How to Optimize Your On-Site Experience: 5 A/B Tests

Where should you start when you want to improve your on-site experience? The answer depends on what’s happening in the customer journey.

A shopper might hesitate because they can’t see the image they uploaded for a personalized product. A higher price might reduce conversion slightly while increasing revenue and margin. A product page might underperform simply because it doesn’t match why someone clicked the ad in the first place.

These are very different problems and require different tests.

Here are five A/B tests that show how brands approached these problems across the landing page, PDP, cart, and checkout. We’ll look at what prompted each test, what changed, and which metrics determined the winner.

Start with the customer journey

CRO starts with understanding where the customer journey is falling short. A shopper might hesitate on the product page because they need more information, or drop off later because something makes the purchase harder to complete.

Start with the problem in the journey and the business outcome you want to improve. Once those are clear, you can choose the test that addresses the issue.

Where are customers dropping off?

Identify the page or funnel stage where shoppers lose confidence or abandon the journey. Then look at what’s preventing them from moving forward and what they need at that point to make a decision.

How do you measure the impact of a price or shipping test?

Commercial tests can affect conversion and AOV in opposite directions. A higher price can lower conversion while increasing AOV, while a lower shipping charge can increase conversion while reducing AOV.

Revenue per visitor (RPV) brings those two metrics together:

RPV = conversion rate × AOV

If conversion falls while AOV rises enough to offset it, RPV can still increase.

The reverse is also possible. A higher conversion rate can come with a lower RPV if AOV falls enough.

RPV still doesn’t capture profitability. A price or shipping change can increase RPV while affecting margin differently, so profitability needs to be part of the evaluation when the goal is to improve purchase economics.

Which landing page works best for each type of paid traffic?

Paid traffic can arrive with different audiences, messages, and campaign intent. The landing experience needs to reflect what prompted the shopper to click.

URL redirect tests let brands compare different landing experiences for the same traffic source and measure whether a page built around a specific shopper motivation drives stronger commercial results.

Together, these questions give you a framework for approaching CRO across the customer journey: identify where shoppers drop off, understand the economics behind commercial decisions, and match the landing experience to paid-traffic intent.

Remove uncertainty at the point of purchase

Some shoppers need more information before they can confidently complete a purchase. These first two A/B tests show how brands addressed that at two different touchpoints in the buying experience.

Test 1: Show the personalized image in the cart

A German personalized jewelry brand found that customers could see the file path of their uploaded image in the cart, but not the image itself. For a personalized product, customers needed a way to confirm that they had uploaded the correct image for customization.

Using ABConvert, the brand hypothesized that showing the actual image would give shoppers that visual confirmation. They ran a theme test comparing the existing file path with an actual image preview in the cart.

The image preview increased cart-to-checkout conversion by 5% and overall order completion by 8%.

Takeaway: Reduce uncertainty where shoppers make decisions. Showing the actual uploaded image gave customers an easy way to confirm their customization before moving from cart to checkout.

Test 2: Move proof closer to Add to Cart

A UK pet-food brand wanted to test whether bringing independent social proof closer to the purchase decision could improve conversion.

The brand used ABConvert to test different PDP treatments that moved Trustpilot proof closer to the Add to Cart button.

The winning variation increased conversion from 19.14% to 21.81%, a 13.95% relative lift, while RPV increased by approximately 12.3%.

Takeaway: Put relevant proof where it can influence the purchase decision. Moving independent social proof closer to Add to Cart can help the winning PDP treatment increase both conversion and RPV.

Don’t optimize conversion at the expense of the business

Conversion rate doesn’t tell the full story for tests that change price or shipping. These changes can also affect AOV, revenue per visitor, and margin, so the winning result depends on the business outcome the brand is trying to improve.

Test 3: Increase product prices by $50

Bloon Paris, a home and lifestyle brand, was facing rising customs and logistics costs in the US, putting pressure on profitability. The brand wanted to see whether it could raise prices without a meaningful drop in conversion.

Using ABConvert, the brand compared its existing US prices with prices that were $50 higher.

The higher-price variation increased AOV from approximately $267 to $321 and RPV from $5.80 to $6.41. Conversion moved from 2.18% to 2.00%, but the difference was not statistically significant. Gross margin per visitor also increased by almost 18%.

