How to Create a Split URL Experiment
This guide walks you through setting up a split URL experiment in Elevate — from entering your URLs to launching the test.
Step 1: Create an Experiment
From your Elevate dashboard, go to Experiments and click New Experiment. Select Split URL Experiment.
Step 2: Name Your Experiment and Write a Hypothesis
Give your experiment a descriptive name — something like "New Landing Page vs Current PDP" or "Sales Page vs Product Page."
Fill in the description and hypothesis fields. For example:
"Redirecting visitors to our new landing page with a video hero and social proof above the fold will increase conversion rate compared to our current product page."
Step 3: Set Up Your Variations
Select how many variations you want to test (including the control). The minimum is 2 (control + one variation).
For each variation:
Control — Enter the URL of your current live page. This is the page visitors would normally land on.
Variation(s) — Enter the URL(s) of the alternative page(s) you want to test against the control.
Each variation gets a name (e.g., "Current PDP," "Shogun Landing Page") and a traffic percentage.
All URLs must be on your Shopify store. External pages hosted outside of Shopify are not supported, as Elevate's analytics tracking requires the page to be within your Shopify storefront.
Multiple Control URLs
The control supports multiple URLs — useful when you want visitors from several different pages to be redirected into the experiment. For example, if you have multiple product pages that should all redirect to the same variation landing page, you can add all of them as control URLs. Each non-control variation is limited to a single URL.
URL Parameters Warning
If your URLs contain query parameters, Elevate will display a warning to make sure the parameters are intentional and won't interfere with the experiment. Review this carefully — UTM parameters or tracking tags in your URLs could cause issues with redirect matching.
Step 4: Choose Redirect Behavior
Select how Elevate should handle redirects. This controls when and how visitors are sent to their assigned variation:
All Experiment URLs (default) — Visitors are redirected to their assigned URL whenever they land on any page in the experiment
Control URL Only — Redirects only happen when visiting the control URL
Redirect Once — Visitors are redirected only on their first visit
Redirect Once, Control URL Only — Redirects happen once, and only from the control URL
For most experiments, the default (All Experiment URLs) works well. Use the other options when you want to limit redirect frequency — for example, if visitors might bookmark the variation URL and you don't want them constantly redirected.
For a detailed explanation of each option, see Redirect Behavior Options.
Step 5: Set Traffic Allocation
Set how traffic is split between your control and variations. The default is an even split. Adjust as needed — percentages must add up to 100%.
Step 6: Choose Your Experiment Goal
Select the primary metric for determining a winner:
Revenue Per Visitor — best for understanding overall revenue impact
Conversion Rate — best for measuring purchase likelihood
Average Order Value — best for testing pages that affect cart size
Add-to-Cart Rate — best for measuring initial purchase intent
Checkout Start Rate — best for measuring mid-funnel impact
Step 7: Add Audience Targeting (Optional)
Narrow your audience if needed — by device, location, traffic source, visitor type, or UTM parameters.
For the full list of targeting options, see Audience Targeting.
Step 8: Launch
Click Create Experiment to submit. The experiment moves into review status. Once ready, click Launch Experiment to go live.
Quality Assurance
After launching, verify the experiment is working:
Visit the control URL in an incognito window — You should be redirected to one of the variations
Check the redirect is seamless — There should be no visible flash of the control page before the redirect
Visit the variation URL directly — Depending on your redirect behavior setting, confirm the expected behavior (redirect or no redirect)
Complete a test purchase — Go through the full checkout flow on both the control and variation to verify tracking works
Check Raw Data — Open the experiment in Elevate and verify that page view events are appearing in the Raw Data tab with the correct variation assignments
After Launching
Monitor results — Check the Results tab to track performance
Wait for significance — Let the experiment run until it reaches a definitive status. See Statistical Significance.
End the experiment — When ready, see Ending an Experiment
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