How to Create a Product Image Experiment
This guide walks you through setting up a product image experiment in Elevate — from selecting products to launching the test.
Step 1: Create an Experiment
From your Elevate dashboard, go to Experiments and click New Experiment. Select Product Image Experiment.
If the Elevate theme extension isn't enabled on your store, you'll be prompted to enable it before proceeding. The theme extension is required to swap images on the storefront.
Step 2: General Info
Enter your experiment details:
Name — Something descriptive like "Product Hero Image Test" or "Lifestyle vs Studio Photos"
Description — What you're testing and why
Hypothesis — What you expect to happen
For example:
"Using lifestyle images showing the product in use as the hero image will increase add-to-cart rate compared to our current white background studio shots."
Choose your experiment goal. Add-to-Cart Rate or Conversion Rate are often the best choices for image tests, since images primarily affect the initial purchase decision.
Step 3: Select Products
Browse your product catalog and select the product(s) you want to test images for. You can select one or multiple products.
For each selected product, Elevate pulls the current product images from Shopify — these become the control images.
Step 4: Configure Product Images
This is the core of the setup. You'll see each variation with its products and image slots.
Control — Shows your current live product images. No changes needed.
Variation(s) — For each variation, you can modify the images for every product:
Replace an image — Click on any image slot to swap it with a different image. You can upload a new image or select from your existing media.
Reorder images — Drag images to change their order. The first image becomes the hero/featured image.
Each product in the variation has its own independent set of images — changes to one product don't affect others.
Tip: Upload your alternative images before starting the experiment setup, so they're ready in your media library when you need them.
Step 5: Traffic Allocation
Set how traffic is split between your variations. The default is an even split. Adjust as needed — percentages must add up to 100%.
Step 6: Add Audience Targeting (Optional)
Narrow your audience if needed — by device, location, traffic source, visitor type, or UTM parameters.
A common setup for image tests: target mobile visitors only, since product images have the biggest impact on mobile where the image gallery dominates the viewport.
For the full list of targeting options, see Audience Targeting.
Step 7: Review and Launch
Review your experiment — verify the correct images are assigned to each variation and product. Then click Create Experiment to submit.
The experiment moves into review status. Once ready, click Launch Experiment to go live.
Quality Assurance
After launching:
Visit each tested product page — Confirm the variation images are displaying correctly
Check image quality — Verify images aren't blurry, cropped incorrectly, or missing
Test on mobile and desktop — Image galleries behave differently across devices
Check the image gallery/carousel — Swipe through all images on mobile, click through on desktop
Verify zoom functionality — If your theme has image zoom, make sure it works with the variation images
Check the Raw Data tab — Confirm page view events are recording with the correct variation
After Launching
Monitor results — Check the Results tab to track performance
Wait for significance — Let the experiment run until it reaches a definitive status. See Statistical Significance.
Apply the winner — If a variation wins, you can apply the winning images to your product directly from the experiment page
End the experiment — When ready, see Ending an Experiment
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