Theme Testing on Shopify

The purpose of this guide is to show how to duplicate your homepage for Split URL testing purposes.

A. Creating the new homepage and getting the preview theme id

1. The first step is to log in to your Shopify dashboard and navigate Online Store > Theme, under Sales Channels.
2. Now duplicate your existing template, so we have 2 separate templates to edit. ‘Theme Name’ > Actions > Duplicate
3. Scroll down on the same page and you’ll see Theme Library.
4. The copy of your template will be available as ‘Copy of {theme name}’, Copy of Dawn in our example.The process of duplication might take a couple of minutes to finalize.
5. By using the Customize option you can make all the changes needed for your test
6. After you’re done with the changes, save your changes but do not click on Publish, then click on Exit to navigate back to the Themes page
7. This step is the trickiest part! From the Themes page, find the duplicate of your template (called Copy of {theme name}).
   1. Click on Actions
   2. Right click on Preview
   3. Click on Copy Link Address
8. The copied link will look like the following link
   https://testing-figpii-dns.myshopify.com/?_ab=0&_bt=eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaEpJaVYwWlhOMGFXNW5MV1pwWjNCcGFTMWtibk11YlhsemFHOXdhV1o1TG1OdmJRWTZCa1ZVIiwiZXhwIjoiMjAyMi0wNy0xMlQxNTo1OTo1Ny45ODFaIiwicHVyIjoicGVybWFuZW50X3Bhc3N3b3JkX2J5cGFzcyJ9fQ%3D%3D--8f908aa0e6c53ea64574d8573647df257a970a56&_fd=0&_sc=1&key=7969501cf1161ddb4b734c4f5542185319a4b706208f007f26a4f0951bd6ba46&preview_theme_id=130376892598
   1. We need the last part of this link which contains the preview_theme_id=130376892598
      this preview theme id will be used in our Split URL test.
   2. Save the preview theme id! The rest of the link can be discarded.
   3. Note: You can use this link to preview the changes you made to the Home Page

B. Creating the Split URL test on FigPii

1. Log in to your FigPii account at figpii.com/login
2. Navigate to your A/B testing dashboard and click on Create New Experiment
3. Choose a name for your experiment
4. Choose Split URL as the Type of Experiment
5. Under Page Targeting choose Multiple pages and:
   1. For the first rule, we’re going to use Include - Simple Match - /
   2. As your second rule, choose Exclude, then Contains, and then paste in the preview_theme_id you copied earlier.
   3. For the third rule, choose Exclude, then Contains, and test=home_page as the value.
6. For the Preview URL, put in your home page URL, e.g. https://www.figpii.com/
7. Under Device and Visitors, choose the device type you want to target. We suggest creating a separate test for mobile and desktop, as most of the time users react differently on different device types.
8. Now we need to construct the URL for your variation.
   
   The formula is as follows:
   
   [Your Home Page URL] + [?preview_theme_id=xxxxxxxxx] + [&test=home_page]
   
   For example:https://testing-figpii-dns.myshopify.com/?preview_theme_id=130376892598&test=home_page
   1. Notice the /? after the domain name and the & between preview_theme_id and test=
9. After constructing your variation URL paste in the value in the variation section and choose a name for your variation.Here you can set your weight (% of visitors that will see the variation) as well.
10. Under Goals add as many goals as you’d like to track on your test. If you need help with setting up event based goals (i.e. clicks on certain buttons etc.) get in touch with FigPii support at support@figpii.com we will set them up for you asap.
11. Under Advanced settings you have options like IP targeting (to test the Split URL test on your device before launching it on live), the test scheduler (to set a start and end time for your test) and so on. Visit https://kb.figpii.com for further explanations on all the options available.
12. Check out Can I Send Experiment Data To Google Analytics? to learn how to integrate your Split URL test with Google Analytics.
13. Click on Save and Launch to launch your experiment!