Shopify CRO, or Shopify conversion rate optimization, is the work of raising the share of Shopify store visitors who buy. You find where shoppers drop off, figure out why, and test changes against the current store instead of paying for more traffic.
This guide covers what is different when the store runs on Shopify: what each plan lets you change, which reports to pull, what to test on each page type, and how A/B testing works on the platform. The general ecommerce process is in our ecommerce CRO guide, so this page sticks to Shopify.
Last updated October 11, 2026 by Devon Cox, Founder and President, ConversionTeam (16+ years in CRO). The test results in this guide come from stores that were on Shopify when we tested them. Shopify Help pages and third-party figures were checked in October 2026.
TL;DR: Shopify CRO in one minute
Shopify CRO means finding where your store loses shoppers and A/B testing changes on the pages your Shopify plan lets you edit.
- Below Shopify Plus, apps can’t change the information, shipping and payment steps of checkout, so most CRO work happens before checkout.
- Shopify’s own reports show where shoppers leave. GA4, Microsoft Clarity, polls and user testing show why.
- This week, pull Sessions by landing page and abandoned checkouts, find the page type that leaks, and test one change there.
Bottom Line: on Shopify, test what your plan lets you change, starting with the pages shoppers pass through before checkout.
On this page:
- What is Shopify CRO?
- Where do Shopify stores lose shoppers?
- How do you find what to fix on a Shopify store?
- How do you increase Shopify conversion rate?
- Which Shopify plans let you change checkout?
- How do you A/B test on a Shopify store?
- What are the common Shopify CRO mistakes?
- When does it make sense to bring in a Shopify CRO agency?
- FAQ
What is Shopify CRO?
Shopify CRO is conversion rate optimization on a Shopify store: research where shoppers drop off, then test changes inside what your theme, apps and plan allow.
It also goes by Shopify conversion optimization, CRO for Shopify and conversion rate optimization for Shopify. All of them mean the same work.
CRO works on the visit itself. SEO, ads and retargeting bring shoppers to the store, and email and loyalty programs bring them back. CRO raises the share of those visits that end in an order.
The method is the same as on any store, and our ecommerce CRO guide covers it step by step. What changes on Shopify is what you can touch and how you measure it:
- Themes and apps instead of a custom front end. Shopify pages are built from theme sections and app blocks. That makes changes fast to build, and every app that adds script to the storefront also adds weight to every page it loads on.
- Checkout steps are fixed below Shopify Plus. Apps can only customize the information, shipping and payment steps of checkout on Shopify Plus. The thank-you and order status pages can be customized on every plan (Shopify Help).
- Shopify reports its own conversion rate. Shopify calculates it as sessions that completed checkout divided by all sessions (Shopify Help), so it won’t match a GA4 rate. Shopify also changed how it counts sessions on September 21 to 23, 2026, so rates from before and after that date don’t compare.
- Shopify has its own A/B testing now. Rollouts Experiments, on the Grow plan or higher, split traffic between two versions of a theme, a checkout and accounts configuration, catalog prices or discounts (Shopify Help: requirements, rollout types). Liquid template changes can’t go into a rollout, so those tests run through Google Tag Manager or a testing app.
How does a Shopify store’s conversion rate compare? Across all platforms, the median site-level conversion rate in our 456 audited ecommerce A/B tests, spanning 31 clients, was 3.9%. Every store in our data was running a testing program. For Shopify stores in general, Littledata puts the median at 1.4% across 421 Shopify stores (September 2026).
Where do Shopify stores lose shoppers?
Shopify stores lose shoppers on every page type, and the cart is where the loss shows: across all ecommerce sites, 70.22% of carts are abandoned (Baymard).
A Shopify store has five page types that every sale passes through: the homepage, collection pages, product pages, the cart and checkout. Each one asks the shopper a different question, and each one loses some of them. If your conversion rate is low, the cause sits on one or more of these page types, and comparing the steps shows which.
