How to A/B Test Pre-Purchase Offer in Shopify? [2026]

Pre-purchase offers are a great way to increase your average order value (AOV).

When the customer has made up their mind to buy from your store, you have the opportunity to offer more from your brand, and close the deal with a bigger order value.

But if your pre-purchase offer isn’t converting as expected, A/B testing can help you figure out the root cause and solve the issue.

So, in this blog post, we’ll share a detailed guide on how to A/B test a pre-purchase offer in your Shopify store, with two different methods.

First, let’s start with some basics!

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Fundamentals of A/B Testing & Pre-Purchase Offers

What is A/B Testing in Shopify?

A/B testing is a technique in which two different versions of a webpage (or other digital assets) are distributed to different visitors to identify which one performs better for a defined business goal.

For most eCommerce brands, the goal is to increase the conversion rate. And A/B testing is considered one of the most effective CRO (conversion rate optimization) tools in eCommerce.

What is a Pre-Purchase Offer in Shopify?

Pre-purchase offer is an upselling strategy where additional product recommendations or upgrades are displayed to the customer before completing the checkout. 

These pre-purchase offers could be displayed either on the product page or the cart drawer. 

For example, a clothing and apparel store may display complementary products or accessories that pair with the product added to the cart. 

The main purpose of setting up a pre-purchase offer is to increase the average order value and revenue by enticing customers to buy more from your brand.

How Does Pre-Purchase Offer A/B Testing Work?

Now, let’s understand this whole concept using a hypothetical example:

Let’s say a clothing and apparel brand is offering a 10% discount with its pre-purchase offer. But the pre-purchase offer conversions are still down.

Graphic explaining how a pre-purchase A/B test works

Now, the brand runs an A/B test where the original product page template has a 10% discount on the pre-purchase offer, and the variant offers a $10 gift voucher. The variant was able to achieve a higher conversion rate in the test (7%). 

Thus, the test was successful as the variant turned out to be the winner, and the brand can update its pre-purchase template with the new offer to get better conversions.

Why A/B Test a Pre-Purchase Offer?

Here are the key benefits of A/B testing a pre-purchase offer:

• Validate a pre-purchase offer idea

If you’ve got a new pre-purchase offer, but are not sure whether its implementation would impact your store, you can perform an A/B test in the initial phase. This way, you can validate your idea before thorough implementation.

• Optimize the upsell conversions

Offering upsell products is an art. Customers need a strong reason to add something to their cart. If you’ve placed pre-purchase upsells but aren’t seeing the desired conversion, A/B testing could help you optimize your pre-purchase offers.

• Increase your store’s revenue

A/B testing helps you with robust validation on what upsells are best for your pre-purchase offer and how the strategy should be executed. Thus, with a proven strategy, you could increase your store’s revenue along with the average order value.

• Enhance the user experience (UX)

A/B testing is not just a tool to optimize conversions and revenue. When used properly, it can also help elevate your store’s user experience. For example, if customers have shared negative feedback about the way the pre-purchase offer is being displayed, you could use A/B testing to make it a more user-friendly experience.

In a nutshell, A/B testing is a data-driven approach to making critical business decisions rather than relying on assumptions.

Now, we’re going to cover two different methods to A/B test a pre-purchase offer:

1. Using GemPages & “GemX: CRO & A/B Testing” App

2. Using “One Click Upsell ‑ Zipify OCU” App

We’ll walk you through both guides one by one.

Method #1: How to A/B Test Pre-Purchase Offer Using GemPages & GemX

First, let’s go through a step-by-step guide on how to run A/B testing on your pre-purchase offer using GemPages — a landing page builder app and GemX — a dedicated CRO & A/B testing app:

Step 1: Define the Hypothesis for the Test

Your pre-purchase offer may consist of multiple elements that could be covered in the scope of the test. But here are the two important questions: 

What exactly are you going to test? And why?

A test hypothesis defines these aspects. 

Let’s understand this with the help of a sample hypothesis:

• Theory: Based on the low conversion rate of the pre-purchase offer, we believe that displaying upsell products with a free shipping offer to all new visitors will entice them to go for the additional purchase.

• Validation: We will know this when we see an increase in the conversion rate of the upsell product and overall revenue.

• Outcome: This will be good for our business because it will help us validate the pre-purchase strategy and increase our overall revenue.

Step 2: Create Two Versions of Your Pre-Purchase Offer

Now, based on your hypothesis, create different versions of your offer page, i.e., the original version and the variant.

If you’re using GemPages, creating your store and landing pages becomes a seamless process.

GemPages is one of the most loved page builder apps by Shopify merchants. With an excellent rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars, from more than 3,400 reviews, GemPages has been helping thousands of merchants worldwide.

GemPages Landing Page Builder app

With GemPages, you can build store and landing pages using its professionally designed templates and visual editor. You can explore GemPages templates for product pages and customize the way you display the upsell offers on your Shopify store.

Step 3: Set Up and Run the A/B Test

To perform the A/B test smoothly and reliably, you need a dedicated A/B testing app.

Install the GemX app if you haven’t already.

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We’ve built GemX with our years of experience in the Shopify CRO domain to help merchants boost their conversion rate with reliable A/B testing.

Once the GemX app is installed, you can click the “Create new experiment” button inside the dashboard.

You’ll find two options:

• Template testing: This A/B testing feature lets you test a single-page template. Thus, you can A/B test a certain element on the pre-purchase offer template as defined in the hypothesis.

• Multipage testing: This feature covers a much broader scope. GemX also lets you test A/B test two complete store experiences, instead of testing just one page.

For this tutorial, we’ll go with the “Template testing” feature.

