You have two or three finished images. The question now is which is best — and whether any of them beats what you already have.

Two tests, in order. A cheap one that narrows the field, then a real one on Amazon that decides it.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-imagetest-explainer-cda0fe06.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? One hundred and twenty seconds on the two tests and their order, how to read the result against a range, and the trap of judging on click-through alone.*

## **Test 1: pick the strongest candidate**

Before touching your live listing, run your new images against each other with a survey panel.

**Compare the new images to each other first**, not against your current one. You are ranking them — best, second, worst — so that the image you put live is your strongest candidate rather than an arbitrary one. That single step meaningfully raises the odds the live test succeeds.

**Optionally, run your best new image against your top three competitors.** Use Brand Analytics to find who actually receives the most clicks on your main keyword, and put your image alongside theirs.

**Reading that comparison:**

**Placing first or second** — proceed to the live test.

**Placing third or fourth** — go back and improve before spending live traffic on it.

**This whole stage is optional and worth doing anyway.** Panel results are not shopper behaviour — people asked to compare images behave differently from people shopping. But it is cheap and fast, and it stops you burning a live test on your weakest candidate.

## **Test 2: live on Amazon**

The only test that counts.

**Upload the new image**, then measure against a stable baseline.

**Watch Top of Search placements specifically.** They are the most predictable and least noisy part of your traffic, which makes them the cleanest read on a CTR change. Pick your **top three Sponsored Products campaigns by spend** and track those.

![Placements, where the cleanest signal is](/kb-assets/shot-adv-placements-view-a28189.png)

## **Reading it, day by day then week by week**

**Days 1–4 — check daily, but only for disasters.**

**Sales falling clearly** — the image is worse. Stop and switch to your second candidate. Do not wait for statistical certainty; you are losing money now.

**Sales stable or rising** — leave it alone and let data accumulate. Four days is not enough to confirm a win, only to catch a failure.

**After one week — look properly.**

**CTR**, week by week over the last six weeks, from the Search Catalog Performance report. You are comparing the current week against the recent range rather than against a single previous week, because weekly CTR is noisy.

**CVR**, from your business reports — unit session percentage.

**Advertising CTR and CVR** on those three campaigns, Top of Search only.

## **The verdict**

Compare this week's CTR against the range of the previous weeks:

| Result | Reading | Action |
|---|---|---|
| **Above the range** | very good | keep it |
| **Top of the range** | good | keep it, watch another week |
| **Bottom of the range** | bad | consider the next image |
| **Below the range** | very bad | switch to the next image |

**Then decide:**

**Bad after one week** — start the test with your second image.

**Middling after one week** — give it one more week. Some of that is noise, and a second week usually resolves it.

**Good or excellent** — keep it, and decide whether to stop or chase further gains with the remaining candidates.

**And check CVR alongside CTR.** An image can raise clicks while lowering conversion — usually because it over-promises, and the shopper arrives to something different from what they expected. **More traffic that converts worse is not a win**, and CTR alone will not tell you.

## **A note on risky images**

If your new image pushes against Amazon's image rules — heavy text, added graphics, unconventional backgrounds — there is a real risk of suppression, and getting your original back live can take time.

For those, use Amazon's own experiment tooling rather than swapping the live image. It is slower, but a suppressed main image on a high-traffic listing is a serious outage.

## **After a win**

**Do it again.** The first improvement is rarely the ceiling, and you now have a process and a designer who understands your product.

**Then move to your next product.** Run this monthly across your catalogue, starting with the listings that get the most impressions.

**And re-check your CTR against the keyword average** — that comparison is what started this project, and it is how you know whether you are now ahead of your category or merely ahead of where you were. See [**Understanding Search Query Performance**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/understanding-search-query-performance).

## **Common mistakes**

**Testing the new image against the old one on a panel** rather than ranking the new ones first.

**Switching after two days** on normal fluctuation.

**Comparing to a single previous week** instead of a range.

**Watching CTR and ignoring CVR.**

**Reading all placements together**, which buries the signal in noise.

**Stopping after one win.**

## **Related**

- [**Writing an Image Brief**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/writing-an-image-brief) — producing the candidates.
- [**Why the Main Image Decides Your CTR**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/why-the-main-image-decides-your-ctr) — the benchmark this is measured against.
- [**Placements: Top of Search**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/placements-top-of-search) — why Top of Search is the cleanest read.