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On the mobile homepage of a large online art store, most shoppers came looking for a subject, style, or artist rather than a specific product. But the homepage hero was built around a rotating carousel, and the search box was placed inside the page header and was easy to miss. Even so, about 33% of visitors found the search box and used it anyway, emphasizing its importance. That was a strong sign that many people wanted to search instead of browsing featured content. This test looked at whether making search the main focus of the homepage would help shoppers find what they wanted faster and lead to more purchases.
Hypothesis: If the homepage leads with a search box and category shortcuts instead of a carousel, more shoppers reach art that matches what they came for, and more of them buy.
What we A/B tested:
The impact:
- +8.3% search usage
- +15.7% purchase conversion rate
- +34.7% revenue per visitor
Takeaways:
- Build the homepage around what users are actually trying to do. One-third of visitors were already skipping the carousel and directly using the search bar. Presenting them with the search bar front-and-center simplified their journey.
- Search bars need shortcuts. Typing takes effort on mobile. Adding tap-and-go buttons for the top-searched categories gave shoppers a fast, zero-effort way to browse without having to type a single word.
