Measure firstChange one thing at a timeIndependent publication - no agency, no tool to sell

Independent field guide

Turn the traffic you already have into sales

The Test Bench is an independent desk for conversion rate optimisation, written for small online businesses: store owners, service businesses and small software teams who cannot hire an agency and should not have to guess. We explain how to measure a funnel honestly, find the leaks worth fixing, and test changes without fooling yourself.

Start with what CRO is and how it works at small scale, or pick a bench below. Every guide opens with a test card: the page type, the goal, the evidence level and the first move.

A small online store's packing bench: stacked parcels ready to ship, a laptop and shelves of orders

How the bench runs

Baseline

Measure the funnel as it is. No change is judged without a before.

Hypothesis

Write down what you expect to happen, and why, before touching the page.

Change

One change at a time, big enough to matter, small enough to read.

Reading

Run it long enough for the numbers to mean something at your traffic level.

Decision

Keep it, drop it, or test the next idea. Record what you learned either way.

Walk the benches

Bench 01 - Calibration bench CRO foundations and measurement What conversion rate optimisation actually is, how to measure a baseline honestly, and how to decide what to work on first when traffic is small. (12 guides) Bench 02 - Arrival bench Landing pages The page a visitor lands on decides in seconds whether the visit continues. Message match, one clear offer, and a single job per page. (12 guides) Bench 03 - Shelf bench Product pages Where browsers become buyers or leave. Photos, price presentation, delivery information, reviews and the buy box, in the order visitors actually check them. (12 guides) Bench 04 - Till bench Cart and checkout The last steps of the funnel, where small frictions cost real orders. Carts that reassure, checkouts that stay out of the way. (12 guides) Bench 05 - Price bench Pricing pages How prices are presented decides how they are judged. Anchors, tiers, totals shown early, and discount framing that does not train buyers to wait. (12 guides) Bench 06 - Capture bench Forms and lead capture Every field is a small tax on the visitor. Shorter forms, better questions, honest error messages and enquiry forms that respect the person filling them in. (12 guides) Bench 07 - Interrupt bench Popups and onsite campaigns Interruptions can earn their place or burn the visit. Timing, triggers, frequency and offers that respect the page the visitor came to read. (12 guides) Bench 08 - Follow-up bench Email capture and flows The visitors who leave today are tomorrow's easiest sales. Capture that is worth signing up for, and the small set of flows that do the follow-up work. (12 guides) Bench 09 - Wayfinding bench Site search and navigation Visitors who cannot find the product cannot buy it. Menus, filters, search results and the zero-results page, treated as selling surfaces. (12 guides) Bench 10 - Proof bench Trust and social proof Strangers buy from stores they believe. Reviews, guarantees, policies and proof elements placed where doubt actually happens, and kept honest. (12 guides) Bench 11 - Message bench Copy and messaging Words are the cheapest test surface on any page. Headlines, buttons, value propositions and product descriptions written from the customer's reasons, not the seller's features. (12 guides) Bench 12 - Split bench A/B testing on low traffic Small stores cannot run textbook tests, and pretending otherwise wastes months. Methods that respect small numbers: bigger swings, longer reads, honest stopping rules. (12 guides) Bench 13 - Instrument bench Analytics and behaviour tools The instruments of the bench: analytics set up to answer buying questions, heatmaps and recordings read properly, and surveys that ask at the right moment. (12 guides) Bench 14 - Load bench Speed and mobile conversion Most small-store traffic arrives on a phone, on a connection the owner never tests. Core Web Vitals in plain terms, and the mobile frictions that cost orders. (12 guides) Bench 15 - Shopify bench CRO on Shopify Conversion work inside Shopify's walls: theme sections, product templates, the cart drawer, checkout customisation and what the platform decides for you. (12 guides) Bench 16 - WordPress bench CRO on WooCommerce and WordPress Conversion work on the open platform: WooCommerce checkout control, WordPress landing pages, plugin discipline and the speed costs of a full plugin folder. (12 guides) Bench 17 - Services bench Services and local businesses When the conversion is a call, a quote request or a booking, not a parcel. Lead quality over lead count, and pages built around how people actually choose a tradesperson or a clinic. (12 guides) Bench 18 - Subscription bench SaaS and subscription conversion Trials, demos and pricing pages for small software products, where the conversion is the start of a relationship and activation matters more than the signup. (12 guides) Bench 19 - Leak bench Funnel leaks by stage A stage-by-stage walk of where visits quietly drain away: arrival, browsing, product evaluation, the decision, the till, and the return visit that never happens. (12 guides) Bench 20 - Audit bench Audits, checklists and mistakes The bench's own paperwork: how to run a conversion audit on a small store, the checklists worth keeping, and the mistakes and myths that waste the most effort. (12 guides)

How this desk works

A test bench desk: a notebook with a hand-drawn funnel and line chart, a laptop and a phone

Three rules. First, no invented numbers: this site publishes no case studies and no benchmark figures of its own, because it has no clients and runs no stores. Where a number appears, it comes from published research or platform documentation, is attributed to its source, and carries the date it was checked; worked examples use round numbers and are labelled illustrations. Second, evidence is graded on every guide's test card, so you can see whether a suggestion rests on published research, platform documentation, practitioner consensus, or a method you run yourself. Third, corrections are published, not buried: the corrections page records what changed and why. The desk's position throughout: your store's baseline beats anyone else's benchmark, every time.