Customer photos featured on product pages: +1.8% add-to-cart (flat)
Test run byClean CommitCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsGiving customer photos a more prominent spot on product pages raised add-to-cart rate by 1.8%, which we treat as inconclusive.
Clean Commit ran this test for an anonymized Shopify apparel store and published it in its A/B test library.
The variant had a 76.4% probability of beating the original, and mobile barely moved.
- Add-to-cart rate: +1.8% across all devices, with a 76.4% probability of beating the original. Inconclusive.
- Desktop add-to-cart rate: +7.1%, but only 2,485 desktop visitors saw the test.
- Mobile add-to-cart rate: +0.2%, effectively flat, and mobile was where most visitors browsed.
- Bounce rate: -3.4% and click-through rate: +1.5%, small engagement gains that did not turn into more adds to cart.
The change
Customer photos move from low on the page to a featured spot.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Product pages where customer photos sat in a less prominent spot.
Variant
Customer-submitted photos, pulled from Reviews.io, were featured more prominently on a handful of product pages that had photos available.
Why it likely came out this way
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Real photos help shoppers judge fit and look, but this store's main images may already have answered those questions.
- Only a handful of products had customer photos, so the change reached a small part of the catalog.
- On mobile, a prominent photo block may push other key details further down the page.
Caveats: The test covered only a few products, and the desktop sample was small. Test duration and total visitors were not shared.
Who ran it
Clean Commit ran this test for a Shopify store (anonymized) and published the results (Clean Commit A/B test library). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Clean Commit →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we feature customer photos near the product gallery, then add-to-cart rate will rise because shoppers see how items look on real people.
- Primary metric
- Add-to-cart rate on product pages with customer photos
- Guardrails
- Conversion rate
- Revenue per visitor
- Mobile add-to-cart rate
- Who should test it
- Apparel and lifestyle stores with plenty of good customer photos across many products. If only a few products have photos, expect a small, hard-to-read effect.
Questions
Do customer photos increase add-to-cart rate?
In this test the effect was small and unclear: add-to-cart rose 1.8% overall and only 0.2% on mobile.
Results may differ for stores with more photos across more products.
Where should customer photos go on a product page?
Many stores test them near the main gallery so shoppers see them early.
Check mobile closely, since extra content up top pushes the add-to-cart area down.
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