Preview links | Culsin

Preview links show a variant on your live storefront before you activate the test. They are signed, scoped to one variant of one test, and ignore the audience rules so you can preview from any page, country or device.

Open a preview

Open the test in the admin
In the Variants card, click Preview next to a variant
The storefront opens in a new tab, showing that variant

The link is a normal storefront URL with a splt_preview token on it:

https://your-store.com/?splt_preview=eyJ0Ijoi...

Copy it out of the address bar to send to someone, or change the path to preview the variant on any page that carries the test’s markup.

What preview mode does

While a preview is active:

You are pinned to the variant the link is for, overriding any variant you were already bucketed into
Audience rules are ignored, so URL, country, device and visitor-type rules do not apply
Status does not matter. Draft, paused and completed tests preview exactly like active ones
Opening the link hides the page until the variant is in place, whatever the anti-flicker setting says, so you never see the control flash first
A banner appears in the top right

You are not counted as a participant. No assignment is recorded, and no bucketing cookie is set, so previewing does not add a visitor to either arm of the test.

The banner names the variant you are looking at. When the test has more than one variant, that name is a menu: pick another variant and you land on the same page rendering it, so you can compare without going back to the admin. Middle-click an entry to open it in its own tab.

Next to it are two controls. Hide (the eye icon) gets the banner out of the way of the page underneath while keeping you in preview, and it stays hidden while you browse. Exit ends the preview session and puts you back to seeing the storefront as a normal visitor. Clicking Preview again in the admin brings a hidden banner back.

How long a preview lasts

A link is good for 24 hours from the moment it was created. After that it stops working and the page falls back to the control.

While the test page is open in the admin, the Preview buttons quietly refresh themselves, so a tab you left open all afternoon still hands you a working link when you come back to it.

Once you open a link, preview mode follows you around the storefront for the rest of that link’s life without the query string on every URL. Switching between variants from the banner does not extend it: the links in the menu expire when the one you arrived with does.

If a link has expired by the time it is opened, the page recovers on its own and renders as a normal visit rather than staying stuck.

Exiting preview

Click Exit on the banner, or add ?clear-preview=true to any storefront URL.

The link carries its own permission, so whoever you send it to sees the same variant without needing a Shopify staff account. Paste it into Slack, an email or a doc.

It cannot be called back. Creating a new link does not kill an old one, and both stop working when they reach their own 24-hour limit. Treat a preview link like any shareable URL and do not post it somewhere it will be archived publicly.

What previews do not change

Your activity is still tracked. Page views, add to carts and custom events you fire during a preview are recorded like any other visit. They count for no variant of the test you are previewing, because preview does not create an assignment.
An existing visitor id is still used. If you browsed the store normally before, you already have a visitor id, and events you fire while previewing still ride on it. Clear the storefront’s cookies first if you want a clean read.
Orders are real. A checkout completed in preview is a real order with real money. Use a test payment method.

Inviting reviewers before activation

A common workflow:

Create the test as a draft
Open each variant’s preview and copy the link
Send the links to teammates, copywriters, designers or stakeholders
Iterate on the variants until everyone is happy
Activate the test

Links last a day, so send a fresh one if a reviewer comes back later in the week.