamless, compelling page builds trust and encourages repeat visits. Additionally, testing allows you to adapt to changing customer preferences, ensuring your pages remain relevant over time.
By investing in landing page A/B testing, you’re setting your business up for sustainable growth. It’s not just about higher conversion rates—it’s about creating a better experience for your customers and driving long-term results.
Prioritizing Your Campaign Landing Pages for Testing
Not every landing page warrants immediate testing, especially if time and resources are limited. To maximize the impact of your A/B testing efforts, focus on pages that are most likely to drive meaningful results. Here’s how to prioritize effectively:
1. High-Traffic Pages
Pages with the highest traffic, like your homepage or top-performing product pages, are the best starting points. These pages generate enough data quickly, allowing you to reach statistically significant results faster. Testing these pages ensures that even small improvements can have a massive impact on your overall conversion rates and revenue.
Merchant Example:
Optimizing the CTA on your homepage banner could lead to a higher click-through rate, directing more visitors to key product pages or promotional campaigns.
2. Low-Conversion Pages
Pages that are underperforming compared to others in your funnel should also be prioritized. If a landing page has high traffic but a low conversion rate, it signals an opportunity for improvement. Testing can help identify and fix issues like unclear messaging, poor visuals, or confusing navigation.
Merchant Example:
If a product page for a bestselling item isn’t converting well, testing different product images, descriptions, or trust badges might uncover what’s holding customers back from completing a purchase.
3. Key Campaign Pages
Landing pages tied to specific promotions, product launches, or seasonal events often have a short window to make an impact. Prioritizing these pages ensures you’re maximizing their potential during critical sales periods.
Merchant Example:
A Black Friday landing page is a prime candidate for testing. Adjustments to the hero section—like a more compelling headline, a limited-time offer countdown, or a prominent CTA—could result in significantly higher conversions during the holiday rush.
Why Prioritization Matters
Focusing on high-impact pages ensures your efforts generate meaningful insights quickly. It also helps allocate resources more efficiently, allowing your team to learn from key experiments and apply those lessons to other areas of the site.
By targeting high-traffic, low-conversion, and campaign-specific pages first, you’ll maximize the return on your testing efforts while making the biggest possible impact on your bottom line.
What to Test First on Your Landing Page
Not all elements on a landing page contribute equally to conversions. Some carry more weight, such as the hero section or call-to-action (CTA), while others, like footer links, play a more supportive role. Knowing where to start ensures your testing efforts focus on what matters most, delivering quicker and more impactful results.
WallMonkeys, known for its creative wall decals, wanted to make its homepage more engaging and drive better conversions. They started small, testing how a change in product imagery could impact results. By swapping a generic stock photo for a more playful, on-brand image, they saw conversions jump by 27%.
Encouraged by this success, they took things further. Replacing the homepage slider with a prominent search bar led to a staggering 550% increase in conversions.
This goes to show how even seemingly simple tweaks—like refining product visuals or improving navigation—can make a huge difference. For ecommerce brands, testing these elements isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s a game-changing opportunity to boost engagement and drive more sales.
Start with the Hero Section
The hero section is the most critical part of your landing page—it’s the first thing visitors see, and it sets the tone for the entire experience. A compelling hero section can hook users instantly, while a weak one can cause them to bounce.
What to Test in the Hero Section:
- Headlines: Test variations like value-driven statements (“Save 20% on Your First Order”) versus curiosity-based phrases (“Discover Your Perfect Fit Today”).
- Hero Images: Compare product close-ups with lifestyle shots showing your product in action.
- CTAs: Experiment with placement, color, text (e.g., “Shop Now” vs. “Claim Your Discount”), and button size.
- Subheadlines: Use this space to test concise benefit statements versus detailed feature descriptions.
Above-the-Fold Content
The content visible without scrolling plays a major role in shaping first impressions and encouraging users to stay on the page. Optimizing this section ensures that your key message lands effectively.
What to Test in Above-the-Fold Content:
- Benefit Highlights: Try leading with customer-focused benefits versus product features.
- Design Layouts: Compare single-column layouts with split-screen visuals or alternating text and image blocks.
- Urgency Signals: Test the impact of countdown timers or “limited availability” notices.
Form Fields
Forms are essential for lead generation and conversions, but they can also be a major friction point. Simplifying and optimizing them is critical to reducing drop-offs.
What to Test in Forms:
- Number of Fields: Test shorter forms with fewer required fields against longer forms.
- Form Layouts: Horizontal forms versus stacked vertical forms.
- Trust Signals: Adding badges like “Secure Checkout” or “GDPR Compliant” to instill confidence.
- Timing: Offering a discount in exchange for a newsletter opt-in may not work for users that just arrived to your brand site for the first time. Consider testing different timing for email opt-in popups to maximize their impact with minimal disruption to the user experience.
Product Descriptions
Product descriptions provide an opportunity to sell by communicating the value of your offering. Small changes in tone, structure, or length can make a significant difference.
What to Test in Product Descriptions:
- Length: Short, punchy descriptions versus longer, detailed ones.
- Tone: Casual, conversational copy versus more professional and formal language.
- Structure: Bullet-pointed benefits versus paragraph descriptions. Tabs vs. accordions.