Across all platforms, the median baseline conversion rate of the tests we ran on each page type was 3.1% on category pages, 4.7% on product pages, 32.0% on the cart page and 37.2% at checkout. On Shopify, category pages are collection pages. Each page type is its own set of tests on different stores, from our ecommerce benchmark, so compare each step with the same step on your store rather than one step with the next.
| Page type | What the shopper is deciding | What we check first |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage | Is this store for me? | Whether the first screen says what you sell, whether a slideshow hides the message, whether navigation matches how people shop |
| Collection pages | Which of these products? | Whether filters match how shoppers choose, whether anyone picked the default sort, whether tiles show price and reviews |
| Product pages | Is this the right one, at this price? | Whether the variant picker shows sold-out options, where the reviews sit, whether shipping cost and delivery date show before checkout |
| Cart | Is the total what I expected? | Whether shipping shows up late, whether a cross-sell competes with checkout, what reassurance sits by the checkout button |
| Checkout | Can I finish this quickly? | Whether sign-in is forced, which express payment options are on, and what your plan lets you change |
To compare your store, pull the same measure in GA4: of the sessions that reached each page type, the share that ended in an order. Set each one next to the median for that page type. We start where a step sits furthest below its median, because more traffic won’t fix a leak there.
Baymard’s figure is the average of 50 cart abandonment studies (Baymard Institute), and it includes shoppers who were only browsing. The cart is one of the places a Shopify store can change on any plan.
How do you find what to fix on a Shopify store?
Pull Shopify’s sessions, funnel and abandoned checkout reports, check them against GA4, then watch recordings and ask shoppers on the pages where they leave.
Research decides what you test. On Shopify, start with the data the store already collects:
- Sessions by landing page (Analytics, then Reports, Behavior category): which pages shoppers start on, so you know which pages carry the traffic.
- Conversion rate breakdown: the funnel from all sessions to sessions with cart additions, sessions that reached checkout and sessions that completed checkout. Compare each step with the same step last quarter, and with Conversion rate over time for the trend. Split both by device and traffic source before you decide what to fix, and read conversion rate next to revenue per visitor and average order value, because a discount can lift one and cut the other.
- Abandoned checkouts (a list under Orders, not a report): what was in the carts that reached checkout and didn’t finish. Shopify counts a checkout as abandoned once it sits incomplete for more than ten minutes after the shopper enters an email (Shopify Help).
Then add the tools that show why:
- GA4: connect it to the store and check its purchase and add-to-cart events against Shopify’s own order count for the same week. If they don’t match, fix the tracking before you test anything, because every result you read later comes off those events.
- Microsoft Clarity: free heatmaps and session recordings. Add it to the theme and watch sessions on the page types where your funnel drops. Look for rage clicks on product images, shoppers opening the cart drawer and closing it, and filters nobody touches.
- Polls: one question at the right moment. The thank-you page can be customized on every Shopify plan, so it’s the place to ask “What’s the one thing that almost stopped you from purchasing today?” right after the order.
- User testing: give a small group of people a shopping task on your store, then the same task on a competitor’s store. They explain the friction on your site more clearly once they’ve felt a smoother path somewhere else.
Then rank what you found. At ConversionTeam we score every finding on impact, effort and strength of evidence, with a framework we call SCORE; PIE and ICE do the same job. A fix on a page with a lot of traffic and a steep drop goes first. Anything broken, like an add-to-cart button that fails on one browser, gets fixed without a test. Plan the work 90 days at a time and re-rank as results come in.
Our ecommerce CRO checklist has a Shopify section with the checks that only apply on Shopify, from installed apps to what your plan allows in checkout. For the full research process, see our guide to running a CRO audit.
How do you increase Shopify conversion rate?
To increase Shopify conversion rate, work page by page: filters and product tiles on collections, the offer and reviews on product pages, costs in the cart, and copy sitewide.
The short version, in the order we work:
- Check that GA4 and Shopify agree on orders.
- Find the page type that sits furthest below its median.
- Fix anything broken on that page without a test.
- Test one change at a time there, starting with the copy and the offer.
