What counts as themes and page speed
This collection covers theme changes, rebuilding pages natively instead of in a page builder, moving pages between landing page tools, and work aimed at load time such as removing apps.
The win/loss record
3 wins, 0 losses. With so few results, treat this as a direction to test rather than proof.
Where these were tested
- Landing page: 2
- Site-wide: 1
The three results
Native Shopify vs a page builder
Oliver Kenyon ran the same landing page built natively in Shopify against a page builder version. The native page won: +9.9% conversion rate, +20.9% revenue per visitor and +10.0% average order value. Because the design was the same, this is the cleanest test in the collection.
Changing landing page tools
Peter Christensen moved a $600+ AOV offer from a SamCart page to a PageDeck landing page and gained +20% conversion rate.
New theme
Kasper Dolk's new theme with a BOGO offer beat the old theme by +44.54% conversion rate (2.44% to 3.53%), +41.85% revenue per visitor (£1.08 to £1.54) and an estimated +782 orders a month, at 99.7% probability to beat the old theme. A buy-one-get-one offer ran with the new theme, so the offer and the theme cannot be separated.
@oliverkenyon
@kasper_dolk
@peterac_Tests that lost or were flat
None of the 3 lost. That is a small sample, and published results lean towards wins.
What the ideas suggest testing
Several entries in the grid are claims without test data, so they are ideas rather than results. Josh Thompson reports four theme switches:
- Replacing a third-party theme with a custom-built store: claims +30% conversion rate in 7 days.
- Moving from a bloated theme to a clean one, cutting load time from 2s+ to under 1s: claims +$81K the next month.
- Switching to a custom setup: claims +$176K in 60 days.
- Switching to a native theme and matching landing pages to top ads: claims +21% conversion rate.
These are before/after comparisons, not split tests, so seasonality and ad changes could explain part of each gain. Dave Diederen's idea is more concrete: remove unneeded apps, load JS and CSS via a CDN, and keep images and files under 1MB.
How to change this on Shopify
Start with an app audit, since each app can add scripts to every page. If a key landing page lives in a page builder, rebuild it as a native Shopify template and run it against the original, as Oliver Kenyon did.
How to test it on your store
Hypothesis: a native rebuild of the top landing page will raise revenue per visitor because it loads faster. Keep the design identical so speed is the only change, split traffic rather than comparing months, and size the test with the sample size calculator. A full theme change is harder to split test, so measure it against a held-out control where your tool allows it.