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Do body copy A/B tests work in E-commerce?

In line with both baselines. Body copy tests win 6% in E-commerce, against 6% for body copy tests generally and 10% for E-commerce generally. Neither the category nor the vertical is moving this much.

The strongest change type we can measure in E-commerce is CTA copy at 20% on 50+ tests.

Small winner set. Few of these tests cleared the bar. The 95% interval on that win rate runs 3% to 11%, so read the figure as directional.

The numbers

Won 6% No measurable change 84% Lost 10%
E-commerceall industries
Tests analysed100+250+
Beat control6%6%
No measurable difference84%
Lost to control10%
Median lift when it won not reported

Median traffic per variant was 4222 visitors. Most ran on product pages (59), homepages (38), carts (8).

Every change type we can measure in E-commerce

change typewin rate in E-commercetests
CTA copy 20%50+
Layout 11%100+
Styling 11%500+
Split URL 10%250+
Social proof 9%50+
Price framing 8%50+
Hero image 7%50+
Headline 7%100+
Body copy (this page) 6%100+

What body copy tests in E-commerce measured

A win rate only means as much as the thing being counted, so this is what these tests were actually optimising for.

measured outcomeshare of tests
Purchase / order complete69%
Add to cart16%
On-page click / engagement8%

Outcomes below 5% of the set are not listed, so these do not sum to 100. How the outcome was measured moves the win rate a lot — see the methodology.

Why this table is not a ranking

These rates are not like-for-like. How often a test wins depends partly on what it chose to measure: a goal that records a soft signal — a click, a scroll — clears the bar more often than one that records a purchase. Across this data, tests measured against a proxy goal win 13%, against 9% for tests measured against a business outcome.

Categories differ a lot in that mix — proxy goals account for anywhere from 2% to 41% of a category's tests.

Hold the metric fixed and the spread narrows sharply. Comparing only tests measured against a business outcome, the gap between the highest and lowest category falls from 9 points to 6 — at which point the intervals overlap and the categories are not statistically distinguishable.

So read the table as a description of what happened, not as a ranking of what works. If you want the comparison to mean something, compare categories that were measured the same way. The methodology page has the full breakdown.

The industry overview is at E-commerce benchmarks; rates across all industries are on the body copy benchmark.

What counts as a body copy test

Supporting paragraph text is rewritten, shortened or expanded. Headings, images and CTAs are untouched.

Control and variant wireframe for a body copy A/B test
Control on the left, variant on the right. Only the changed element is highlighted.

Body copy tests that won in E-commerce

  • The popup message text and link wording were changed, and the link background color was darkened.

    Checkout page+168.9%

  • The body copy changed from a bullet point to a statement saying the item was available for immediate shipping and would arrive in 1 to 3 days.

    Product page+14.3%

  • The body copy changed from a general reassurance statement to one that offered a risk-free trial with a 14-day money back guarantee.

    Product page+11.2%

  • The cross-sell box changed from showing full product names with price and buy button elements to showing only the first word of each name and hiding those elements.

    Homepage+8.6%

Body copy tests that did not

  • The first navigation menu item label changed from its previous wording to a category name on mobile and desktop.

    HomepageNo significant difference

  • The subheadline text was replaced, and the five feature and benefit bullet lines below it were rewritten.

    Product pageNo significant difference

  • The bundle boxes were updated to include recommended age range labels for the starter, standard, and advanced options.

    Product pageNo significant difference

These are individual tests, not rules. Each ran on one site, with one audience, against one page we are not showing you. They are picked to be illustrative rather than sampled at random, and a change that won here can lose on your page for reasons none of this captures. Read them as prompts for what to test, not as findings to copy.

Who ran these tests

This is every Mida account that ran a readable test — in-house marketers, founders, product teams, and agencies working on client sites. Nothing here is filtered by who ran the experiment or how experienced they are.

Low win rates are normal in experimentation, including at the top end. Microsoft's experimentation team, reporting on its own platform, found that only about one third of ideas improve the metric they were designed to improve — and that roughly another third actively hurt it. That is a dedicated experimentation organisation with research, prioritisation and review behind every test.

A mixed population like this one runs below that. The gap is roughly what disciplined practice buys you: ideas grounded in research rather than opinion, one variable at a time, and tests built so the result can actually be read.

A win is a variant that beat its control on that test's primary goal with a statistically significant result. Tests that never got enough traffic to say anything either way are excluded. The methodology has the full detail, including what these numbers cannot tell you.