A/B Testing for Ecommerce: A Beginner’s Guide

For you as an online store owner, small changes can make a difference—but guessing what works can be risky. 

That’s where A/B testing for ecommerce comes in. 

Regardless of how big your store is, you can easily use this technique to understand your audience better and optimize for conversions. 

Whether you’re looking to improve your product pages, streamline the checkout process, or test different sales promotions, ecommerce A/B testing helps you make decisions backed by data, not assumptions.

In this post:

• What is A/B testing in ecommerce?

• Benefits of doing A/B testing for online stores

• When you should try (and skip) A/B testing

• Examples of ecommerce A/B testing

• Ecommerce store areas to consider for A/B testing

What is A/B testing for ecommerce?

A/B testing is a technique of comparing two versions of a web page, email campaign, popup, promotion, or other online store component using metrics such as engagement levels and conversions to define which performs better.

The ultimate goals of A/B testing for ecommerce stores include enabling businesses to increase conversions, removing guesswork from CRO projects, and understanding the impact of website changes without losses.

Benefits of doing A/B testing for ecommerce stores

No online store can survive and thrive without improving, which also involves making changes to the website's conversion funnel. But making changes without having an idea of the potential impact may result in losses in conversions and revenue.

That's where A/B testing experiments come in—thanks to them, you as an ecommerce business can get the much-needed quantitative and qualitative evidence that proves which changes improve the site, user experience, and conversions.

So, A/testing in ecommerce helps to:

• Increase conversions (sales, clicks, email signups, etc.)

• Identify website elements that can influence customer behavior

• Reduce marketing costs by finding and prioritizing the most impactful changes and campaigns

• Understand the impact of changes like adding different images, marketing copy, and page layouts

• Make evidence-based decisions for future website design and onsite campaign improvements

When should you try (or skip) A/B testing?

Consider these factors when deciding to try A/B testing for your ecommerce store.

Amount of visitors

Having enough traffic is critical to meaningful A/B experiments.

Say, if your ecommerce store has lower than 10,000 monthly visitors, A/B testing might not be the best idea. In this case, there's a good chance that you won't generate enough conversions per tested variation to detect both small and significant differences.

Use this table to inform your decisions:

Type of ecommerce store

Some types of online stores are more suitable for A/B testing than others. This table will help you understand why, whether your store is in a suitable category for testing, and what you can test.

Seasonality

Seasonality can significantly impact the effectiveness of ecommerce A/B testing.

For example—

During peak shopping periods, such as holidays, customer behavior often differs from the rest of the year, making the results unreliable. Say, if you run tests during Black Friday, there's a good chance that you will get higher website conversions regardless of the changes you're trying out. On the other hand, off-season periods may simply not provide enough traffic for conclusive tests.

To understand how significant the change in customer behavior is, look at this data we collected from the users of our popup builder. During Black Friday, their campaigns collected 101% more leads and generated 54% more engagements compared to other days:

To account for seasonality, test during stable periods or segment results by season to compare behaviors. If you must test during peak times, focus on short-term optimizations like promotions and discount sizes rather than foundational changes.

Examples of ecommerce A/B testing

Municibid: personalization of lead generation campaigns

Municibid, an online government auction service based in Pennsylvania, provides a good example of effective conversion rate optimization—specifically through smarter newsletter campaigns.

Rather than relying on a standard, generic newsletter approach, Municibid implemented targeted campaigns tailored to their two major service categories: heavy equipment auctions and automotive government auctions.

For the heavy equipment auctions page, they introduced a popup that included a zip code signup field to make it even more relevant to users:

Similarly, a dedicated popup was designed for visitors on the automotive auctions page:

This simple yet strategic adjustment made the popups more personalized and relevant to their audience, resulting in significant improvements in engagement.

The results were a 30% click-through rate (CTR) for the heavy equipment campaign and a 20% CTR for the automotive campaign.

Check out the full Municibid campaign analysis for more insights.

Asphalte: driving visitors to product survey

Asphalte wanted to boost lead generation and get more visitors involved in their regular product survey (the brand manufactures only the items that receive the best feedback. To attract as many answers as possible, they ran A/B testing to try out different campaign ideas.

Here’s a look at the first campaign design...

Here’s the second campaign version—

Note that it’s a full-screen popup that focuses the visitor’s attention on the message (this is another point of testing, as the previous campaign occupied only a part of the screen).

The third version of this campaign had a different background and feel:

The experiments with different versions of the popups really paid off. By conducting thorough A/B testing, Asphalte was able to identify the most effective design and messaging.

As a result, they successfully increased the click-through rate (CTR) of the popups from 15% to an impressive 25%.

Let’s evaluate the performance for January: 

• Popups were viewed by 60,000 visitors

• 15,000 of them clicked through

• Over 4,000 converted into leads

• A click-through rate (CTR) of 25% was achieved

That’s great results, and here’s why: 

A 25% CTR is significantly higher than the average for popups, which is around 4%. This success can be attributed to effective ecommerce A/B testing and compelling popup content. 

