🛠️How Testing Works

Template testing

Shoplift empowers merchants to conduct tests using Shopify templates, so you can leverage the full power of the Shopify Theme Editor when making changes that you want to test.

If you're unfamiliar with Shopify templates, the following is a quick explanation of how they work.

Shopify templates

Shopify templates are files in your theme that are configured to give your online store a consistent look and feel by leveraging different page sections. Which sections are available in your templates depends on your theme.

In the theme editor, you can discover which templates are applied to which products, collections, and pages, and then edit them to customize the information displayed to your customers. Editing a template applies the changes to every product, collection, or page that uses that template.

For example, if you add a newsletter signup form to a collection template, then all collection pages that use that collection template now display the newsletter signup form.

To ensure a consistent shopper experience during testing, Shoplift tests performed on a selected template will run on every product, collection, or page assigned to that template in Shopify. If you'd like to test a page individually that shares template assignment with other pages, you can isolate it to its own template by following these steps.

Liquid (OS1) vs. JSON (OS2) templates

Depending on your theme architecture (Legacy or OS2), your theme will contain either liquid templates, JSON templates, or a mix of the two.

Templates constructed in JSON are the newest architecture provided by Shopify, and unlock significantly more editing capabilities in the Shopify Theme Editor, such as drag-and-drop sections. For more information on theme compatibility and potential limitations, see Theme compatibility.

Template availability

Shoplift reads your live theme from Shopify, so only templates from your live theme will be available for testing. If you have multiple themes on your store, templates from other themes won't be available to test with Shoplift.

If you'd like to test a template from a theme other than your live theme, you can switch that theme to your live theme or copy that template code into your live theme. For more information, see Shopify's official documentation on Shopify Section Architecture.