Homepage categories moved higher: +13% revenue per visitor
Test run byBlend CommerceCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsMoving a five-category widget from below the fold to above the promo banner lifted revenue per visitor by 13% for a faith-based publishing brand.
Blend Commerce ran this two-week A/B/C test in Intelligems on desktop and mobile.
The result did not reach statistical significance, so treat it as a directional win.
- Revenue per visitor: +13% for Variant A. This was the primary win.
- Average order value: +11% and conversion rate: +2% for Variant A.
- Variant B used the same high position but eight categories. It lifted conversion rate by 8% and collection-page views by 23%, but average order value stayed flat.
- Not statistically significant. Variant A led on revenue per visitor for the whole test, but the gap could still be noise.
The change
The category widget moves from below the fold to above the promo banner.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The homepage showed a story-style category widget with five categories below the fold. Heatmaps showed only about three in ten mobile visitors scrolled far enough to see it.
Variant
Variant A moved the same five-category widget above the promotional banner and added a heading and short supporting copy.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Most visits were on mobile, and most mobile visitors never scrolled to the old widget. Moving it up put a popular route in view.
- Keeping the familiar five categories may have helped shoppers find known sections faster without new choices to weigh.
- The eight-category version drove more browsing but not bigger orders, which hints that more options spread attention thinner.
Caveats: The two-week test did not reach statistical significance, so the agency calls the lifts directional. Variant A also added heading copy, so placement and copy were tested together.
Who ran it
Blend Commerce ran this test for a faith-based publishing brand and published the results (Blend Commerce A/B test). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Blend Commerce →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we move our homepage category links above the first promo banner, then revenue per visitor will rise because more mobile visitors will see a quick route into collections.
- Primary metric
- Revenue per visitor
- Guardrails
- Conversion rate
- Promo banner click-through
- Homepage bounce rate
- Who should test it
- Stores with mostly mobile traffic and a homepage where category links sit low on the page. If heatmaps show most visitors already reach your categories, expect little change.
Questions
Where should category links go on a homepage?
High enough that most visitors see them without much scrolling.
Check scroll depth on mobile first, since that is where links are most often missed.
Is it better to show more categories?
Not always. In this test, eight categories drove more browsing, but five familiar ones produced bigger orders and more revenue per visitor.
Can I trust a result that is not statistically significant?
Treat it as a lead, not proof. It is reasonable to ship a low-risk change like this, but keep watching revenue per visitor after launch.
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