Should I display "Bestsellers" or "New Releases" on the homepage?

[quicksilver1024]

I can think of merits for each and I'm having difficulty deciding which is the best approach.

The merits are:

"Bestsellers" - Shows products that have a higher probability of grabbing new visitor's attention ('new visitor' as in somebody who is completely foreign to our products).

"New Releases" - Keeps the homepage fresh with new content and displays the most useful information to repeat visitors who check in on our website to see what's new.

What do you think?

[incrediBILL]

Why not do both?

You show a row of bestsellers with a link to more bestsellers and do the same with new releases. That way you get the best of both.

[quicksilver1024]

And what if I only have the option to choose one? Which would you prefer?

[piatkow]

Rather depends on the product and your visitor profile.

If people are making a one off purchase and aren't necessarily particularly expert then best sellers are probably good.

If it is something that attracts many repeat purchases then your customers may be more interested in whats new.

[jwolthuis]

Make sure that if you display both, you eliminate duplicates. I'd guess there's quite a bit of overlap between the two categories.

[pbradish]

We've displayed one or both on home pages in the past but after running tests and heat maps we now display neither for our largest eCommerce site.

That space is now taken by a large slider and other graphics pointing customers towards our most popular categories. The freed up space has been real nice for when we have sales or need to highlight a certain brand or category.

Since new products are no longer displayed on the home page I created a category for newest products and added it to all of our navigation menus. This has been much more effective for us (backed by analytics) rather than listing new products on the home page. All categories can be sorted by best sellers so that wasn't much of an issue either.

It's going to be different for everyone though. If possible test several versions and see what your customers respond best to.