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PIE framework · Free page ranker

PIE prioritization: rank the pages to test first

PIE scores each page of your site from 1 to 10 on Potential, Importance and Ease, then averages the three. The result tells you where to run your next test. ICE uses the same average to rank ideas; PIE ranks the pages before you have the ideas. The free ranker below compares up to 10 pages.

What it is and where it came from

A way to choose where to test, before what to test

Chris Goward designed PIE to prioritize the areas of a site for A/B testing. Conversion, the agency where he is President, defines it with three questions: how much a page can improve, how valuable its traffic is, and how difficult a test on it will be. Its text does not state a scale or a formula, and its sample table is consistent with an arithmetic mean. This ranker and Hypotize use whole numbers from 1 to 10 and average the three. Ease is scored the other way round from the question: a high score means an easy test, so all three scores point the same way.

Source: Conversion, PIE Prioritization Framework

PIE and ICE

Same math, a different thing being scored

Both frameworks average three scores from 1 to 10, so the formula alone cannot tell them apart. The difference is the object. PIE was built to score pages, and the score says where to look. ICE scores ideas, and the score says what to try. Conversion notes that teams also use PIE to pick which idea to test first; at that point it works much like ICE, with Potential in place of Confidence. This ranker keeps the original object: the page.

What you score

PIE
A page, template or funnel step
ICE
An idea for a test or a change

The question it answers

PIE
Where should we test first?
ICE
Which idea should we try first?

The first letter

PIE
Potential: room to improve on the page
ICE
Impact: effect of the idea if it works

The second letter

PIE
Importance: value of the traffic to the page
ICE
Confidence: evidence that the idea will work

Ease

PIE
Difficulty of running any test on the page
ICE
Cost of building and testing this idea

The math

PIE
Average of three scores from 1 to 10
ICE
Average of three scores from 1 to 10

What the team rates

Three questions, and the data behind each answer

Potential

How much improvement can be made on this page?

Score it with: Drop-off and exit rates, a heuristic review, session recordings, survey answers. The weakest pages usually score highest.

Importance

How valuable is the traffic to this page?

Score it with: Visits per month, the share of revenue or sign-ups that pass through it, and what that traffic costs you.

Ease

How easy will it be to run a test on this page? 10 means light work, 1 means the page is blocked.

Score it with: Design and engineering work, the testing tool's limits on the page, and approvals from the people who own it.

Free page ranker · No account required

Rank your pages

Inputs stay in this browser. Nothing is sent to Hypotize by this ranker.

Your pages, each scored from 1 to 10

10 is the best answer on every score. For Ease, 10 means a light test and 1 means a very difficult one.

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3

Where to test first

  1. 01 Product page7.67
  2. 02 Homepage7.00
  3. 03 Checkout6.67

PIE = (Potential + Importance + Ease) ÷ 3

On a tie, the page with the higher Importance comes first.

Worked example

Why the checkout does not always come first

An online shop scores three pages. The checkout gets Potential 6, Importance 10 and Ease 4: every order passes through it, but it is already decent and any test needs the payments team. The product page gets 8, 8 and 7: visitors leave it more often and the team owns it. The homepage gets 5, 7 and 9. The product page wins with 7.67, then the homepage with 7.00 and the checkout with 6.67. The most important page is not the first test, because Importance is one question out of three.

After the ranking

From the page to the ideas

  1. 01

    Pick the top page

    The page with the highest PIE score is where the next test goes. Keep the scores: they explain the choice when someone asks why not the checkout.

  2. 02

    Collect ideas for it

    Write down what could fix the problem you found when you scored Potential. Each idea becomes one experiment with its own hypothesis.

  3. 03

    Rank the ideas

    Score the ideas for that page with ICE or RICE, or keep PIE if each test is a whole-page change. Then run the one at the top.

Decision rules

When to use PIE, and when not to

Use it when

  • You run conversion tests on a website or an app and need to choose where to start.
  • Traffic and revenue differ a lot from one page to another.
  • Some pages are hard to test because of their owners or the testing tool.

Do not let it decide when

  • The work is not tied to a page, such as pricing, an email sequence or a new channel. Use ICE or RICE.
  • A page has too little traffic for a test to reach a result in a reasonable time.
  • A legal, brand or launch deadline already fixes the order.

Common input failures

  • Importance from opinion instead of analytics, so the page the boss looks at wins.
  • Ease scored only for engineering, while approvals block the test for weeks.
  • Potential high everywhere, because nobody looked at where visitors actually leave.

In Hypotize

How Hypotize scores PIE

PIE is one of the built-in frameworks, next to ICE and RICE. You set it for a project, or pick it for a single experiment. In Hypotize PIE scores an experiment, not a page. Set it on a project when the backlog is page tests: each experiment is one test on one page, and the three scores answer the questions for that page. Use ICE when the ideas are not tied to a single page. Each person rates Potential, Importance and Ease from 1 to 10. Hypotize averages each vote, and the priority is the average of all the votes. An AI agent connected through MCP votes the same way, with the keys potential, importance and ease.

A score ranks the backlog. It does not run the test. In Hypotize the score is attached to a record with enforced rules: no test reaches Ready without a hypothesis, a success metric, a segment and dates, and none closes without a result and a written learning.

Choose the right framework

Pick it by the question, not the math

ICE

What you rate
Impact, Confidence, Ease, each 1 to 10
The score
Average, stays on a 1 to 10 scale
Choose it when
Ranking many growth ideas quickly on one shared rubric.

PIE

What you rate
Potential, Importance, Ease, each 1 to 10
The score
Average, same arithmetic as ICE
Choose it when
Ranking pages and funnel steps for conversion work: where to test first. The math matches ICE; the questions are about the page, not the idea.

RICE

What you rate
Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort
The score
(R × I × C) ÷ E, effort divides the score
Choose it when
When audience size and effort differ enough between ideas that they must change the ranking.

Keep the context

Rank the pages here. Then keep every test you run on them.

Create your first experimentICE guideRICE guideGrowth experiment templateHypotize for CRO teams

Reviewed 29 October 2026. The source link identifies the documented method; product behavior is derived from the current Hypotize framework configuration and scoring code.