Installation Guide

Step 1: Install from the Shopify App Store

1. Open the Simple Split Testing listing on the Shopify App Store
2. Click Add app and install

You’ll land in the Simple Split Testing dashboard inside your Shopify admin, on the Split tests page. A Get started checklist at the top tracks the next three steps and ticks them off as you finish them.

Step 2: Enable the theme app embed

Variant assignment only runs when the Split Embed Script app embed is enabled on your published theme. Tests cannot be launched until it is on.

1. In Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes → Customize
2. Open App embeds in the left rail (under Theme settings)
3. Toggle on Split Embed Script
4. Save

Back in the app, the checklist has a Recheck button next to this step so you can confirm straight away.

The embed injects a small script into your store’s <head> on every page load. While no tests are active, the script stops before any network call, so an installed-but-idle app has no measurable cost per page view.

Step 3: Confirm the web pixel is active

The web pixel forwards storefront events (page views, cart adds, orders, custom events) to the app so conversions can be counted. The app installs the pixel automatically on first install, and the checklist shows it as done once it’s live.

If automatic install didn’t run, the checklist step says so and offers Open Customer Events, which takes you to Settings → Customer events in Shopify admin to enable it by hand. Reinstalling the app also retries automatic setup.

You don’t pick events here. The pixel sends the standard storefront events plus anything you’ve defined under Custom events.

Using an AI agent? get_setup_status reports the same two things, and is the first thing to check if a live test reports nothing. See AI agents & MCP.

Step 4: Create your first test

1. From the Split tests page, click New
2. Name the test. The handle below the name is the slug you’ll type into data-split-id, and you can edit it with the pencil
3. Add a description of what you’re trying to learn (optional)
4. Write the hypothesis if you have one: what you expect to happen and why. Once the test completes you can mark it proved true or false, so the test keeps its answer
5. Pick the primary metric. Revenue per visitor is the default, and the other options are conversion rate, average order value, add to cart rate, and any custom event you’ve defined
6. Define two or more variants. The first is the control. Weights are the traffic share each variant gets and should total 100
7. Open Audience to restrict who the test applies to (Growth and above), and Advanced to set the confidence level, the sample size you’re planning for, and sticky bucketing
8. Click Save as draft

Custom events and audience targeting are both Growth features. On Free and Starter the Audience section shows what it would do and links to the plans page, and the metric picker offers the four built-in metrics.

Step 5: Mark up your theme

Edit your theme code and add data-split-id and data-split-variant attributes to the elements you want to vary. The draft test page hands you a ready-made block per variant that you can copy straight in. Put the control first.

A test with no markup in your theme shows every visitor the control, and nothing reports that as an error, so this step is not optional.

Full reference: storefront markup.

Step 6: Preview

On the draft test, click Preview next to a variant. It opens your live storefront in a new tab with that variant forced, and a banner in the top right confirms preview mode. The variant sticks for the rest of that browsing session, so pages you click through to show it too.

Check every variant renders the way you expect before you launch. See preview links.

Step 7: Launch

The draft page shows a Ready to launch panel listing anything still outstanding. Once it’s clear, click Launch test. Visitors start getting bucketed immediately, and results appear on the test page within a few minutes once you have traffic.

Launching is refused while the Split Embed Script app embed is off on your published theme, because the test would collect nothing. Resuming a paused test follows the same rule.

Measure an order fact with Shopify Flow

Some conversions are facts about an order rather than something a visitor clicks: a warranty attached, a bundle bought, a subscription started. Record those from a Shopify Flow workflow that starts from an order, using the app’s Record split test event action. See Shopify Flow.

Plan limits worth knowing

Every plan counts tested sessions, which are sessions where a visitor was actually bucketed into a running test. Paused tests cost you nothing.

• Free runs 1 test at a time, with no custom events and no audience targeting
• Starter runs 5 tests at a time, still without custom events or audience targeting
• Growth and above run unlimited concurrent tests and add custom events, audience targeting, and stopping a test automatically once a winner is clear

Check where you stand on the Plans page in the app.