# Category link bar on mobile homepage: +5% orders (inconclusive)

- Outcome: Flat / inconclusive
- Page type: Homepage (Ecommerce)
- Elements: Navigation & mega menus
- Test run by: [GrowthRock](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/growthrock/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://growthrock.co/ecommerce-mobile-home-page-navigation/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/growthrock-apparel-mobile-homepage-link-bar/

Adding a bar of nine category links to the top of the mobile homepage showed a 5% rise in orders for an apparel store with over 1,000 products, but the result was not statistically significant, so we count it as inconclusive. GrowthRock ran this A/B test and published it on its blog. Visits to the category pages shown in the bar did rise clearly.

## Result

**+5% orders (inconclusive)**

- Orders: +5% at 93% one-tailed significance. Optimizely's two-tailed stats showed no significance, so this is inconclusive.
- Category page views: +10-12% at 99% or higher significance, but only for links visible without scrolling the bar.
- Links hidden off-screen in the scrollable bar showed no change in page views.
- Scale: 28 days, more than 80,000 visitors and about 2,300 conversions per version.

## Control

The mobile homepage led with large campaign images. Category links sat behind the hamburger menu, with more links only far down the page.

## Variant

A left-right scrollable bar of nine category links, with arrows, was added at the top of the homepage. The hamburger menu stayed in place.

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

- Visible links save a tap and make categories easier to find than a hamburger menu, which sent more shoppers to listing pages.
- More category visits did not clearly turn into more orders, possibly because only the first few links were seen.
- Links that required sideways scrolling were largely ignored, which limited the bar's effect.

## Caveats

Not statistically significant by the testing tool's own two-tailed stats; the agency reads it as a likely winner, but we treat it as inconclusive. The test date was not shared.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we add visible category links at the top of the mobile homepage, then more shoppers will reach product listings and order because they skip the hamburger menu.
- Primary metric: Orders (conversion rate)
- Guardrail: Category page views
- Guardrail: Homepage bounce rate
- Guardrail: Revenue per visitor
- Who should test it: Mobile stores with many products and categories that rely on a hamburger menu. Plan for a long test, as the order lift may be small. Consider a stacked layout so all links are visible, since off-screen links were ignored here.

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Credit: GrowthRock ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/growthrock-apparel-mobile-homepage-link-bar/).
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.