Minecraft-focused homepage hero: +23.25% clicks to product pages
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsA Minecraft-focused homepage hero with a Minecraft-themed image lifted clicks to game product pages by 23.25%, with a 95.67% probability of beating the control.
Shockbyte, a game server hosting company, ran this test, and it was published as a VWO case study.
Most of its search traffic came from people looking for Minecraft server hosting.
- Clicks to game product pages: up 23.25% for Variant 2, with a 95.67% probability to beat the control.
- Order CTR: up from 12.68% to 14.67%.
- Clicks to the Minecraft hosting page: up from 18.42% to 23.18%.
- Engagement rate rose from 48.18% to 54.93%, and bounce rate fell from 51.16% to 45.62%.
The change
The variant swaps the multi-game hero for a Minecraft-only hero with a themed image.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
A homepage hero with pricing plans on one side and a full list of games on the other, with no focus on Minecraft.
Variant
Variant 1 led with Minecraft-only copy and server plans. Variant 2, the winner, added a Minecraft-themed hero image on top of that.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- The page now matched what most visitors searched for, so they knew at once they were in the right place.
- Cutting the multi-game list removed competing choices from the hero.
- A familiar game image is a fast visual cue, which may be why Variant 2 beat the copy-only version.
Caveats: Sample size and duration were not shared, and the result is vendor-reported. Separate figures for Variant 1 were not given.
Who ran it
Shockbyte ran this test and published the results (VWO case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Shockbyte →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we focus the homepage hero on the product most visitors search for, then more will click through to product pages because the page matches their intent.
- Primary metric
- Click-through from the homepage to product pages
- Guardrails
- Orders or subscriptions
- Traffic to other product lines
- Bounce rate for visitors from non-core searches
- Who should test it
- SaaS and hosting businesses where one product brings in most traffic. It may hurt if your audience is spread evenly across many products, since others will no longer see their option up front.
Questions
Should my homepage focus on one product?
If most of your traffic comes looking for one product, focusing on it can help.
Shockbyte saw 23.25% more clicks to product pages.
Does a hero image matter beyond the copy?
In this test, the version with a Minecraft-themed image was the winner over the copy-only version.
The case study did not give separate numbers for the copy-only variant.