15 A/B Testing Ideas for Ecommerce to Drive Conversions

Improving website conversions requires learning what engages your customers by comparing different tactics and strategies.

That’s the main goal of ecommerce A/B testing.

This strategy is a proven way to improve the shopping experience, checkout flows, and ultimately, your sales.

Get started:

• The essentials of ecommerce A/B testing

• Ideas for A/B testing for ecommerce stores

A/B testing essentials for ecommerce

Before starting A/B testing on your ecommerce site, make sure you will make the right decisions by understanding the basics.

The critical things to keep in mind are:

• Check if your store gets at least 10,000 monthly visitors. Anything less means that your A/B experiments may not generate enough conversions per each tested variation to detect even small differences

• Define your most important business goals. Boosting sales, increasing average order value, building an email list quickly— base your first experiments on them to achieve meaningful results right away

• Test one thing in the beginning. If you're just starting out with A/B testing, consider focusing on one element (discount size, hero visual, etc.) to get more experience first

• Get more insights from heatmaps and visitor recordings. They can give you valuable qualitative insights on how visitors interact with different elements on your website, which could be useful for conducting A/B tests, too

• Consider the timing of your experiments. Running an A/B test during a busy holiday season may not accurately reflect normal customer behavior. Consider testing during slower periods or spread out tests throughout the year for more accurate results.

Ecommerce A/B testing ideas

• Get more sales with AI Wishlist recommendations

• Use gift card giveaways to drive lead generation

• Reduce cart abandonment with mystery offers

• Boost sales with discounts in exit-intent campaigns

• Limit signup fields in forms to get more conversions

• Promote new products with onsite notifications

• Personalize marketing offers with account-based campaigns

• Test hero images vs videos to maximize conversions

• Help choose products with quizzes

• Improve product engagement with extra thumbnails and animations

• Combine multiple onsite channels to maximize engagement during sales

• Increase sales with an Easter egg hunt

• Make customer reviews more accessible on product pages

• Improve average order value with upsell messages on the cart page

• Experiment with different menu structures

Idea #1: Get more sales with AI Wishlist recommendations

AI Wishlist is a machine learning-enabled tool for increasing sales that generates a list of items based on the recently viewed products.

By analyzing various data sources, including onsite browsing activity, visitor profiles, and sales performance of individual items, the AI Wishlist is designed to predict visitors' purchase intentions.

Unlike traditional wishlist apps, AI Wishlist is always accessible from any page on a website, making the recommended items more visible. If a visitor leaves and returns, the list will also be there, waiting for them.

This is a proven A/B testing idea for eCommerce: émoi émoi, a French fashion store, achieved an impressive 11.4% order rate from clicks on items suggested by their AI Wishlist.

Idea #2: Use gift card giveaways to drive lead generation

Gift cards are an excellent occasional alternative to discounts, particularly during special occasions or holidays. Promote your giveaway in website popups and see if this ecommerce A/B testing idea boosts your lead generation.

Example: Dusk, a furniture brand, promotes their £1,000 gift card giveaway via this good-looking campaign:

Idea #3: Reduce cart abandonment with mystery offers

If your store has a high cart abandonment rate (which according to studies is over 70%), you can experiment with mystery offers. One way is to show the message describing the deal immediately when a customer adds an item to the cart.

Example: Endy presents a limited-time mystery offer when the cart content window pops up, confirming the item has been added:

Idea #4: Boost sales with discounts in exit-intent campaigns

This is a great A/B testing idea for ecommerce stores looking to boost average order value and reduce cart abandonment. Offer an extra 10% discount to those with items in their cart in an exit-intent campaign to ensure they will see it.

Example: Oddballs, a UK-based lifestyle brand, gives this unique discount code (to be able to track code applications, too) in this exit intent popup:

Idea #5: Limit signup fields in forms to get more conversions

If building your email list with popups and forms is your goal for A/B testing, consider adding only one signup field. Research shows that one field has the best conversion rate, suggesting that visitors perceive filling out such forms as less time-consuming:

Example: This campaign with one field from Blume converts 5% of visitors, which is higher than the average conversion rate of similar campaigns:

Idea #6: Promote new products with onsite notifications

Onsite notifications are a social media-inspired, non-intrusive feed for websites, designed to promote products by creating personalized shopping experiences. The feed is added to the website header and looks like a bell (with a number of unread messages if there are any).

A big advantage of onsite notifications is that visitors can access them from any page, so there's no need to make website changes if you want to promote products.

Example: the "bell" on CODAGE Paris, indicating one unread message:

When opened, onsite notifications are shown in a feed:

Idea #7: Personalize marketing offers with account-based campaigns

You can show personalized offers to customer groups (those who bought once, those who visited your store two times in the last month, etc.) and individual customers thanks to targeting in ecommerce tools.

With this, you can create targeted campaigns such as: 

• Special promotions for visitors who have items in their shopping cart 

• Upsell offers for customers who added a specific product to their cart 

• Exclusive deals for customers who made a purchase X days ago

• Discounts for visitors who viewed a particular product or product category 

• Personalized offers for carts with a total value of $X

Example: targeting options for Shopify stores in Wisepops:

Idea #8: Test hero images vs videos to maximize conversions

Adding images to the hero (above-the-fold) section on a website is a common practice to focus the attention of visitors on a product or offer. Consider replacing the hero image with a video (possibly showing how the product is used) and see if this idea for ecommerce A/B testing helps increase your conversions.