What’s even more impressive is the consistency—CTR remains steady at around 20%, generating approximately 4,000 high-quality leads every month!

Learn more: Asphalte case study

Wisepops: testing homepage headlines and copy

We at Wisepops also use A/B testing to improve our website conversion rate. One of the latest experiments that we’re running involves testing two different headlines on our homepage.

The first version of the headline focuses on the most important goal of our clients: turning their traffic into customers.

That goal is exactly what we added, along with a few lines of supporting text. That text mentions another pain point: the increasing cost of driving traffic to websites.

The second version of the headline focuses on the unique nature of our product.

Here’s what I mean—

Wisepops is the first ever dedicated onsite marketing platform, a suite designed to help online businesses focus on converting traffic with diverse channels (onsite notifications, popups, bars, embedded forms, and AI wishlist) and conduct experiments with advanced CRO testing.

Ecommerce store areas to consider for A/B testing

1. Homepage design

The homepage is often the first impression for visitors, making it a critical area to test. Here are the elements to consider experimenting with:

Hero images

Experiment with different hero images, such as seasonal collections, popular items, promotional sales, and lifestyle product visuals to see what drives engagement.

Promotional banners

Test banners for discounts, new arrivals, sales promotions, social proof, or free shipping to determine which messaging drives more clicks or conversions.

Product highlight sections

Try variations like "Best sellers" vs. "New arrivals" or "Customer favorites" to learn what drives more traffic to product pages.

2. Product Pages

Optimizing product pages is essential since they directly impact purchase decisions. Some of the most common tests that ecommerce businesses run are layout changes, embedding promos, and adding social proof.

Image gallery layouts

Test image galleries vs. single large images to see which presentation increases engagement.

Size guides

Experiment with displaying size guides as popups vs. inline elements to determine which format reduces friction.

Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons

Test variations of the “Add to Cart” button copy (e.g., "Buy Now" vs. "Add to Bag") to improve clicks and conversions.

3. Navigation and search

Help users find what they need more easily by testing navigation structures and search functionality in your ecommerce store.

Menu labels

Try "Shop by style" and/or "Shop by occasion" to see what improves product discovery:

Filters and product sorting

Experiment with default filters (e.g., “Sort by popularity” vs. “Sort by price”) and provide a search menu to optimize browsing behavior.

Search bar placement

Test moving the search bar to more prominent positions on the page.

4. Checkout Process

The checkout process can make or break a sale, making it a top priority for testing.

Checkout flow

Test single-page vs. multi-step checkout processes to reduce drop-offs.

Payment options

Experiment with adding and/or or prioritizing specific payment methods (e.g., Buy Now Pay Later services).

Shipping costs display

Test showing shipping costs earlier in the process vs. at checkout to reduce surprises. For example, Illy shows the "estimated total" cost immediately when I added some items to the cart:

5. Promotions and discounts

Promotions can boost conversions, but how they’re presented matters.

Timing of offers

Test showing discounts on the product page, in countdown timer popups, on the menu pages, and/or during checkout.

Urgency messaging

Experiment with countdown timers on your homepage and other pages (e.g., “Sale ends in 24 hours!”) to drive a sense of urgency.

Learn more: Examples of effective limited-time offers

Discount types

Test percentage discounts (e.g., 10% off) vs. dollar-value discounts (e.g., $10 off) to see which performs better.

These guides will help choose discounts:

• 20 coupon and discount code ideas

• Discount pricing strategy

6. Website popups

Popups can convert up to 20% of your traffic, but their effectiveness heavily depends on their design and display timing.

Trigger timing

Test popups triggered after 10 seconds vs. on scroll to find the sweet spot.

Related: Best time to show popups: a guide

Offer types

Experiment with offering a discount (e.g., 10% off) vs. free shipping + loyalty bonuses to boost signups.

This popup example below converts 5% of visitors: learn more.

Designs

Test different popup designs, such as minimalistic vs. with an image, or one-step vs multi-step, to see what gets more attention.

Get inspired: Popup design ideas and examples

7. Trust Signals

Building trust is crucial for converting first-time buyers, and you can experiment with different placements on your store.

Reviews and Ratings

Test the placement of reviews on product pages, homepage, or menu pages (e.g., top of the page vs. lower down).

Trust icons

Test different trust badges or icons near the checkout button to see if they impact conversions. Like here, there’s a bundle offer and an extra discount code on the top and the bottom of the “add to basket” button.

Brand values icons

Adding information about your brand’s mission and values is also a strong point for A/B testing in ecommerce. For example, 76% of US consumers want brands to reduce their environment footprint, which suggests that they would be more likely to buy from businesses that take initiative to minimize their impact on the environment.

Meow Meow Tweet uses these badges to let the visitors know about their commitments:

Summary

A/B testing in ecommerce is a powerful tool for store owners to make data-driven decisions that enhance the shopping experience and boost conversions. 

I hope the tips, examples and ideas in this post were helpful but if you’d like to learn more about A/B testing, consider these guides from our blog:

• How to write effective product descriptions

• How to promote a new product in your store

• Welcome message for new customers: examples