Shopify conversion rate optimization that never breaks your store.

Why Shopify brands trust us with their build

Dedicated Slack channels with your team, and separate ones with your developers or dev partner. A shared repository where every site update and every queued test is visible to everyone before it ships. Full-time QA people test every experiment before launch and again after launch, weekly full-site checks run on every brand we work with, and an AI QA tool sweeps continuously between the human passes.

We take not breaking your website very seriously, because we have sat on the brand side when someone else broke ours. Andrew Cowan, who runs every account personally, was a CMO and brand owner before he started Parah Group, and the process reflects that: nothing ships without your developers knowing, and nothing breaks quietly.

Shopify stores also share a set of leaks that generic CRO advice misses: theme apps that slow the product page, cart drawers that hide the shipping threshold, subscription widgets that confuse the buy box, and checkout steps the store owner has never seen on a phone. Our research checks for those.

What we test on Shopify stores

Most Shopify tests fall into seven areas. The order depends on where your recordings and numbers point. Each area below lists the tests we run there and the tool that usually carries them.

The Shopify testing tools we run

We are platform agnostic, but on Shopify two tools do most of the work. Intelligems handles price, shipping, checkout and content tests, which is why it carries the experiments that move profit most directly. Shoplift runs theme and template tests natively inside Shopify, which keeps visual tests fast to build. Where a brand already runs VWO, Convert or Nelio, we use what is there.

Comparing tools yourself? Our reviews of Intelligems for price testing and Shoplift cover pricing and fit, and VWO vs Optimizely covers the enterprise options.

Checkout deserves its own note. Shopify reports that Shop Pay lifts conversion by up to 50 percent compared with guest checkout, so express wallets come before anything clever. And checkout UI extensions on the information, shipping and payment steps are available only to Shopify Plus stores, so we plan checkout tests around your plan instead of promising tests your store cannot run.

Proof from the program

Willie’s Remedy Seed Co. ran checkout extension tests through Intelligems that produced clear wins, part of a quarter in which conversion rate rose 20 percent, average order value 25 percent and subscription take rate 75 percent while paid traffic scaled. The same program has produced results across other stores. Grab Green, an 8-figure cleaning products brand, tested free-shipping thresholds, a gamified cart progress bar, bundles, multi-packs, value badges and price points, and lifted average order value 80 percent through bundling. Combat Iron Apparel raised conversion rate 35 percent in six months with a homepage rebuilt around reviews, fewer pop-ups, a gamified shipping bar and post-purchase offers.

How to choose a Shopify CRO agency

The wrong Shopify CRO partner costs you more than fees. A broken add-to-cart on a Saturday, or a test that collides with your developer’s release, can erase a month of wins. Ask these before you sign:

• How do you QA a test before and after launch, and who does it?
• How do you coordinate with our developers, and where can we see what is queued?
• Which testing tools do you use for theme tests, and which for price and shipping?
• Do you measure tests on revenue per visitor and profit, or on conversion rate alone?
• Will you tell us when a test is not worth running on our traffic?
• Do you work on post-purchase and subscription, or only the storefront?

Our own answer to the fifth question is simple. If a test cannot reach significance on your traffic, we say so before it is built, and suggest a bigger swing or a sequential test instead of a dozen inconclusive ones. Small stores get honest advice; large stores get a roadmap sized to their traffic.

Shopify CRO runs inside The CRO Program. For the full path to purchase, see ecommerce CRO; for the method, A/B testing; and for paid traffic, landing page design. If you want to start on your own, read how to audit your Shopify funnel for conversion leaks and Shopify collection page optimization. The case studies show the experiments behind the numbers.

Shopify CRO FAQs

Related services