The homepage design best practices that hold up in real ecommerce A/B tests are simple: show products fast (a best-sellers row or category shortcuts right under the hero), make the hero a clear value proposition with an obvious "Shop Now" button, and keep proof and promotions in support roles rather than in the first screen.
Across 133 ecommerce homepage tests in our database, the biggest wins came from shortening the path to a product, not from adding persuasion.
This page sorts those tests by what they changed, flags the ones that lost, and gives you a testing order.
Every number comes from the practitioner or vendor who ran the test.
Homepage optimization: what it is and why it pays
Homepage optimization is the practice of testing changes to your homepage against a control to raise revenue per visitor, conversion rate, or click-through into collections.
It is not a redesign on taste. Each change is a hypothesis about what stops shoppers from reaching a product page.
The homepage gets more traffic than most store owners expect.
Returning visitors, branded search, and shoppers who tap the logo mid-session all land there.
Dave Diederen's homepage hero redesign made this point: even on single-product stores, visitors bounce back to the homepage while they compare.
The redesign lifted revenue per visitor by 72.15% (+$30,562/month), while a copy-only variant moved it just 8.43%.
It is also one of the weakest pages on most sites.
Baymard Institute benchmarked 344 top-grossing US and European ecommerce sites and found that 76% perform at a "mediocre" level or worse on homepage and category navigation, with only just over half reaching "decent" on homepage design specifically.
What to measure
Use revenue per visitor as the primary metric for store-wide homepage tests.
Click-through to collections is a fine secondary metric, but it can rise while sales stay flat.
Clean Commit's category slider with lifestyle images lifted clicks by 2.3% with no change in sales.
Segment results by device and by new versus returning visitors before you ship.
Several tests below won on one device and lost on the other.
What the database shows overall
Our homepage test collection holds 133 ecommerce results: 108 reported wins, 20 flat or inconclusive results, and 5 losses.
Treat that win rate with care. Agencies publish their wins more often than their losses, so the share of winners here is far higher than what you should expect from your own program.
The elements tested most often were the hero (44 tests), layout and section order (42), navigation shortcuts such as category pills and quick links (21), headlines and copy (16), and product rows (16).
Ecommerce homepage best practices, ranked by evidence
The practices below are ordered by how consistently they won across different stores and teams.
None is guaranteed to work on your site. Each is a strong first hypothesis.
| Practice | Example result | Who ran it | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best-sellers row under the hero | +29.72% revenue per visitor | Dave Diederen | One Clean Commit version was inconclusive |
| Category shortcuts near the top (mobile) | +10.9% revenue per visitor | Oliver Kenyon | Placement matters; one move under the hero lost |
| Static hero image instead of video | +52.67% revenue per visitor | Dave Diederen | One store, three image variants |
| Plain "Shop Now" CTA copy | +8.15% revenue per visitor | Dave Diederen | Small effect compared with layout changes |
| USPs higher on the page | +$77,558/month | Oliver Kenyon | Three changes in one test |
| Sales carousel as the hero | -46.2% conversion rate | Clean Commit | Avoid; small sample, but the direction was clear |
1. Show products in the first scroll
This is the most repeated win in the database.
Shoppers arrive ready to browse, and a hero banner that only links to another page adds a click before they see anything they can buy.
Dave Diederen added a best-sellers row directly under the hero and saw conversion rate rise 30.88% and revenue per visitor rise 29.72%.
In a separate test, they moved best sellers above the fold and pushed reviews lower: +21.75% conversion rate and +39.03% revenue per visitor.
Blend Commerce found a similar pattern for BBQ Land (+15.86% conversion).
Not every version won. Clean Commit's best-sellers module below the hero showed +16.9% conversion but was inconclusive.
For new visitors specifically, an Optimizely customer saw bestseller recommendations beat featured products by 23.01% in click-through.
This lines up with Baymard's usability research. First-time visitors use the homepage to judge what a store sells, and Baymard reports that 22% of ecommerce sites show an inadequate range of products on the homepage.
Its guideline is to showcase at least 40% of your product types.
2. Give mobile shoppers category shortcuts
On mobile, the menu is hidden behind an icon.
A row of category bubbles, pills, or text links near the top replaces it with one tap.
Oliver Kenyon added Instagram-style category bubbles above the mobile hero for a leather goods brand: +10.9% revenue per visitor, +7.7% average order value, and +2.9% conversion rate.
