Category links with product photos: +13.5% proceed to checkout
Test run byGrowthRockCRO agency
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding a 'Discover More' block of links to other categories, shown with plain product photos, lifted proceed-to-checkout by 13.5% for an electronics ecommerce site.
GrowthRock ran this A/B/C test for three weeks.
The same block with lifestyle photos showed no significant difference.
- Product photo version: +13.5% proceed to checkout at 97% statistical significance.
- Product photo version: +23% transactions, but only at 89% significance, below the usual 95% bar.
- Lifestyle photo version: no significant difference on any key metric, and none above 50% significance.
- Both the agency and the client's designers preferred the lifestyle version before the test.
The change
A 'Discover More' row of other categories, shown with product photos, is added.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Category pages ended with no links to other categories.
Variant
A 'Discover More' section at the bottom of category pages linked to other categories. One version used plain product photos and another used lifestyle photos.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Product photos matched the rest of the page, so the section felt like part of the catalogue.
- Lifestyle photos looked different and may have been skipped as ads.
- One category dominated the site, so links to other categories gave shoppers related products they might not have found.
Caveats: The test ran for three weeks with over 20,000 sessions and 550 checkouts per version. The transaction lift fell short of 95% significance, and the test date was not shared.
Who ran it
GrowthRock ran this test for an electronics ecommerce site and published the results (GrowthRock blog). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on GrowthRock →
How to run this test on your store
- Hypothesis
- If we add links to other categories at the bottom of category pages, using photos that match our product grid, then more visitors will reach checkout because they find related products.
- Primary metric
- Proceed to checkout rate
- Guardrails
- Transactions
- Revenue per visitor
- Clicks on the new section
- Who should test it
- Stores where one category dominates traffic and other categories are related. Test more than one design if you can, as the photo style changed the outcome here.
Questions
Should I use product photos or lifestyle photos for category links?
In this test, product photos lifted checkouts by 13.5% and lifestyle photos did nothing.
Photos that match the rest of the page may get more attention.
Do cross-category links help ecommerce sales?
They can, especially when one category dominates. Here they helped only when the design fit the page.
What if my test shows no difference?
The design may be the problem rather than the idea.
This test would have looked flat if only the lifestyle version had run.
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