Theme Tests

A theme test shows the visitors assigned to a variant a different theme from your store — a redesign, a new theme from the Theme Store, a seasonal copy of your current one — while everyone else keeps seeing your live theme. Your live theme stays published the whole time.

This is a Shopify-only test type. On an HTML site the Theme test row does not appear.

Before You Start

A theme test compares your live theme with one of your store’s unpublished themes, so you need two things in Shopify first.

An unpublished theme

In your Shopify admin, open Online Store → Themes. The theme you want to test must be in the theme library, below your live theme. To test a redesign of your current theme, click ⋯ → Duplicate on the live theme and edit the copy; to test a new theme, add it to the library without publishing it.

The app embed on, in both themes

Split Test Pro runs on your storefront through the Experiment app embed, and app embeds are switched on per theme. A duplicated or newly added theme starts with it off, and without it the variant theme has no Split Test Pro script: no exposures, no on-page goals, and nothing to send visitors back to your live theme when the test ends.

Your live theme needs the embed on as well — it is already on if your experiments run today. See Shopify Theme App Extension for how to check it.

Setting Up a Theme Test

On the experiment’s Variants step, open the variant’s card and tick Theme test. The panel has two boxes:

• Control theme with a Live pill — your published theme, locked. The control always sees it.
• Variant theme — a dropdown of your unpublished themes (Choose a theme). Pick the one this variant should show.

Once a theme is chosen:

• Preview theme opens your store on that theme in a new tab, without Shopify’s preview bar.
• Edit theme opens that theme in the Shopify theme editor.
• Under the dropdown the panel shows the embed state: App embed on, or App embed off — Enable in theme editor. The link opens that theme’s App embeds panel; switch Experiment on, save, and click Re-check.

The note under the panel sums it up: Your live theme stays published. Visitors assigned to this variant will see the selected theme. If your store has no unpublished theme, the panel says Duplicate your live theme in Shopify first.

In the Experiment Summary, the Control row reads Live theme · Dawn (your theme’s name) and the variant lists Theme test among its test types.

You can also ask Splitty for one — “test my Dawn — holiday theme against the live one” — and it drafts a variant with the Theme test set to that theme, as long as the theme is in your store.

How It Works for Visitors

When a visitor assigned to the variant opens a page on your store, the Split Test Pro script sends them once to the same page on the variant theme, using Shopify’s own theme preview (preview_theme_id, with pb=0 to hide the preview bar). The path, query string and hash are kept. From then on Shopify keeps that visitor on the variant theme as they browse, with no further redirects.

The switch happens on the first page the experiment targets; after that the visitor stays on the variant theme on every page, targeted or not. For a whole-theme comparison, target every page so both groups are counted from their first page view.

• No preview bar. Visitors see the theme as if it were published.
• Checkout and orders are unaffected. Checkout is not part of the theme, and the Split Test Pro Web Pixel attributes orders to the variant whichever theme the visitor browsed.
• Your live theme stays published. Nothing changes for the control or for visitors outside the test.
• The theme editor is left alone. Nobody is sent anywhere inside the Shopify theme editor or when the store is shown in a frame.

The first page view on a visitor’s first visit loads the live theme briefly before the switch, the same way a redirect does.

Combining With Other Test Types and Experiments

A Theme test is an ordinary test type. One variant can combine it with Code · CSS & JS, URL redirect and Template test — the code runs and the template applies on the variant theme. A variant with both Theme test and URL redirect redirects on the next page load, once the visitor is on the variant theme.

One experiment can mix theme-test variants with other variants, and theme tests run alongside your other experiments; there is no exclusivity rule. Two running experiments whose variants send the same visitors to different themes do not work well together, though: a visitor can only be on one theme at a time. Run those one after the other. See Running Multiple Experiments.

Preview on the variant card opens your page on the live theme, not on the variant theme. Write any code for the variant with that in mind, or check it with Preview theme.

After the Test

• Visitors return to your live theme on their own. Once the experiment is completed (or the visitor is no longer in a variant with that theme), the script sends them back to your live theme on their next page view. Only visitors the script sent are sent back; you previewing a theme from the admin are never touched.
• Make the winner permanent in Shopify. When the variant theme wins, the Results page shows a Make it permanent block: Variant A wins with the theme Dawn — new design. Publish it in Shopify to make it permanent. Publish in Shopify opens your theme library and Preview opens the theme. After publishing, check that the Experiment app embed is still on in the new live theme (Check the app embed). See Declaring a Winner.
• Rolling out the winner keeps sending everyone on the targeted pages to the winning theme until you publish it. Publish before you stop serving, otherwise visitors return to your old theme. See Winner Rollout.

Theme Tests vs Shopify Rollouts

Shopify’s own Rollouts can also A/B test a theme, on the Grow plan and above, with a percentage split between two themes. Split Test Pro theme tests run on every plan, sit alongside template tests and per-product targeting, combine with code changes in the same variant, and are judged by the same Bayesian results as the rest of your tests.

Next Steps

• Test one template instead of a whole theme: Template Tests.
• What the other test types do: Variant Types Overview.
• Check the embed and the script on your storefront: Shopify Theme App Extension.