Usually, when you make a decision, there’s no way to really know what would have happened if you went the other way. All you can do is pick a path and hope for the best.
In ecommerce, this isn’t the case.
A/B testing allows you to try out two different versions of the same page at the same time. Here’s how A/B tests work — after you’ve made some changes to a page, some visitors will be randomly directed to the original version, while others will be randomly directed to the updated version.
That way, you’ll be able to objectively determine whether your changes are having their intended effect.
In this guide, we’ll show you everything you need to know to set up A/B tests for your Shopify product pages. With the help of an ecommerce A/B testing tool, it’s really not that complicated.
There are many ways that A/B testing can be used to benefit your Shopify store:
Use A/B testing to optimize your Shopify storeShogun’s A/B testing tool is both powerful and easy to use Get started now
Ecommerce is a zero-sum game.
If a prospect lands on one of your product pages only to quickly back out, there’s a good chance you’ll lose them to a competitor — maybe forever.
And you can bet that your competitors are doing everything in their power to make sure they don’t lose any potential customers to you.
Continuous A/B testing will allow you to keep finding new ways to improve your product pages and stay one step ahead of the competition.
Also, consumer behavior isn’t static. What once worked for your Shopify product pages may now be ineffective.
By continuously testing your Shopify product pages, you can quickly identify new trends in visitor behavior, respond to changing tastes, and avoid becoming outdated.
You certainly don’t need to be a professional web developer to take advantage of A/B testing. Here are a few ecommerce A/B testing ideas that anyone can try out to see if they move the needle on their product page’s conversion rate or other performance metrics:
Completing one of these relatively easy A/B tests will allow you to quickly get a win on the board, giving you the confidence to take on more extensive, continuous testing in the future.
Let’s go through that last example — seeing what happens when you add a collection of related products to a product page — to show you exactly how to set up your own experiment with Shogun A/B Testing:
Step 1. After downloading and installing Shogun A/B Testing, open the app and click on the “Create test” button. Then, select the “Page test” option.
Step 2. Select the page you want to experiment with in the “Original” section of the test settings. Then, click on the “Copy original” button in the “Variant” section to duplicate the design of the page.
Step 3. You’ll find that you can make changes to your new variant directly through Shopify’s built-in theme editor — conveniently, Shogun doesn’t require you to learn how to use any third-party design tools to set up your experiments.
The theme we’re using for our store comes with a related products section, so we can just add this feature to our new variant with a couple of clicks.
Step 4. Select a goal for your experiment. There are pre-set options such as conversion rate, add-to-cart rate, and average order value, and you have the ability to set up a custom event to track as well.
You can also determine how the percentage of traffic is split up between the original version and the new variant, and you can target your test to a certain segment of your visitors if you like (custom audiences can be built based on factors such as where the visitor is located, whether they’re a new visitor or a returning visitor, what type of device they’re using, etc.).
Step 5. Whenever you’re ready, click on the “Review” button and then confirm that you want to start your test.
Step 6. After publishing your test, you can see how both the original version and the new variant are performing in real-time.
Shogun will also show you when the results of your test have reached statistical significance, so you’ll know when you’ve collected enough data to confidently conclude your experiment. Then, you’ll be able to make a highly informed decision about whether you should stick with the original version or fully switch over to the new variant.
Overall, Shogun A/B Testing makes it especially easy to conduct your own ecommerce experiments and figure out what it takes to improve your product pages.
We’ve already gone over the many benefits of Shopify A/B testing — and you don’t need to just take our word for it. Countless ecommerce merchants have shown that A/B testing produces significant results, such as:
Shogun is natively integrated with the Shopify platform — unlike many other Shopify A/B testing tools, you can simply install Shogun directly onto your store rather than setting up the integration by manually editing your site code.
Use A/B testing to optimize your Shopify storeShogun’s A/B testing tool is both powerful and easy to use Get started now