The reverse test confirms it. When Dave Diederen hid a category slider the client called clutter, conversion rate fell 2.9% and revenue per visitor fell 2.95%.
Format matters. Visually's test for TUSHY found smaller, text-led quick links won by 4.9% in conversion rate, and the arm with no quick links did worst.
Placement matters too: Clean Commit moved a shop-by-category block under the hero across 11,001 visitors and saw conversion fall 6.2% overall (not significant), with mobile down 13.6% and desktop up 8.8%.
More on menus and shortcuts is in our mobile CRO guide.
3. Make the hero say what you sell, then get out of the way
The hero section is the most tested homepage element in our data.
The winning heroes share three traits: a clear statement of the product and its main benefit, a static image of the product in use, and one obvious button.
Dave Diederen tested a hero video against three static image variants, and every image beat the video.
The best, a benefit-led image, lifted revenue per visitor by 52.67% across 38k visitors and 750+ orders.
Oliver Kenyon's hero rebuild combined a USP toolbar from post-purchase surveys, three benefit bullets, and a full-width CTA for +$77,558 per month.
Simpler copy tends to win. Dave Diederen's test of "Shop Now" against creative CTA copy such as "Discover Your Style" lifted conversion rate 4.99% and revenue per visitor 8.15%.
See our hero section tests and the above-the-fold guide for more.
4. Avoid promotional carousels in the hero
The single worst homepage result in the database is a carousel.
Clean Commit replaced a trust-focused hero with a carousel promoting current sales: conversion rate fell 46.2% and revenue per visitor fell 87.6%.
The sample was small (1,082 visitors over 26 days), so the true size of the drop is uncertain, but the tool gave a 97.1% probability that the control was better.
An Optimizely apparel customer saw a similar pattern when a carousel of head-to-toe outfits cut add-to-cart by 6.07%.
If you keep a carousel, follow Baymard's implementation guidance.
It found that 46% of sites with a homepage carousel have usability issues, and it recommends auto-rotation on desktop only (5 to 7 seconds per simple slide, pausing on hover and stopping after any interaction) and no auto-rotation on mobile.
5. Put trust and value props where visitors actually scroll
Reviews, guarantees, and USPs help, but buried sections cannot work.
Blend Commerce found only 30% of Jackson's visitors reached the USP block, so they moved it above the title and description.
That variant posted +225% conversion rate in a two-week test; the size of the lift suggests a small sample, so read it as direction, not a forecast.
On RubberStamps.net, reviews sat where only 25% of visitors saw them; a reformatted homepage that surfaced them sooner raised revenue per new visitor 33.2% ($4.99 to $6.64) in a VWO test with about 6,000 visitors.
Notice the tension with practice 1. When reviews competed with products for the top spot, products won.
Put the short trust strip (rating, guarantee, shipping) near the hero and the long review section below the first product row.
6. Match proof to the visitor
The same element can help one audience and hurt another.
Dave Diederen hid an "As Seen On" press bar for paid traffic and conversion rate rose 3.55%.
For new visitors at Canopy, Visually found the opposite: adding press logos lifted conversion 6.4%.
Convertibles ran a rotating press quote for a gin subscription brand that won on desktop (+A$9,392/month) and lost on mobile.
Returning visitors respond to continuity. Visually's "Your cart is ready" reminder for DIME Beauty's cart abandoners lifted conversion rate 24.3%, though the source does not report sample size.
For targeting by audience, see our segmentation guide.
@oliverkenyon@oliverkenyon
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen
Clean Commit@DaveDiederen7. Don't assume more content helps
Adding sections is the easiest homepage change, and it often does nothing.
Clean Commit's educational homepage for new visitors (returning visitors got product highlights and offers instead) was flat.
A science-backed summary section showed -12.4% conversion rate (not significant, small desktop sample).
Each new block pushes products further down, so test additions against the cost of scroll depth.
Where to start
- Check how far visitors scroll and what they click first. If fewer than half reach your first product row, start with practice 1.
- Run a mobile category-shortcut test if your homepage gets most of its traffic on phones.
- Replace any hero video or sales carousel with a static, benefit-led image and a plain CTA.
- Move your USP strip into the first screen.
- Segment every result by device and new versus returning visitors before you ship it.
Run these as separate tests where traffic allows, so you know which change did the work.
Check statistical significance before calling a winner, especially on smaller stores.
For SaaS and lead-gen homepages the priorities differ; see our SaaS homepage guide.
For the rest of the store, start from the CRO hub or browse all tests.