Price testing on Shopify without Plus

Shopify says it plainly: "Only development stores or stores on a Shopify Plus plan can use apps with update operations" in the Cart Transform API. Functions in general are open to every plan when they ship in a public app; only custom apps that contain functions need Plus. So on a non-Plus store, the clean way to charge a tested price is a discount that lowers the store price for some shoppers.

1. 1.Set the arms at or below the store price. A discount can only lower a price, so the Shopify price is the highest price in the test. To test a higher price, raise the price in Shopify to the highest arm, read the prices again in Benchmyrk, and set the other arms, the control included, lower. Visitors outside the test see and pay the Shopify price.
2. 2.The storefront shows each arm's price. A small script (bc-price.js, loaded only while a price test runs) replaces the printed price of the tested products on product pages, collection cards and other price elements with the arm's price.
3. 3.Checkout charges it. The shopper's arm travels with the cart as a cart attribute. Benchmyrk's discount, built on Shopify's Discount Function API, lowers each tested line to the arm's price.
4. 4.Results compare money, not just orders. Revenue and gross profit per visitor, plus units sold and the average price paid per arm, with the same statistics as every other test.

The rule Benchmyrk holds price tests to: a shopper is never charged more than the price their page showed, and a tested price is shown only where it is charged.

• When a test starts, checkout starts charging the test prices before the storefront shows them. When it stops, the storefront stops showing them before checkout stops charging. During the switch a shopper can pay less than the page said, never more.
• Pausing or ending a test stops the checkout discount at once; storefront pages follow within about a minute.
• If someone turns the discount off in Shopify, Benchmyrk notices within about ten minutes, takes the price test off the storefront and notifies the store's owners and admins.
• The discount only applies to the Shopify prices the test was set up with. If a price changes in Shopify during the test, shoppers see and pay the new Shopify price for that product.

A lower price usually converts better, and a higher one usually sells fewer units. Conversion rate alone will nearly always favour the cheapest arm. Judge a price test on revenue per visitor, or better, gross profit per visitor, which takes off product costs, payment fees and shipping.

Profit needs product costs in Shopify. Benchmyrk gives no profit verdict while costs are known for less than 90% of order value. Plan for revenue goals to need more visitors than conversion goals: see Sample size and test duration.

• One currency: shoppers browsing in another currency (Shopify Markets) are left out of the test.
• Products with selling plans (subscriptions) can't be in a price test.
• Savings badges your theme computes ("Save $22") and instalment widgets keep using the Shopify price.
• On a tested product's page, Buy it now and accelerated checkout buttons are hidden for shoppers in the test, in every arm alike, because those checkouts skip the cart attribute.
• Themes that add to cart through custom code that skips the cart attribute charge the normal price; the cart then shows that price before payment. Start with a small share of traffic and check the storefront.
• Up to 10 products and 100 variants per test, and one live price test per product.
• Variants of one product that share a Shopify price need the same test price.
• The discount needs two optional permissions (read and write discounts) that an owner or admin grants from the Prices tab, not at install.

Price tests are common in ecommerce, and the safeguard that matters most is consistency: each shopper sees one price and pays that price. Keep tests short, keep the differences modest, and be ready to honour the lower price if a shopper asks about it. Rules on price differences vary by country, so check with your adviser if you sell somewhere with specific pricing rules.

1. 1.Decide the question: which product, which prices, and whether you're judging on revenue or profit.
2. 2.Add product costs in Shopify if you want profit per visitor.
3. 3.Set the Shopify price to the highest arm and read prices again.
4. 4.Check the sample size for the traffic those products get.
5. 5.Preview each arm on the product page, a collection page and the cart.
6. 6.Start with a small traffic share, place a test order in each arm, then widen it.