Ending a Theme Test
When your theme test reaches statistical significance, it's time to review the results and decide what to do next. This guide covers how to end a test, apply a winning variant, and clean up old themes.
End your test
When you're ready to stop your test, open the test in Shoplift and click End test. This stops traffic splitting immediately — all visitors will see your original (published) theme again until you apply a variant.
Pausing a test
If you need to temporarily stop a test to make quick fixes or edits, you can click Pause instead of ending it. Pausing reverts all traffic (including visitors who were seeing the variant theme) back to your original published theme while the test is paused. Your test data stays intact so you can resume later.
Avoid pausing tests unless absolutely necessary. Extended pauses can compromise your test data. If you need to pause for more than a short period, end the test instead, duplicate it to a new draft, and relaunch when you're ready.
Apply your winning variant
If your variant theme outperformed the original and you want to make it permanent, click Apply variant.
Applying a variant publishes your variant theme, making it the new live theme for your store. All visitors will see the variant theme going forward.
Applying a variant publishes a new theme to your live store. Before applying, verify that all templates, app blocks, app embeds, and third-party integrations work correctly on the variant theme.
What happens to your old theme
Your original theme isn't deleted when you apply a variant. It becomes an unpublished theme in your Shopify theme library, available in case you need to revert or reference it later.
Over time, as you run more theme tests, your library may accumulate themes you no longer need. Shopify has a limit on how many themes you can store (20 on standard plans, 100 on Shopify Plus), so it's worth cleaning up periodically.
Delete old themes
If you're sure you no longer need an old theme, you can remove it from your theme library:
In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
Scroll down to the Theme library section.
Find the theme you want to remove, click the ... menu, and select Delete.
Deleting a theme is permanent and cannot be undone. Before deleting, confirm you're removing the right theme by checking the name and the last-edited date. If you have active tests using that theme, end them first.
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