- Read each result by device, and in revenue per visitor as well as conversion rate.
- Move to the next page type and repeat.
Below is what ConversionTeam tests to improve a Shopify store’s conversion rate, grouped by page type. Where we have a result from a store that was on Shopify when we tested it, it’s inline. Our clients are confidential, so stores are described, not named. Each figure is the measured lift in conversion rate as reported in that client’s progress report or result sheet.
Collection pages
Collection pages are where shoppers narrow a catalog down to a few products. Filters and the default sort are often left the way the theme set them, and both make good first tests. More detail is in our product listing page guide. On a pet products store (2025), a redesigned best-sellers collection page lifted conversion rate +39.3%.
- Filters: we order filters by how often shoppers use them, not alphabetically, with the attributes people choose by (size, color, price, use) first, because that’s how they narrow the list. On a phone, where filters usually sit behind a button, we check they still work.
- Sort: set the default sort on purpose. We test “Best selling” as the default against the theme’s default, because it puts what other shoppers buy at the top.
- Product tiles: we put the price with any strikethrough, star ratings with review counts and color swatches on the tile, so shoppers can compare without opening every product. Flags like “New” or “Best seller” go only where they’re true.
- Collection copy and layout: we test a short line at the top that says what’s in the collection, image buttons for subcollections, and a promotion area when a sale applies. On a large catalog, a short quiz or product finder can do the narrowing for the shopper.
Product pages
The product page answers “is this the right one, at this price?” Most of the answer has to fit in the first screen on a phone.
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Images and video: shoppers can’t hold the product, so we test several angles, zoom that works on a phone, the product in use, the color the shopper picked, and a short video where movement matters. We keep video out of the first thumbnail position.
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Product copy: we lead with what the product does for the shopper, then the specs and the answers to the top objections, such as size, materials and what’s in the box.
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Price and offer presentation: we show the reference price and the saving in dollars or percent, and put the benefits (free shipping, the returns policy, a guarantee) next to the add-to-cart button, where the decision gets made. When a promotion is running, an automatic discount applies it in the cart and checkout, so the shopper doesn’t need a code. On a home improvement store (2018), a price test on a top product, where the lowest price won, lifted conversion rate +81.8%. A price test changes margin as well as conversion rate, so read revenue per visitor before you keep a lower price.
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Reviews placement: we put the star rating and review count next to the product title and link it to the reviews further down the page, with customer photos where the store has them. If the products have more reviews somewhere else, such as a marketplace, we show that too. On a pet products store (2025), linking the store’s marketplace review count from product pages lifted conversion rate +7.4%.
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Variant selection: when a shopper picks a color, the main image should change to it. We show sold-out sizes and colors before the click, offer a back-in-stock alert instead of a dead button, and add a size guide or a fit note (“runs small”) where fit is a question, because each of those stops a shopper who was ready to buy.
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Add to cart on mobile: we make it the one high-contrast button on the page, with a plain label, and test a sticky add-to-cart bar on long product pages so it stays within reach. Express checkout buttons (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay) go where they don’t push it down the page.
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Pre-purchase questions: we answer sizing, shipping and returns questions on the page, in a short FAQ under the description. Live chat only helps if someone staffs it.
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Urgency: we use real stock levels and real delivery cutoffs only, never a countdown timer that resets on reload.
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Bundles and recommendations: bundle offers usually come from an app, so test the bundle and its price against the single product rather than assuming it helps. We run more than one recommendation section on a product page, such as frequently bought together and accessories, and test what goes in each.
More detail is in our product page guide.
Cart
The cart is where shoppers check the total. Many Shopify themes let you choose what happens when a shopper adds a product: a cart drawer, a pop-up or the cart page. That choice is one to test.
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Cart drawer vs cart page: we test the drawer against sending shoppers to the cart page. The drawer keeps them shopping. The page has room for shipping costs, delivery dates and reassurance. Which one wins depends on the store.
