Shipping Testing
Shipping Testing allows you to experiment with different shipping configurations, such as:
- Free shipping thresholds
- Shipping rates
- Shipping method names
- Shipping policy messaging
Eligibility
Shipping Testing is available for merchants who meet one of the following requirements:
- Shopify Plus merchants
- Merchants with more than 7,500 orders
- Merchants on the Scale plan
- Merchants with 600+ orders who upgrade to the Scale plan
Note: Shipping plans must be managed directly within Shopify. Third-party shipping applications and discount tools are not currently supported.
For merchants with more than 20,000 orders or unique shipping configurations, please contact your Customer Success Manager to review feasibility before proceeding.
Requirements Before Launch
To configure a Shipping Plan Test, access to the following Shopify sections is required:
- Shipping & Delivery Settings
- Products
In addition, all customer-facing shipping messages that reference the shipping offer being tested must be identified and updated as needed. Please identify and provide the areas where shipping-related messaging should be updated, and our team will implement those updates as part of the test setup.
Common locations include:
- Promotional bars
- Product Detail Pages (PDPs)
- Product Listing Pages (PLPs)
- FAQ pages
- Cart shipping progress bars
- Checkout messaging
For QA purposes, depending on your audience targeting configuration, it may be necessary to review these areas using a VPN to ensure the correct experience is being served and to confirm that all required updates are displaying correctly before launch.
Checkout Considerations
Checkout content cannot be modified through the testing platform. If shipping-related messaging exists within checkout, it must be manually removed or updated by the merchant for the duration of the test.
Pausing or Ending a Test
Shipping Plan Tests assign visitors to a shipping experience before they reach checkout. As a result, visitors who were previously included in the test may continue to see their assigned shipping plan even after the test is paused.
Because of this behavior, simply pausing the test is not recommended.
Recommended Process
To safely conclude a Shipping Plan Test:
- A Clean variant will be included in the Shipping Test experience that mirrors the default experience.
- Allocate 100% of traffic to the Clean variant.
- Allow the Clean variant to run for approximately one week.
The Clean variant helps clear any shipping rates that may have been applied to existing carts during the test. For example, a visitor may have added items to their cart and received the test shipping rate without completing checkout. Running the Clean variant ensures that those visitors receive the standard shipping experience when they return.
We recommend keeping the Clean variant active for at least one week to help ensure that test shipping rates are fully removed from existing carts and that no residual test data remains.