This walkthrough covers creating a theme experiment in Cooee, choosing your challenger theme, and going live.
Before you start
The Cooee Shopify app installed, with the advanced theme integration enabled.
At least one additional theme in your Shopify theme library (Admin → Online Store → Themes). This becomes your challenger.
The challenger theme fully configured and reviewed. Visitors assigned to it see it exactly as it stands, so preview it end to end first — homepage, a product page, cart, and checkout entry.
Cooee never edits your themes. You build and maintain the challenger yourself in Shopify.
Step 1 — Create the experiment
In Cooee, go to Experiments and click New Experiment.
Select Theme A/B Testing.
Enter a clear Name, for example "Q3 Homepage Redesign".
Write a Hypothesis stating what you expect and why. For example: "If we show the new minimalist theme, add-to-cart rate will increase because the simplified product layout reduces decision friction."
Choose a Primary Metric — the single KPI that defines success, such as Add-to-Cart Rate, Conversion Rate, or Revenue per Visitor.
Click Create.
Committing to one primary metric before launch matters. Picking the winning metric after the fact is the most common way to convince yourself of a result that isn't there.
Step 2 — Configure the arms
Your experiment is created with two arms:
Arm | Role | Theme |
Control | Baseline experience | Your current live theme, set automatically |
Variant A | Challenger experience | You select this |
To set up the variant:
Click Variant A.
Select the challenger theme from your Shopify theme library.
Optionally rename the arm to something descriptive, such as "Minimalist v2".
Traffic split
The default is 50% control / 50% variant, and the arms must sum to exactly 100%. You can weight it differently — 80/20, for example — if you want to limit how many visitors see an unproven experience.
Tip: allocating less than 30% to the variant slows down how quickly you reach a trustworthy result, sometimes dramatically. Use 50/50 unless you have a specific reason not to.
Avoid changing the split once the experiment is running. It shifts the mix of visitors mid-test and makes the comparison unreliable. If you need a different split, stop and restart.
Step 3 — Publish
Review the configuration and click Publish.
Cooee begins assigning new visitors immediately.
Returning visitors who already have an assignment keep the arm they were given.
Checking it yourself
To see the variant experience as a visitor would, open your store in a private browsing window. Each private window is treated as a new visitor, so you may need a few attempts before you land in the variant arm.
Your own visits are counted like any other, so keep internal testing light once the experiment is live.