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Cross-sell copy: we test the line above recommended products. A generic heading reads like an ad, while one about what the shopper is building gives them a reason to add an item. On a pet products store (2025), rewriting the cart popup’s cross-sell headline lifted conversion rate +21.3%.
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Shipping cost and threshold messaging: we show the shipping cost and a delivery estimate before checkout starts, on the product page as well as the cart, because extra costs top the reasons shoppers give Baymard for abandoning a checkout. A free-shipping threshold goes sitewide in the announcement bar, not only in the cart. On a pet products store (2025), a sitewide header bar rotating the free-shipping threshold and a service offer lifted conversion rate +10.3%.
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Trust: we keep the return policy and payment security next to the checkout button and take out anything that competes with it. On a home goods store (2022), in a small test, removing a bullet list from the cart page lifted conversion rate +11.3%.
Checkout
What you can change in checkout depends on your plan (see the plan section below). On every plan:
- Express payment: turn on the express payment methods your shoppers use, such as Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, plus pay-later options where your shoppers use them.
- Guest checkout: don’t make an account a condition of buying. Offer one after the order.
- Form fields: ask only for what you need, and mark optional fields as optional.
- Abandoned checkout email: Shopify can automatically email shoppers a link back to the checkout they left (Shopify Help). Turn it on, edit the template so it looks like your store, and check that it sends. A longer recovery series is email marketing work.
- Checkout branding: every plan can add the logo and change colors and fonts in the checkout editor, so checkout looks like the store the shopper just left.
- Thank-you page: it can be customized on every plan, so use it for the next step: the post-purchase poll, account creation, or an offer for the next order.
On Shopify Plus, apps can also change the information, shipping and payment steps themselves.
Sitewide
Some changes touch every page. The homepage headline and the value proposition come first, because they decide whether a new visitor keeps reading.
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Headline and value proposition: we test a first screen that says what the store sells, who it’s for and why buy here, links straight to the top collections, and matches the ad or email that brought the visitor. A theme’s default banner rarely does that. On a pet products store (2025), new homepage hero copy lifted conversion rate +72.4%. On a kids’ tech brand (2026), a homepage headline that says what the product does lifted conversion rate +8.2%. On a pet products store (2025), a new homepage subheadline lifted conversion rate +12.8%.
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Navigation and search: we name the top categories the way shoppers do, add breadcrumbs on collection and product pages, and make search easy to find. Pull your most common site searches and check what comes back. A search with no results is a lost order.
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Fonts and readability: Shopify themes usually set fonts in the theme settings, so a font test is quick to build. Check body text size and contrast on a phone, along with form labels and tap targets big enough for a thumb. On a home goods store (2022), a new font pairing across the store lifted conversion rate +24.0%.
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Theme speed and app bloat: we review installed apps and remove any that add script to the storefront but are no longer in use, check image file sizes, then measure speed per template on a mid-range phone, with third-party scripts counted, instead of one sitewide score. How we read the score, what to remove first and what to aim for: Shopify speed optimization.
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Popups and email capture: when a store has no popup, we start with the least aggressive trigger, the third page view, then test exit intent, then entry. As long as the popup gives dollars off, entry is the one you end up on.
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Selling abroad: Shopify Markets can set currency, language and prices by market. Check the product page and cart in each market’s currency.
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Mobile: we check every test on a phone before it launches and read results by device, because a change that wins on desktop can lose on mobile.
Which Shopify plans let you change checkout?
Only Shopify Plus lets apps customize the information, shipping and payment steps, while the thank-you and order status pages can be customized on every plan.
| Checkout feature | Basic plan or higher | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Checkout and accounts editor (logo, colors, fonts) | Yes | Yes |
| Apps that customize the thank-you and order status pages | Yes | Yes |
| Apps that customize the information, shipping and payment steps | No | Yes |
| Checkout Branding API | No | Yes |
Source: Shopify Help, customizing your checkout, fetched October 7, 2026.
So on Basic, Grow and Advanced, checkout work means settings (express payment, guest checkout, branding), the thank-you page and, from the Grow plan up, Rollouts tests of checkout configurations. Most of the testing goes into the pages before checkout. Our Shopify CRO agency page has a plan table with the same checkout rows, plus what can be tested on each plan.