Checkout Page
According to The Baymard Institute, optimizing the design of your checkout page can increase conversions by 35% (the average shopping cart abandonment rate is around 75%). While often overlooked in landing page discussions, the checkout page is a crucial component of the customer journey. Optimizing this step can significantly reduce cart abandonment rates and boost overall conversions.
What to Test on the Checkout Page:
- Payment Options: Test the inclusion of multiple payment methods like Apple Pay, PayPal, and buy-now-pay-later options (BNPL).
- Trust Signals: Experiment with badges like “SSL Secured” or “Guaranteed Safe Checkout.”
- Guest Checkout: Compare conversion rates for mandatory account creation versus a guest checkout option.
- Progress Indicators: Test the effectiveness of multi-step checkout progress bars in reassuring customers.
- Cart Summary: Experiment with showing or hiding order details like item breakdowns and shipping costs before checkout. Providing free shipping or free returns for orders over $50 can encourage customers to increase their cart value by adding more items to meet the minimum threshold.
Reviews and Social Proof
Social proof elements, like testimonials and trust badges or reviews, can reassure visitors and reduce hesitation. Their placement and format can influence their effectiveness. Inclusion of rich media like image and videos with customer testimonials can help shoppers see the product in the hands of real users, which can massively improve the effectiveness of your customer reviews.
What to Test in Trust Elements:
- Testimonial Formats: Text-based testimonials with images versus video reviews.
- Placement: Above-the-fold placement versus further down the page.
- Trust Badges: Testing icons like “Money-Back Guarantee” or “Secure Payment” near CTAs.
Table: Ranking Landing Page Sections by Impact
Why Prioritize in This Order?
Starting with high-impact sections like the hero ensures your efforts target the areas most likely to affect conversions. As you work through these prioritized tests, you’ll gain insights that can be applied to other sections of your landing page, maximizing the effectiveness of your optimization efforts.
By focusing on the most influential elements first, you’ll see quicker wins and build a strong foundation for more advanced testing strategies.
The Importance of Test Length
One common mistake in A/B testing is ending experiments too early. For results to be reliable, your test needs to achieve statistical significance—ensuring that observed differences aren’t due to chance.
- Run for at Least Two Weeks: This accounts for daily and weekly variations in user behavior. If your traffic volume to the test is low–it may require a much longer window than two weeks. If more than 4 weeks is required, your volume may be too low to make testing worth it on that particular page.
- Aim for 100 Conversions Per Variant: Enough data reduces noise and makes conclusions more reliable.
- Use a Significance Calculator: Tools like Optimizely or Google Analytics can help determine when your test results are statistically valid. It’s best to rely on these tools to be more confident in the test results.
Cutting tests short leads to inaccurate conclusions, wasting time and resources. Patience is key for actionable insights and it’s important to wait until you’ve reached statistical significant–otherwise testing isn’t worth the time or effort.
How to Develop a Repeatable Testing Checklist for Your Brand
A structured checklist simplifies your landing page A/B testing process and ensures no critical areas are overlooked. Below is a table merchants can use as a framework for testing their landing pages, organized by sections.
How to Use Shogun to Run A/B Tests for Your Ecommerce Store
A/B testing with Shogun enables ecommerce marketing teams to optimize landing pages and other storefront elements with ease. Shogun’s user-friendly interface allows merchants not only to design their storefronts but also create, test, and refine page variations without requiring advanced technical skills.
Here’s how to set up and run landing page A/B testing using Shogun:
Step 1: Identify What You Want to Test
Before diving into Shogun, decide which elements on your landing page you want to optimize. Common areas to test include:
- Headlines and subheadlines
- Hero images
- Call-to-action buttons (text, color, placement)
- Product descriptions
- Page layouts (single-column vs. multi-column)
Define clear goals for your test, such as increasing conversion rates, reducing bounce rates, or boosting average order value (AOV).
Step 2: Setup and Launch Your A/B Test in Shogun
- Log in to your Shogun dashboard and navigate to the page you want to test by selecting “Pages” and then “Run an A/B Test.”
- Once you hover over “Run an A/B Test,” you’ll be able to choose between two options: test an existing page or upload a new page to test. In this example, we’ll go with the “test an existing page” option.
- We’ve selected the product page “Tall Vase” to experiment with. Merchants can choose to measure data based on clickthrough rate and conversion rate. Based on the settings selected, you’ll be able to create different variants. Next, select “Create and edit variants” to proceed.
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Modify the variant using Shogun’s interface and make any desired changes to the variant, such as updating the hero image, altering CTA text, or adjusting layouts. You can also preview the page on different devices by selecting the different screen icons in the top center. Preview the changes to ensure they appear as intended.
- Rename the variant to reflect the changes you plan to test (e.g., “Hero Image Test A”) and publish the test. Once it’s live, you’ll be able to access in-depth analytics from Shogun’s advanced A/B testing feature.
Step 3: Analyze and Implement Results
Once your test reaches statistical significance:
- Review the data to determine which version performed better.
- Implement the winning variation permanently.
- Document the results to guide future tests.
Best Practices for Running A/B Tests with Shogun
- Run One Test at a Time: Avoid overlapping tests to ensure clean, reliable data.
- Test High-Impact Elements First: Focus on areas that directly affect conversions, such as the hero section or checkout process.
- Keep Variants Simple: Test one element at a time to isolate its impact.
- Iterate Based on Results: Use insights from completed tests to inform future experiments.