# Personalized PDPs for new and returning visitors: +1.0% CR, flat

- Outcome: Flat / inconclusive
- Page type: Product page (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Layout, fonts & visual design
- Test run by: [Clean Commit](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/clean-commit/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://cleancommit.io/ab-tests/personalized-pdp-layout-for-returning-visitors/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/cleancommit-personalized-pdp-layout-for-returning-visitors/

Tailoring product pages by visitor type, with an educational page for new visitors and a condensed one for returning visitors, moved conversion rate just 1.0%, and orders were flat. Clean Commit ran this test for an anonymized Shopify store and published it in its A/B test library. With 2,581 visitors over 33 days, the result is inconclusive.

## Result

**+1.0% CR, flat**

- Conversion rate: +1.0%, and orders were flat (0.0%). No clear difference.
- Add-to-cart rate: -10.7%. Negative: the tailored pages did not create more purchase intent.
- Revenue per visitor: -5.0%. Negative, though within what a small sample can produce by chance.
- Bounce rate fell 12.2% and click-through rate rose 8.2%, but both are within normal variation for this sample.

## Control

Every visitor saw the same product page.

## Variant

New visitors saw a page focused on benefits, how it works and social proof. Returning visitors saw a condensed page with stronger calls to action and fewer distractions.

## Why it likely came out this way (our reading)

- The sample was small, so a real effect of a few percent could easily go unseen.
- Visitors engaged more with the pages but did not buy more, which suggests the layouts held attention without changing the decision.
- Two different layouts sat inside one variant, so a gain for one group may have been cancelled by a loss for the other.

## Caveats

Small sample: 2,581 visitors over 33 days, which is too few to detect small effects. The variant combined two different layouts for two visitor groups.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we give returning visitors a condensed, CTA-focused product page and new visitors an educational one, then conversion rate will rise because each group gets a page that matches what they already know.
- Primary metric: Conversion rate, split by new and returning visitors
- Guardrail: Add-to-cart rate
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor
- Guardrail: Orders
- Who should test it: Stores with enough returning traffic to measure that group on its own. With a few thousand visitors a month, as here, you likely won't get a clear answer; small stores are better off with bigger, simpler changes first.

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Credit: Clean Commit ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/cleancommit-personalized-pdp-layout-for-returning-visitors/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.