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CRO Secret: The One Thing Personalization Doesn’t Tell You

A/B Tests

Shopify

Ecommerce

Aug 12, 2025

5 min. read

Vivian

Many Shopify stores have steady traffic and stable conversion rates. That’s great. But because things are “working,” a lot of decisions end up being based on gut feeling.

Sometimes that works. But you’ll never know how many better options you’ve missed.

That’s where A/B testing comes in. And if you’ve already been doing personalization, you might wonder, what’s the difference?

What’s the difference between A/B test and personalization?

They both follow a similar flow: modification > advance targeting > analysis. But the biggest difference is how they handle the audience.

A/B testing splits traffic randomly. That means the results are easier to trust. You’re not guessing, you’re testing. Personalization, on the other hand, skips the “split” part. It’s already live, so it’s harder to compare and know what’s truly working better.

A/B test vs. Personalization

Not testing yet? You might be leaving money on the table.

Small tweaks, like changing one line of copy on a button, can move the needle. Even a small lift — say 1% or 2% — could mean thousands in extra revenue for a high-volume store.

You don’t need to be a data scientist to start experimenting. You just need to be curious enough to ask: could this perform better?

You might have never tested before, but that next 2X or 5X growth? It might be hiding behind a simple variation you haven’t tried yet.

So don’t let “this works fine” stop you from finding what actually works best.