How to Create a Price Experiment (Duplicate Products)
This guide walks you through setting up and launching a single product price test using duplicate products. This is the approach for stores not on Shopify Plus.
On Shopify Plus? Use Native Price Testing instead — no duplicates needed.
Testing multiple products? See Testing Multiple Products (Grouped).
Step 1: Create an Experiment
From your Elevate dashboard, go to Experiments and click New Experiment. Select Price Experiment from the available options.
Step 2: Name Your Experiment and Write a Hypothesis
Give your experiment a clear, descriptive name that makes it easy to identify later — something like "Summer Collection Price Test" or "Holiday Bundle Pricing."
We strongly recommend filling in the description and hypothesis fields. Your hypothesis should state what you expect to happen and why. For example:
"Lowering the price of our best-selling moisturizer from $29.99 to $24.99 will increase conversion rate enough to generate more total revenue, despite the lower margin."
This documentation becomes valuable when you're reviewing results weeks later and need to remember what you were testing and why.
Step 3: Select Your Product
Choose the product you want to test from your store.
If you've already created a duplicate of this product, select it.
If not, click Duplicate Product to create an exact copy, then change the price on the duplicate to whatever you want to test.
Important: Only change the price on the duplicate. Keep everything else — title, images, description, variants — identical to the original. This ensures your test results reflect the price change alone.
Step 4: Set Traffic Allocation
By default, traffic is split evenly between your control (original product) and variation (duplicate). For a two-variation test, that's 50/50.
You can adjust these percentages to any split you'd like — just make sure they add up to 100%. A common alternative is 70/30 if you want to limit exposure to the new price while still collecting enough data.
You can also name each variation to make your reports easier to read (e.g., "Original $29.99" and "Discounted $24.99").
Step 5: Choose Your Experiment Goal
Select the primary metric that will determine your winning variation. Your options are:
Revenue Per Visitor — best for understanding overall revenue impact
Conversion Rate — best for measuring purchase likelihood
Average Order Value — best for testing pricing tiers
Add-to-Cart Rate — best for measuring initial purchase intent
Checkout Start Rate — best for measuring mid-funnel impact
Elevate tracks all metrics regardless of which one you choose as the primary goal. Your selection determines how the statistical model identifies a winner.
Step 6: Add Audience Targeting (Optional)
By default, your experiment runs for all visitors. If you want to narrow the audience, you can add targeting rules to control exactly who sees the test.
Common examples:
Run the test only for mobile visitors
Target visitors from a specific country
Limit to traffic from a particular campaign using UTM parameters
Target only new visitors or returning visitors
You can combine multiple rules using AND/OR logic for precise targeting.
For the full list of available targeting options and how to configure them, see Audience Targeting.
Step 7: Create and Review
Once your setup is complete, click Create Experiment. Your experiment moves into a review phase where Elevate performs initial checks to ensure everything is configured correctly.
Step 8: Copy Reviews to Duplicate Products
If the original product has reviews, you'll want to transfer them to the duplicate so both variations show the same social proof.
On the experiment review page, Elevate provides the specific information you need to send to your reviews app provider. They'll replicate the reviews onto the duplicate product. This keeps the experience consistent and prevents the duplicate from looking empty.
Step 9: Sync Third-Party Integrations
Make sure any third-party apps that affect the product page — subscription options, bulk purchase discounts, bundles, upsells — are set up on the duplicate product too.
If a visitor lands on the duplicate and something is missing or broken, it'll skew your results and create a poor experience.
Step 10: Submit for Elevate Review
This step ensures prices stay consistent across your entire store — no visitor will see different prices for the same product in search results, collections, or recommendations.
Click Submit for Review and the Elevate team handles the configuration. This is a one-time setup; once it's done, all future price tests skip this step.
Review typically takes 2–12 hours.
Step 11: Quality Assurance
Before launching, do a thorough QA check to verify the duplicate product page matches the original in every way except the price change. Check:
Product images and descriptions are identical
Reviews are showing on both products
Third-party apps (subscriptions, bundles, etc.) are working on the duplicate
The correct price is displayed
For a detailed QA walkthrough, see the Price Test QA Checklist.
Step 12: Launch
Once QA is complete and everything looks good, click Launch Experiment. Your test is now live and traffic will begin splitting between variations.
Next Steps
Monitor your experiment — Check the Results tab on your dashboard to track performance as data comes in
Wait for statistical significance — Don't end your test early. Let it run until it reaches a definitive status. See Statistical Significance for how this works.
Review advanced analytics — Once you have enough data, use the Advanced Analytics tabs to dig into visitor segments, checkout behavior, and per-product breakdowns
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