Closing the size confusion gap on American Eagle's jeans PDP

Brand of the Week

Founded in 1977, American Eagle Outfitters has grown from a small Pittsburgh retailer into one of the most recognised American fashion brands, reporting over $5 billion in revenue in 2023 across more than 1,180 stores worldwide. At the core of the brand is denim — jeans are a flagship category, central to how AE positions itself with its target audience of teens and young adults. Alongside its main line, AE owns Aerie, a brand that has built a strong following around inclusive sizing and body-positive messaging, and Todd Snyder, a premium menswear label. The brand has invested significantly in its digital experience as ecommerce has grown in importance across the apparel category.

That investment makes what we found on the jeans product page worth looking at — because A/B testing is precisely the tool that closes the gap between a well-built brand and a well-converting page. Not by guessing what works, but by putting real changes in front of real shoppers and measuring what happens.

That's where we looked.

The challenge

We took a peek into American Eagle's jeans product page, and two things stood out.

Sizing is a two-decision problem presented as one. Choosing a jean size means choosing a waist AND a length. The current dropdown collapses both into a single list, asking shoppers to hold two variables in their head simultaneously while scrolling through 54 options. This is a cognitive load issue — and it's especially pronounced on mobile, where most jeans traffic lands and the dropdown takes up nearly the full screen.

The fit data exists — but it's in the wrong place. AE collects a Bazaarvoice "Fit" rating on each product, tracking whether the style runs small, true to size, or large. It's a meaningful signal, particularly for jeans where fit uncertainty is the primary reason shoppers hesitate. The problem is that it lives buried in the reviews section — two full scrolls below the Add to Bag button. At the exact moment a shopper is deciding whether to commit, that information is nowhere near them.

So what would we A/B test?

Control: American Eagle's current product page — a single 54-option dropdown combining waist and length, with the Fit rating in the reviews section.

Variant (built in MidaGX): Two changes to the size selection step.

Change 1 — Two-axis size selector
Replace the single dropdown with two visible rows: waist pills first, then length pills. Shoppers make one decision at a time. The selector reads the live product inventory, so it stays accurate across styles and colours — no hardcoded sizes. Lengths that don't exist for the selected waist are greyed out and struck through at a glance, rather than silently absent inside a dropdown. The Add to Bag button is always visible.

Change 2 — Fit cue at the size step
Surface a compact version of AE's existing Fit rating — "True to size," "Runs small," or "Runs large" — directly alongside the size selector, where the shopper is already making their decision. The cue auto-hides on products with too few ratings to be statistically meaningful, so it only appears when it's genuinely informative.

Our hypothesis

The two-axis selector addresses a navigation problem. The fit cue addresses a confidence problem. They target different reasons a shopper might not add to bag, which is why we'd run them together as a single variant rather than separately.

We'd expect the two-axis selector to reduce drop-off at the size selection step — particularly on mobile — by making the right choice easier to find and available stock easier to see. The fit cue, meanwhile, should reduce hesitation for shoppers who are close to committing but uncertain about sizing, with the strongest effect on styles that genuinely run off-size.

If we were on American Eagle's team, this is the test we'd run. Not because we know it wins — but because it asks a question worth answering, and only real traffic can tell you.

The CRO principle underneath

Shoppers don't scroll to find confidence. They either have it at the moment of decision, or they leave. The job of a well-designed product page isn't just to have the right information — it's to surface that information where the decision is actually being made.

AE already has the fit data. The product range already covers different bodies and preferences. The opportunity here isn't to change what they offer — it's to make choosing easier at the moment it matters most.

Want to run a test like this on your own site? Get started with Mida for free — no credit card required.