How do you A/B test on a Shopify store?
Use Shopify’s Rollouts Experiments for theme, checkout configuration and price tests, and Google Tag Manager or a testing app for the storefront changes Rollouts can’t hold.
There are three ways to run a test on a Shopify store:
| Method | What it can test | Plan | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Rollouts Experiments | An edit to the main theme or a replacement theme, a checkout and accounts configuration, catalog prices, discounts. Not Liquid template changes | Grow or higher | Built in |
| A tool delivered through Google Tag Manager, such as Nantu | Layout, copy and code changes on the homepage, collection pages, product pages and what shoppers see in the cart. Not checkout steps, and not cart functions tied to the back end | Any | Nantu is free |
| A testing app from the Shopify App Store, such as Intelligems or Shoplift | What the app supports | Depends on the app | From $69 a month (Intelligems) and $99 a month (Shoplift), as of October 2026 |
A Rollouts theme test reports conversion rate, add-to-cart rate and reached-checkout rate (Shopify Help). A Google Tag Manager test changes the page in the shopper’s browser, with no app to install. That’s how ConversionTeam runs storefront tests, with Nantu, our free testing tool. The three methods, step by step, are in our Shopify A/B testing guide.
The tools for a Shopify testing program:
- Shopify Rollouts: Shopify’s built-in A/B testing for themes, checkout configurations, prices and discounts.
- Nantu: ConversionTeam’s free A/B testing tool, delivered through Google Tag Manager.
- Google Tag Manager: puts the test code on the storefront.
- Google Analytics 4: records the purchases and revenue each version gets.
- Microsoft Clarity: recordings and heatmaps of each version, to see why it won or lost.
- Shopify’s own analytics: the order count you check every result against.
- Intelligems and Shoplift: Shopify testing apps, Intelligems from $69 a month and Shoplift from $99 a month, as of October 2026.
Whatever runs the test, set the sample size before it starts and run it in whole weeks. A test called early is often a false winner.
Checkout steps can’t be tested through a tag manager on any plan. On checkout, Shopify runs a tag manager inside its pixel sandbox, and pixels can’t display buttons, forms, banners or pop-ups on the page (Shopify Help). Checkout tests run through Rollouts on the Grow plan or higher, which compares two checkout configurations, or through apps built on checkout extensions. On Shopify Plus those apps can change the information, shipping and payment steps. On other plans, only the thank-you and order status pages.
Testing doesn’t conflict with SEO when it follows Google’s guidance on website testing: no cloaking, a canonical tag on any variation URL, temporary redirects, and the test ended once it has a result.
What are the common Shopify CRO mistakes?
The common ones are installing apps to fix conversion, redesigning instead of testing, stopping tests early, writing checkout tests your setup can’t run, and mixing up Shopify’s and GA4’s numbers.
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App and theme bloat: an app added to fix one problem keeps loading on every page after the problem is gone. Review installed apps before you add another.
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Redesigning instead of testing: a new theme or template changes everything at once, so when the numbers move you can’t tell why. On a home goods store (2022), keeping the original product page layout instead of an untested redesign lifted conversion rate +5.7%.
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Stopping tests at the first significant read: run whole weeks and the sample size you set before launch. Early winners often fade.
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Writing checkout tests your setup can’t run: a tag manager can’t change checkout on any plan, and below Shopify Plus, apps can’t customize the information, shipping and payment steps. Check what your plan and tools can change before checkout ideas go on the test plan.
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Reading Shopify’s conversion rate and GA4’s as the same number: Shopify divides sessions that completed checkout by its own session count, and GA4 counts sessions and users its own way. The two rates won’t match. Pick one for testing and compare like with like, and don’t compare Shopify’s rates across its September 21 to 23, 2026 session-counting change.
When does it make sense to bring in a Shopify CRO agency?
When the store has more test ideas than people to research, build and read them, an agency brings the testing process, the developers and the analysts as one team.
