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Landing Page Split Testing For eCommerce — Complete Guide [2025]
One of the best things about landing pages is that they are quite flexible.
Tweak and experiment with them however you want. After all, when offering something through a landing page, your primary goal and focus is to optimize the conversion rate.
Split testing is a strategic method to experiment with your landing pages. It can help you identify what needs to be improved to increase your conversion rate.
So, in this blog post, we’ll cover a step-by-step guide on how to run landing page split testing for eCommerce brands — along with the tools and examples.
Let’s get started!
What is Landing Page Split Testing in eCommerce?
Landing page split testing is a technique to compare two slightly different versions of a landing page to measure their performance and determine which one performs better for your business goals.
When talking of landing pages, the business goal is typically to increase the conversion rate.
Landing page split testing (also known as A/B testing) is one of the widely used techniques by eCommerce brands worldwide. Apart from landing pages, split testing can also be used for several other digital assets, such as store pages, emails, SMS, ads, and so on.
That said, in this article, we’ll specifically focus on landing page split testing.
How Does Landing Page Split Testing Work?
Basically, you’re creating two versions of a landing page and splitting your traffic equally for each version. Then, by comparing their performance, you can identify the winning variant that gives a higher conversion rate.
Let’s understand this with the following example:
There are two versions of a landing page, where the “Control” version features a white CTA button, and the “Variant” landing page has a green CTA button. Each receives 50% of the total traffic. In the final results, the Control version achieved a 5% conversion rate, while the Variant succeeded with a 10% conversion rate.
Thus, you successfully identified the winning landing page version with this split test. Based on this test, you can implement the change on your live landing page, i.e., changing the CTA button color to green, to achieve a higher conversion rate.
Now, this was quite a simplified explanation, but there’s more to the process. Also, if you’re wondering how to split the traffic and take care of the other technicalities, we’ve got a solution for you. You just need to use GemX to set up your test, and it’ll take care of the rest. We’ll cover the complete guide later in this article.
Why Conduct Landing Page Split Testing?
Here are the key benefits of conducting a landing page split test:
Make data-driven improvements
Your landing pages may have the potential to deliver better results, but you need to find out the exact areas you need to fix. You can’t identify those areas just based on your gut feeling or assumptions. Split testing is a tool that gives a data-driven approach to make such critical decisions on improvements.
Increase your conversion rate
One of the major goals behind running a split test is to identify the issues that are negatively impacting your conversion rate—and to fix them. Landing page split testing helps optimize the conversion rate by transforming your landing pages according to customer preferences.
Boost your revenue and profit
With a higher conversion rate, of course, your revenue goes up. But on top of that, you could also run specific landing page tests aimed at increasing the upselling and cross-selling opportunities. This way, you can also boost your average order value (AOV). All these efforts eventually have a compounding effect on your profit as well.
Enhance the user experience
The goal of split testing doesn’t necessarily have to be about increasing the conversion rate only. As a brand, it’s crucial to deliver a great user experience to maintain your brand’s trustworthiness and reputation. You could even aim to enhance the user experience of your landing pages through split testing.
How to Conduct Landing Page Split Testing or A/B Testing for Shopify Stores
Here’s the step-by-step guide on how to conduct landing page split testing for your Shopify store:
Step 1: Identify the Landing Page(s) to Test
This step is optional and applies only if your brand has multiple landing pages for different goals. In that case, review and compare their performance metrics. Prioritize the ones that are critical for your business growth and aren’t delivering the expected results.
Step 2: Define the Hypothesis for the Test
Many brands make this A/B testing mistake by starting the test without defining the hypothesis. In simple terms, a hypothesis helps you finalize the exact variable or element to test.
You can consider this Hypothesis Kit by Craig Sullivan as a template:
On a landing page, there could be several variables or elements. But you don’t need to test them all. Review the data and significance of the relevant elements — and then test the ones that have the biggest impact on your conversion rate.
For example, you can review the customer behavior data through a heatmap tool and see which elements they click on often, and which ones they typically ignore. Also, you can use direct customer feedback and survey data the same way.
Now, let’s understand this with a hypothetical example. Assume we need to run an A/B test for the below landing page for a newly launched product.
You’re running a flash sale but aren’t getting the expected conversion as visitors are quickly bouncing off the page without scrolling down. You noticed the countdown timer is actually below the fold and could be placed in the above-the-fold section.
So, here’s your hypothesis based on Craig’s template:
Theory: Based on the high bounce-off rate found in store analytics, we believe that displaying the countdown timer at the top of the page for all new visitors will entice them to go for the purchase.
Validation: We will know this when we see a reduction in the bounce rate and an increase in the conversion rate.
Outcome: This will be good for our business because it will help us validate the product idea and increase our overall revenue.