Example: This hero image on Faguo is designed to drive visitors to the section with gift guides, which is a must-do tactic during the holiday season:

In this example, Bang & Olufsen's website shows a product in a real use scenario, so it's easier to understand its practicality and benefits right away:

Idea #9: Help choose products with a quiz

If you sell products that might be a bit difficult to choose without some help (watches, coffee beans,  skincare products, etc.) you might do an experiment where you implement a product quiz. In case you have a quiz already, consider trying different ways to increase website engagement, including sticky bars, popups, and onsite notifications.

Example: Syos offers help with choosing saxophone mouthpieces with these campaigns that appear only after a visitor views a few products:

Idea #10: Try extra thumbnails vs animations on menu pages

Improve engagement with products by trying different ways to present them on category pages. Static images, although still a popular practice, may not be the best tactic because they don’t give visitors enough information to decide whether an item is worth further consideration.

Giving enough information is critical, as UX studies suggest up to 65% of customers prioritize thumbnails over all other aspects when browsing product category menus.

One common ecommerce A/B testing idea is to add extra thumbnails to show customers how products look when used. 

A clothing brand Taylor Stitch, for example, shows these great-looking lifestyle images when I hover over the products:

Dusk, a furniture store, takes this idea for ecommerce A/B testing even further.

Each product thumbnail had sliders that I used to see products in more use cases, giving even more visual context to decide if a product is worth checking out. The slider that moved along was another great feature, as it allowed me to see exactly how many extra thumbnails are left to see:

Idea #11: Combine multiple onsite channels to maximize engagement during sales

If you’re using copyable discount codes for sales and other limited-time offers, one A/B test idea is to share them via different onsite channels. For example, if you need to display an exclusive code to your loyal customers who received it via email, consider multiple campaigns, including a popup and a sticky bar.

Example: Charlotte Bio had this popup campaign with a copyable code during a flash sale:

To make sure that those who closed that campaign didn't miss the offer, a sticky bar appeared at the top of the website. 

Just like the popup, it allowed to apply the discount to the shopping cart in one click:

This strategy paid off well, as Charlotte Bio was able to generate 17% of monthly sales within six hours. 

In fact, 236 customers applied the code in the bar alone:

💡 Comment:

Using copyable discount codes may add some friction to the buying process. But there’s also a lot of benefits to this tactic. For example, applying codes can create a sense of accomplishment and enhance satisfaction, especially if they receive them through exclusive channels like loyalty programs. In any way, ecommerce A/B testing is the best way to understand whether copyable discount codes are something that your customers appreciate.

Idea #12: Increase sales with an Easter egg hunt

To put a creative twist on your holiday offers, consider experimenting with gamification. Gamified popups like spin-to-win wheels, for example, convert three times more visitors on average compared to the traditional format.

Hosting an Easter egg hunt on your website is a creative and engaging A/B testing idea worth exploring this holiday season. Here's how it can work: you would add small egg-shaped popups to a few selected product pages that, if clicked, give a special offer. The rules of the hunt would be announced on the homepage, so everybody is aware of the deal.

We’ve seen some online stores experimenting with this ecommerce marketing idea.

Soi Paris, for example, improved their sales and the average order value.

Here are the designs of the “eggs” they used:

Next, a similar project from Powertool World also generated great results—

Over 11,000 and 5,000 visitors found and clicked to get the coupon on desktop and mobile, respectively, even though it appeared only after viewing four pages.

Read more about how Powertool World engaged their visitors with an egg hunt.

 Here’s the announcement they had:

Idea #13: Make customer reviews more accessible on product pages

Many online stores have customer reviews below the fold on product pages, meaning they're not immediately visible. Help visitors find them easier by adding a link to them in a small window that appears when they hover over a product rating.

Here's an example from Cuisinart—clicking the link "read reviews" automatically takes us to the Ratings section on the page:

Idea #14: Improve average order value with upsell messages on the cart page

If increasing average order value at the shopping cart page is one of your goals for ecommerce A/B testing, then consider trying upsell messages (apart from creating a clean interface with guest checkout, of course).

To make this idea for A/B testing a success, the upsell messages should contain relevant products, use countdown timers for urgency, and include one-click cart addition options.

Example: Shnuggle’s upsell popup contains a related product and highlights the savings of buying a bundle.

More: examples of upsell popups

Idea #15: Experiment with different menu structures

Easy and intuitive navigation is key to guiding users to the right products, whether on sale or pre-filtered (by price, use case, etc.) products. To test what works best for your audience, try A/B testing different menu structures and see which leads to more clicks, visited pages, and sales.

Let’s see some examples for inspiration.

Nature’s Fynd has a simple structure:

Next, Snif has a more complex one, with multiple submenus within their main navigation bar, each leading to a specific product category:

On the other hand, Hardgraft found a way to organize a similar long menu by making it vertical:

And here, Blume has a dedicated section that gives easy access to sale or promotional items as well as relevant subcategories:

Summary

There are a virtually endless number of ecommerce A/B testing ideas out there, but we hope that focusing on the ones included here will help you improve customer experience and conversions.

For more ideas, check out:

• Shopify success stories

• Guide to a website conversion funnel

• 12 ideas on how to increase sales on a Shopify store