Do headline A/B tests work on homepages?

About the same as anywhere else. Headline tests win 10% of the time on homepages, against 10% across all page types. This page neither helps nor hurts the change type.

It is not the best use of a test slot on this page though. Layout tests win 27% on homepages on 100+ tests.

The numbers

	homepages	all page types
Tests analysed	250+	500+
Beat control	10%	10%
No measurable difference	76%	—
Lost to control	13%	—
Median lift when it won	+15.6%	—

Median traffic per variant was 1371 visitors.

What else is worth testing on homepages

change type	win rate on homepages	tests
Layout	27%	100+
Hero image	18%	50+
Price framing	16%	49 tests
Social proof	15%	50+
Styling	15%	500+
Body copy	14%	100+
Split URL	14%	100+
CTA copy	11%	100+
Headline (this page)	10%	250+

Only change types with at least 30 tests on homepages appear here.

What counts as a headline test

The main heading is rewritten. Structure, styling and every other element stay put.

Control and variant wireframe for a headline A/B test — Control on the left, variant on the right. For how this differs from adjacent categories, see the headline benchmark.

Headline tests that won on homepages

invitational headline prompting visitors with questions to initiate contact
CTA button text offering a free start/trial in French and Dutch
numbered step-style headline announcing summer essentials discovery followed by a shop sale prompt
headline listing bookkeeping, e-invoicing, banking and taxes as simplified all-in-one solution for self-employed professionals in Belgium

Headline tests that did not

Headline touts automatic vendor management that eliminates manual spreadsheet tracking, followed by a subhead describing how the product syncs accounting systems, extracts contract terms with AI, and answers questions in seconds, ending with a live demo prompt.
Changed hero layout from centered single-column to left-aligned with new headline text, added avatar social proof badge and customer logo strip, removed original body copy
headline stating quick 5-minute setup for A/B testing, followed by subhead listing GA4 integration, free forever pricing, drag-and-drop editor, and no coding required

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.

So treat these as a general base rate, not a target. If you would rather not close that gap the slow way, find a CRO agency in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands or Australia — or browse every region.

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.