By the way, apart from the countdown timer, here are some of the most critical elements on landing pages that have a huge impact on the conversion rate:
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Headline copy
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Hero image
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CTA buttons
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Offer price/discount
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Social proof
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Trust badges
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Safety elements (such as a returns policy or a money-back guarantee)
Step 3: Create Two Versions of the Landing Page
Once the hypothesis is ready and you have the variable decided, it’s time to create the variant landing page.
Important note: As a best practice, it’s better to test one variable/element at a time. So, if you’re planning to test two variables, e.g., hero images and the CTA button, it’s advisable to first test your hero image — and then conduct a separate test for the CTA button.
If you’re using GemPages to create your landing pages, it’s quite easy to create a variant of the original landing page. Just click on the three dots and click “Duplicate”. Now, your variant landing page is ready to make the planned change.
Also, making changes to your landing page with GemPages is smooth — just drag, drop, and customize the element as you need.
You can make minor to advanced changes yourself, even without any prior web design experience. GemPages’ intuitive visual editor makes the process quite easy and efficient.
Step 4: Set Up an Experiment (Split Test) Using GemX
Now, you need a reliable A/B testing tool.
But we’ve got you covered — GemX is specifically built for Shopify merchants with our years of experience and expertise in CRO and A/B testing.
Go to the GemX dashboard. Click “Create new experiment,” and then select the “Control” (original) landing page. As a best practice, make sure to name your landing pages in a way that you can clearly identify the control and variant.
Next, select the “Variant” landing page. If you’ve already created a variant in GemPages, you can directly click “Select an existing template” — and if not, select “Create Variant based on Control”, and GemX will create a variant copy using GemPages.
Once you’ve inserted the Control and Variant, make sure the experiment settings are selected as per your requirements. Here’s a brief overview of those settings:
4.1 Choose a Winning Metric:
It could be either “Conversion” or “Revenue”, depending on your business goal. For example, if you’re split testing to increase the sales of upselling items, “Revenue” would be an appropriate metric.
In this case, we’ll go with the “Conversion” metric, as our goal is to increase the conversion rate through the change in the countdown timer placement.
4.2 Select the Device Types:
If you want to limit the test to certain device type(s), GemX allows you to select the device types accordingly.
4.3 Select the Visitors:
Now, this one’s an important setting. As we defined in the hypothesis, we want to target only new visitors in our test. So, we’ll exclude “Returning” visitors and go with “New” only.
4.4 Choose the Traffic Source:
This depends on your strategy. You can either select all the traffic sources or specific ones based on the audience you’re targeting.
4.5 Define the Traffic Split:
This should ideally be split equally, i.e., 50% for each page.
Now, if you’re still finding it difficult to set it up, don’t worry — you can click the Question/Help icon and you’ll find the option for “Setup guide”, “Chat with us”, and “Book a call with us”.
Step 5: Start the Experiment
Once the entire setup is done, hit the “Start experiment” button, and the test will be initiated in seconds. And that’s it, now just wait and monitor the test result.
Important note: Before you start an experiment/split test, make sure you’ve been receiving sufficient traffic on your landing page. In order to conduct a valid A/B test that shows you a true picture, you must have enough traffic data.
Once the test is live, you’ll find more options to pause, rename, and end the experiment as well. Also, you can click “View analytics” to see real-time data.
Also, you can check a quick overview of your live experiment in the GemX dashboard with key data points such as Conversion, Revenue, and Visitors. And you can click on the Analytics icon to expand more detailed data points.
Side note: Since this is a demo test, obviously, the graphic below doesn’t contain any data. It’s just for your reference to see what analytics would be available to you.
Step 6: End the Experiment and Analyze the Results
Once the test is completed, you can click “End experiment”.
Before you end the experiment, make sure to allow it the required time (minimum two weeks) and achieve the statistical significance of 95% (or at minimum 90%). This ensures that the result you obtained is reliable and has not occurred by fluke.
Step 7: Implement Changes
If the test is successful, implement the changes and continue monitoring the performance.
If the test fails, you don’t have to give up immediately. You can go for further iterations by changing other critical variables. Again, focus on the data points to define your new hypothesis and test one variable at a time.
Final Thoughts on Landing Page Split Testing
As an eCommerce brand, you must consider landing page split testing as an ongoing process.
You must regularly evaluate the performance of your landing pages, identify the areas of improvement, and validate your ideas through A/B testing. Thus, you also need a reliable A/B testing tool from a long-term perspective.
So, don’t forget to install the GemX: CRO & A/B Testing app. You can just start with a FREE trial — and initiate landing page tests that actually help you with conversion rate optimization.
To learn more about other eCommerce marketing strategies, tools, and best practices — check out more resources on the GemPages Blog. Also, join the GemPages Facebook community to network and learn from like-minded entrepreneurs and experts.
FAQs About Landing Page Split Testing
