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Creating your first test

When you launch Shoplift for the first time, you'll be prompted to go through a short onboarding flow. Once onboarding is completed, you'll land on the Dashboard, which is the home for all of your recent tests and a launching point for creating new tests.
Initially, your Dashboard won't have very much in it - but creating and launching your first test is incredibly easy and takes only a few minutes. We'll walk you through each step, from draft to launch, below.

Create a new test

From the Dashboard, click the black button that says "Create test." This will launch the test creation flow, which is where you will make all of the necessary selections for your test, create a draft, and make edits to your test variants before launching your test and collecting data.

Select a template from your theme

Once you've entered the test creation flow from the Dashboard, you'll be prompted to select a template from your live theme to test. Shoplift empowers merchants to conduct robust A/B tests on themes by leveraging the power of Shopify templates, which provide the design and layout for both individual pages and groups of pages on your website.
Like in Shopify, templates from your theme are organized in Shoplift by the type of page they support: your Homepage, Collection pages, Product pages, and Landing pages.
Select the template that you want to test and proceed to the next step.
New to A/B testing?
If you are new to A/B testing, we have a number of test ideas to get you started.

Create your test variant

There are three ways to create a new test variant in Shoplift: duplicating your original, selecting a different template from your theme, or creating a variant with a Lift Assist™ test recommendation. We'll cover each option here at a high level.

Option 1: Duplicate your original template

If you choose to create a variant by duplicating your original, Shoplift will create a copy of the template you originally selected to test and add this to your test as the test variant. You can then make edits to this duplicate in the Shopify Theme Editor to test anything you want, such as new copy, images, or layouts.
Please note that while all themes and templates are supported for duplication, the degree to which you can edit your template in the Shopify Theme Editor will depend on your theme. Read more about Theme Compatibility.

Option 2: Select a different template from your theme

If you've already created a template that you want to test against your original, you can select it from your theme and it will be added to your test draft as your variant. A popular use case for this is for testing pages created with third-party landing page builder apps, like Replo, Shogun, or Pagefly. Read more about Testing third-party pages and templates.

Option 3: Use a Lift Assist™ recommendation

Another option for creating a test variant is to use a Lift Assist™ test recommendation. Lift Assist™ is Shoplift's recommendation engine which dynamically provides theme sections to extend your store's functionality and give you the tools you need to run powerful tests otherwise not capable with your theme.
When a Lift Assist™ recommendation is selected, Shoplift will create a variant by duplicating your original template and injecting the necessary theme section into the duplicate. All Lift Assist™ theme assets will automatically use your Brand Styles to keep your tests on-brand and save you time on design. Read more about how to set up and use Lift Assist.

Adjust your traffic allocation

By default, each variant is set to receive 50% of total test traffic, but you can change this to any distribution that you want if you'd like to more tightly manage the traffic exposure of specific tests.

We recommend running tests with the default allocation of 50% for both the original and variant templates, but there are certain cases where you may choose to allocate more or less traffic depending on your strategy.

Choose a primary goal

Once you've selected a template and created a variant, you can define a primary goal for your test. Shoplift uses three key metrics to define success for tests: conversion rate, average order value, and revenue per session.
The primary goal you select will be used to determine the statistical significance of your test, but all metrics will still be included in the report. For more information on each of these metrics, view our documentation on Goals and reporting metrics.

Set your device exposure

Next, you can choose to run your test on all devices, or limit your test traffic to a specific device type. To limit your test to desktop or mobile traffic only, select the option for "Desktop" or "Mobile".

New and returning visitor segmentation

In addition to providing device segmentation options, Shoplift also provides segmentation capabilities based on new and returning website visitors. Segmenting your tests based on new and returning visitors can be a powerful way to optimize your store for these major cohorts of users, particularly for subscription-based businesses.
Please note that new and returning visitor segmentation becomes more accurate over time as data is collected from our tracking script. To ensure a minimum threshold of accuracy, this segmentation option is not available for tests until we've collected data for a minimum of 14 days from initial installation of the app.
After 14 days, you will be able to segment your tests based on visitor type, and our segmentation and reporting will increase in accuracy the longer the app is installed.