Price test QA checklist (Shopify)
6 min
This checklist helps you confirm a Shopify price test is set up correctly before real visitors see it. Work through it for every variation, on desktop and mobile. It covers both strategies; items marked (clones) or (cart transform) apply only to duplicate products or cart transform.
Available on: Shopify.
1. Preliminary setup
- The Personizely app embed is enabled in your published theme: Online Store → Themes → Customize → App embeds. See Install on Shopify.
- Price selectors are configured under Settings → Campaigns, and Validate shows no errors (supported themes).
- (clones) Inventory, shipping profiles, discounts, search, reviews, subscription and bundle apps are set up for the duplicates. See Set up your store before launch.
- Every variation has the price rules you intended, including variant-level rules. See Price rules and rounding.
- The campaign has a primary goal, usually Purchase with revenue or profit per visitor.
Support can review your setup before launch. Send them the campaign link from the chat in the app.
2. Storefront prices (preview)
Open each variation with its preview link (?ply_preview_campaign=<campaignId>.<variationId>, from the variation's Preview button). Prices that were rewritten get a red outline. The preview parameter stays on links you click, so you can browse the store in that variation.
- Prices and compare-at prices follow your rules, including rounding.
- Nothing else changed by accident: titles, images, videos, descriptions, ratings and reviews look the same as on the live site.
- On the product page, switching variants updates the price every time.
- Savings amounts and percent-off badges are correct, and compare-at prices equal to the price are hidden.
- Prices are rewritten on every page where the product appears:
- Homepage
- Collection pages
- Search bar (predictive search) and search results
- Product page
- Recommended products (for example "You may also like" and "Recently viewed")
- Cart drawer and cart page upsells
- Product quizzes
- Landing pages and other app-rendered sections
- Prices in other currencies are correct if you sell in several markets.
- Open the live site with ?ply_disable=1 to compare against the original store with Personizely turned off.
3. Cart and checkout (running campaign)
Preview only repaints the storefront. Checkout prices change only while the campaign is running, so test cart and checkout on a running campaign:
- Give the campaign a target that only you match, for example a query string filter such as ?qa=price, and start it.
- Open the store in a private window with that query string and add ?ply_debug=1. The browser console shows which variation you're in ("Campaign … ran - variation …").
- Open new private windows until you've landed in each variation and the control.
Then check, for each variation:
- Prices in the cart drawer, cart page and checkout match the product page.
- Prices stay correct with a quantity of 2 or more.
- Products from different variations and products outside the test show the right prices together in one cart.
- Custom bundle or volume pricing works as intended.
- (cart transform) /cart.js shows attributes.__campaignVariations with your campaign and variation.
- (cart transform) Checkout shows the variation price. Compare-at prices don't appear in checkout; this is expected.
- (clones) The cart contains the duplicate product (/cart.js shows a different product ID from the original), at the variation price.
- (clones) Opening a duplicate's URL directly redirects to the original product. (With Products with subscriptions or bundles on, visitors in a variation are instead taken to the duplicate.)
- Express checkout buttons (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay) on product and collection pages charge the right price. These buttons can skip the cart; if they show the original price, consider hiding them on campaign products during the test.
- Discount codes you plan to promote still apply.
4. Test order
- The cart holds the right products and variants for the variation.
- Complete a test checkout (Shopify's test payment gateway or a real order you refund) and check the prices on the order.
- The order shows up under the right variation in the campaign report after a few minutes.
5. Before launch
- Switch the target back to your real audience (or All visitors).
- Reset the campaign's statistics so your test orders and visits don't count. See Report filters, outliers and resetting stats.
- Check the traffic split and the advanced statistical settings.
Troubleshooting
- A price isn't outlined in preview → it isn't matched by your price selectors, or its card has no product ID. See Price selectors.
- Cart or checkout shows the original price → see Cart transform troubleshooting or Duplicate products troubleshooting.
- You always land in the same variation → your assignment is stored in the browser. Use a new private window for each attempt.