Personalizations - Getting Started
Personalizations let you deliver tailored experiences to specific visitor segments — without running a test. Instead of splitting traffic between variations to find a winner, you show a specific experience to a targeted audience based on rules you define.
What Is a Personalization?
A personalization takes a change you want to make — a different page layout, a custom price, a tailored banner — and shows it exclusively to visitors who match your targeting criteria. Everyone who matches sees the personalized experience. Everyone who doesn't sees your store as normal.
Think of it this way:
Experiment → "Which version works better?" → Split traffic, measure, find a winner
Personalization → "Show this version to this audience" → Targeted delivery, track performance
How It Differs from an Experiment
Goal
Find which variation performs best
Deliver a tailored experience to a specific audience
Traffic split
Visitors are randomly assigned to variations (e.g., 50/50)
All matching visitors see the personalized experience (100%)
Control group
Yes — a portion of visitors see the original
No split — if a visitor matches the audience rules, they see the personalized version
Statistical significance
Evaluated — you wait for enough data to declare a winner
Not applicable — there's no comparison being tested
Audience targeting
Optional — can run for all visitors or a specific audience
Required — the audience rules define who sees the personalization
Traffic allocation step
Yes — you configure the split
No — there's no traffic to split
When to Use Personalizations
Personalizations are most useful when you already know what works for a specific audience and want to deploy it permanently:
After a winning experiment — You ran a test, found that mobile visitors convert better with a specific layout, and now want to roll it out just for mobile visitors
Audience-specific pricing — Show different prices to visitors from different countries, traffic sources, or customer segments
Campaign-specific landing pages — Redirect visitors from a specific ad campaign to a tailored page
Targeted messaging — Show different banners, headlines, or content to new visitors vs. returning visitors
Seasonal or regional content — Display different images or promotions based on visitor location
Available Personalization Types
Personalizations use the same underlying tools as experiments. You can create personalizations for:
Page Personalization
Show different page templates to targeted audiences
Pricing Personalization
Offer dynamic pricing to specific visitor segments (Shopify Plus: native pricing; other plans: duplicate products)
URL Redirects
Send specific audiences to targeted landing pages
Product Image Personalization
Show different product images to different audiences
Content Edits Personalization
Use the Visual Editor to customize text, images, and layout for targeted visitors
Custom Code Personalization
Inject custom JS/CSS for specific audiences
The creation flow for each type is the same as the corresponding experiment — with two key differences: there's no traffic allocation step, and audience targeting is required instead of optional.
How It Works
You create a personalization and select the type (page, pricing, URL redirect, etc.)
You configure the personalized experience — the change you want visitors to see
You set up audience targeting rules — device, location, traffic source, UTM parameters, visitor type, or any combination
When a visitor matches your targeting rules, they see the personalized experience
Visitors who don't match see your store as normal
Elevate tracks performance metrics so you can monitor how the personalization is performing
All matching visitors are assigned to the personalized variation — there's no random split and no control group receiving a different experience.
Setting Up Audience Targeting
Audience targeting is the foundation of personalizations. Without it, a personalization would just be a change applied to everyone (which is what experiments are for).
Common targeting setups:
Mobile visitors → Show a simplified, mobile-optimized layout
Visitors from Facebook ads → Show a landing page that matches the ad creative
Returning visitors → Display a loyalty discount or personalized recommendation
Visitors from the US → Show US-specific pricing or promotions
Visitors from a specific UTM campaign → Tailor the page to match the campaign messaging
You can combine rules with AND/OR logic for precise targeting. For the full list of targeting options, see Audience Targeting.
Monitoring Performance
Even though personalizations don't have a control group for A/B comparison, Elevate still tracks all performance metrics — conversion rate, revenue, add-to-cart rate, session duration, and more. You can monitor these in the same Results and Advanced Analytics tabs as experiments.
This lets you see how the personalized experience is performing and catch any issues early. If metrics drop after launching a personalization, you can pause it and investigate.
Next Steps
To create a personalization, go to Personalizations in your Elevate dashboard and select the type of personalization you want to create. The setup follows the same steps as the corresponding experiment type — refer to the relevant experiment guide for detailed instructions:
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