The key finding was that the price increase did not produce a statistically significant drop in conversion, while improving RPV and gross margin per visitor.

That gave Bloon Paris enough confidence to implement the higher US pricing after the test.

Takeaway: A price increase doesn’t have to hurt performance. If conversion holds steady while AOV, RPV, and gross margin per visitor increase, a higher price can improve the economics of each visitor.

Test 4: Lower the shipping rate below the free-shipping threshold

A Shopify Plus electronics brand in Switzerland wanted to increase completed orders while keeping their existing free-shipping threshold on orders above CHF 70. The test compared CHF 5.99 with CHF 3.99 shipping for orders below the threshold.

The lower shipping rate increased conversion from 1.86% to 2.69% (a 44.62% relative lift) and increased RPV from CHF 2.34 to CHF 2.73. At the same time, AOV fell by roughly 20%.

The lower shipping rate generated higher RPV despite the lower AOV.

Takeaway: Higher RPV doesn’t necessarily mean higher profitability. Before rolling out a shipping change, assess profit per visitor to understand whether the increase in RPV also improves the economics of the offer.

Match the landing page to shopper intent

The customer journey starts before a shopper reaches your store. Paid traffic comes with a specific message and motivation, and the landing page needs to pick up from there.

Test 5: Build landing pages around paid-traffic intent

A US Shopify Plus sporting-goods brand was sending paid traffic with different shopper motivations to the same generic product page. The brand wanted to see whether a landing page built around a specific shopper motivation would outperform the existing PDP.

The test compared the original women’s walking-vest PDP with four landing pages built around different shopper motivations. The winning page, “Tone while you walk,” increased conversion from 3.08% to 6.40%. RPV also increased from $9.22 to $15.15.

AOV was lower on the winning page, but the higher conversion rate resulted in higher RPV.

Takeaway: Match the landing experience to why shoppers clicked. A page built around a specific shopper motivation can outperform a generic PDP, even when AOV is lower.

Lessons from optimizing the customer journey

The five tests covered different points in the customer journey, but they followed the same principle: start with the business problem and measure the outcome that matters for that problem.

1. Start with the outcome you’re trying to improve

The metric you use to judge a test should reflect what the test is trying to change.

For the personalized jewelry test, cart-to-checkout conversion and order completion showed the impact of the image preview. For Bloon Paris, gross margin per visitor was important alongside CVR, AOV, and RPV because the test was aimed at improving US-market profitability.

The other metrics still matter because they show what changed alongside the primary outcome and help identify any trade-offs.

2. Look at the customer journey, not just individual pages

The five tests covered different points in the buying experience, from the landing page and PDP to the cart and shipping decision.

The personalized jewelry test addressed a cart problem. The pet-food test focused on the PDP. The price and shipping tests examined purchase economics, while the sporting-goods test looked at what happened after a shopper clicked a paid ad.

Looking across those points helps connect the problem to the part of the experience being tested.

3. Don’t optimize one metric at the expense of the business

The shipping and price tests show why conversion rate alone doesn’t tell the whole story. The higher price increased AOV, RPV, and gross margin per visitor while CVR decreased slightly. The lower shipping rate increased CVR and RPV while AOV decreased.

Looking at the metrics together shows what the change actually did to the business and whether the trade-off is worth it.

4. Look beyond the winning metric

A test result is more useful when you understand what drove the change. The pet-food test, for example, showed that different PDP treatments using the same Trustpilot proof did not perform equally. The landing-page test showed that a higher conversion rate could outweigh a lower AOV and still produce higher RPV.

Looking at the relationship between metrics helps you understand why a variation won and whether the result is commercially meaningful.

Follow the customer journey to find the right test

These five tests show that effective CRO starts with the problem you’re trying to solve. Once you understand where the experience is falling short and what outcome you want to improve, you can choose a test that answers the right question.

ABConvert lets Shopify merchants run A/B tests on their theme, template, visual editor, checkout, price, shipping, offer, and URL redirect, so teams can test the experience and commercial decisions that matter to their store.

Ready to find your next test? Book a demo with ABConvert and start testing your customer journey.