A store team usually has the ideas. What it runs out of is time to research them, build tests in the theme, check them for flicker and read the results properly. That’s the work an agency takes over. Across all clients and platforms, 61.1% of our 2,288 audited tests won.
How we work with Shopify stores is on our Shopify CRO agency page. For how a testing program runs, see Iterate, our ongoing testing program.
FAQ
What is Shopify CRO?
CRO stands for conversion rate optimization. Shopify CRO is the work of raising the share of Shopify store visitors who buy. You research where shoppers drop off with Shopify’s reports, GA4, session recordings and polls, then A/B test changes on the pages your plan lets you edit, starting with collection pages, product pages and the cart.
Can you A/B test Shopify checkout?
Yes, within limits. Shopify’s Rollouts Experiments, on the Grow plan or higher, compare two checkout and accounts configurations. A tag manager can’t change checkout on any plan, because Shopify runs it there in a sandbox that can’t display buttons, forms or banners. On Shopify Plus, apps built on checkout extensions can also change the information, shipping and payment steps.
Does Shopify have built-in A/B testing?
Yes. Rollouts, in the Shopify admin under Markets, includes Experiments: A/B tests of a theme change, a checkout and accounts configuration, catalog prices or discounts, on the Grow plan or higher. Rollouts can’t change Liquid templates, so layout and code changes still run through Google Tag Manager or a testing app such as Intelligems or Shoplift.
How long does Shopify CRO take?
A single test runs two to four weeks, longer on a low-traffic store. We plan programs 90 days at a time, and a realistic winning test moves its metric 5% to 10%. The larger lifts in this guide are selected wins, not the planning number, so expect results to build over several months.
Does A/B testing hurt Shopify SEO?
Not when it follows Google’s guidance on website testing: show search engines the same content shoppers see, put a canonical tag on any variation URL, use temporary redirects, and end the test once it has a result. Tests delivered through Google Tag Manager change the page in the browser and leave the store’s URLs as they are.
Do you need Shopify Plus for CRO?
No. Plus matters for checkout: it’s the one plan where apps can customize the information, shipping and payment steps. Collection pages, product pages and the cart can be changed and tested on every plan, checkout branding and the thank-you page can be changed on every plan, and those pages are where we start on any store.
What is the difference between Shopify’s conversion rate and GA4’s?
Shopify divides sessions that completed checkout by its own count of sessions. GA4 counts sessions and users its own way and can report either, so the two rates won’t match. Pick one for testing and use it every time you compare. Shopify changed its session counting on September 21 to 23, 2026, so don’t compare its rates across that date.
How much does Shopify CRO cost?
Research tools such as GA4 and Microsoft Clarity are free. Commercial testing platforms commonly run $500 to $3,500 a month, and Shopify testing apps start lower: Intelligems from $69 a month and Shoplift from $99 a month, as of October 2026. A professional CRO audit typically costs $1,500 to $10,000. For what we include, see our Shopify CRO agency page.
Related reading
- Shopify CRO agency - how we run audits and A/B testing for Shopify stores, with the plan-by-plan checkout table.
- Shopify A/B testing guide - the three ways to test on Shopify, which fits which change, and how to run a test step by step.
- Shopify speed optimization - how fast the sites we audit load on mobile, how to check a store’s speed, and what to fix first.
- Ecommerce CRO guide - the general ecommerce process, funnel numbers and strategies.
- Ecommerce conversion rates - our full ecommerce benchmark, by funnel stage, device, visitor type, traffic source and industry.
- Ecommerce CRO checklist - the inspection list we use in an audit, with a Shopify section.
- Best CRO agencies - our review of CRO agencies, including the best CRO agencies for Shopify.
- A/B test win rate - how often tests win, across all our audited tests.
- CRO guides - every ConversionTeam guide in one place.
About the author
Devon Cox is the Founder and President of ConversionTeam, with 16+ years in conversion rate optimization. He holds a B.S. from Boston College and an MBA from the University of Colorado Boulder. More about Devon.