Shopify variations

If your website runs on Shopify, you can test whole themes or page templates without writing code. ABlyft offers two variation types for it: Shopify Theme and Shopify Template.

Before you start, the ABlyft snippet must be installed in your Shopify theme, and the experiment needs a page and a goal like any other experiment.

Shopify ThemeCopy Anchor Link

Shows a draft theme of your store to a part of your customers before you publish it.

1. In Shopify, go to Online Store → Themes and prepare your draft theme (do not publish it).
2. Open the Edit code page of the draft theme. The theme ID is part of the URL, for example themes/123456789.
3. In ABlyft, create a variation of the type Shopify Theme, see Variations.
4. In the section Shopify Theme, enter the Draft theme ID (numbers only, up to 12 digits) and save.

When a visitor is assigned to the variation, the snippet waits until Shopify is available on the page. If the visitor does not see the draft theme yet, the snippet redirects to the preview of that theme and hides Shopify's preview bar.

Shopify TemplateCopy Anchor Link

Shows an alternative template of a page type, for example a second product page layout. It works with all page types: product, collection, page, blog, article, cart, search and customers.

1. In your theme, create the alternative template, for example product.alternate.liquid or product.alternate.json.
2. In ABlyft, create a variation of the type Shopify Template.
3. In the section Shopify Template, enter the Template name. Only the part between the page type and the file ending is used. For product.alternate.liquid enter alternate.
4. Save.

The snippet then reloads the page with the parameter ?view=alternate, which makes Shopify render the alternative template. If the page already has a view parameter, the snippet does not redirect.

Preview and goalsCopy Anchor Link

• Use Show in browser in the menu of the variation, or the preview of the experiment, to check how the theme or template looks. See Preview & QA.
• Goals work as in every other experiment. See Goal types. For purchases and revenue in Shopify, ABlyft supports order tracking through a webhook or through the Customer Event pixel, see Shopify tracking.

RelatedCopy Anchor Link

For developers: the underlying functions are shopifyPreviewTheme and shopifySwitchTemplate in the JavaScript tools.

Next stepsCopy Anchor Link