Now, select the original pre-purchase offer template and its variant. If you don’t have a separate variant created in GemPages, don’t worry, you can easily create the variant through the GemX admin too.

Then, configure all the advanced conditions as per your test scope and requirements.

Here’s a brief overview of these conditions:

3.1. Choose the Winning Metric: The winning metric could be either “Conversion” or “Revenue”, depending on your campaign goal. For example, since we’re aiming to increase the average order value (i.e., revenue) in this A/B testing campaign, you can select “Revenue” as your winning metric.

3.2. Select the Device Types: Specify which device traffic you’d like to cover in this A/B test — desktop, mobile, tablet, or ALL.

3.3. Select the Visitor Types: This could be an important setting if your hypothesis is defined to target specific types of visitors only — new, returning, or both.

3.4. Choose the Traffic Sources: You could select all traffic sources or exclude specific ones based on your strategy. For example, if you want to analyze the behavior of organic traffic only, you can exclude the paid traffic sources.

3.5. Define the Traffic Split: Typically, the traffic split should be 50% for each variant so that both templates are given equal opportunity to show their performance.

3.6. Select “Market & language”: This is applicable if you’re operating in multiple markets and want to analyze the behavior of specific market(s) only.

As you can see, when running an A/B test with GemX, the scope and precision of the test get highly advanced as well as flexible. Once all the settings are configured, click on the “Start experiment” button — and your pre-purchase offer A/B test will go live immediately.

Alt-text: Process of creating an A/B test in GemX

Step 4: Analyze the Test Results and Implement Changes

Continue monitoring the performance of your test. 

End the test once you have found the winning template. However, before you end the test, make sure to review these two important criteria for a reliable test result:

• Make sure to achieve a statistical significance of at least 90-95%.

• Run the test for the required timeframe, i.e., two weeks at a minimum.

Review the A/B test analysis inside the GemX dashboard. Once you’ve found your winning template, you could implement those changes in your live store.

Step 5: Document the A/B Test Insights

Regardless of the test result, you should make it a practice to document the insights obtained through your A/B test.

Meaning, whether the test was successful or even if it failed, you could gather observations regarding the customer behavior. These insights would be helpful for your future marketing efforts.

You can use a database tool of your choice (e.g., Notion) to save and organize the test insights.

Learn more: Landing Page Split Testing For eCommerce — Complete Guide

Method #2: How to A/B Test Pre-Purchase Offer Using Zipify

Now, let’s talk about an alternate method. In this method, we’ll discuss one of the upselling apps that lets you create and A/B test a pre-purchase upsell funnel.

Go to the Shopify App Store and install the “One Click Upsell ‑ Zipify OCU” app.

Click the Install button again to confirm the installation with access permissions.

Then, you’ll land on the onboarding flow inside the Zipify dashboard. Click Continue to proceed further.

Enable the app extensions inside the Shopify theme editor and click “Save”.

Side note: There’s also a setting to “Define OCU as your Post-purchase upsell app”; however, we don’t go into those details because currently, we’re focusing only on the pre-purchase upsell funnel.

Now, you can create the pre-purchase upsell offer in two ways:

1. Create “Blank funnel”

2. Pre-built funnel

For this guide, we’ll go with the pre-built funnel option.

Even with the pre-built funnel, you can customize the settings manually or keep them as is and publish the funnel.

Now, the standard pre-purchase funnel is published.

Alt-text: Process of creating a pre-built funnel in Zipify

Next, click on the “Create split test” button and proceed to set up the A/B test (also known as a split test). As you can see, you’ll have two options to display the additional product: 1. “Different Product” and 2. “AI Generated product”.

For this guide, we’ll choose the “Different Product” option and select the specific product from the available products in our store.

Finally, hit the play icon to start the A/B test.

Again, follow the similar process that we discussed in the previous method, i.e., ensuring 90-95% statistical significance and running the test for at least two weeks. Once you have enough data, you can click on the trophy icon that says “Choose winner”.

Review the performance data of both variants and choose the winner.

Alt-text: “Choose winner” feature in Zipify admin

Again, after finding your winner template, you can implement the required changes on your live template. Also, don’t forget to note down the observations from your A/B tests.

And that’s it!

We’ve covered two comprehensive guides on conducting pre-purchase offer testing.

Learn more: How to A/B Test Post-Purchase Pages/Upsells on Shopify

Final Thoughts on A/B Testing Pre-Purchase Offer

Whether you’re using GemX or an A/B testing feature within your pre-purchase upsell app, remember, the important thing is to ensure the accuracy of the test.

For that, you need to apply the right methodology and analyze the data properly before ending the test. GemX makes it easy for you to conduct reliable A/B tests with its advanced configuration and intuitive analytics.

You can give GemX a try with a 14-day free trial — and start your first A/B test NOW!

To learn more about other eCommerce marketing strategies, tools, and best practices, check out more resources on the GemPages Blog. Also, join the GemPages Facebook community to network and learn from like-minded entrepreneurs and experts.

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FAQs about A/B Testing Pre-Purchase Offer

How to create a pre-purchase offer in Shopify?

There are two main ways to create pre-purchase offers in your Shopify store:;

• Use a page builder app, e.g., GemPages Landing Page Builder, to build product pages with pre-purchase upsell offers.
• Use an upsell app, e.g., Zipify, to create pre-purchase upsells.

What is pre-purchase offer A/B testing?

In pre-purchase A/B testing, you could test two different versions of the offer page to identify which one brings more conversions of the pre-purchase upsell offer. For example, you could test a pre-purchase offer page with 20% discount vs a $20 gift voucher.

What’s the difference between pre-purchase and post-purchase upsells?

As the names suggest, a “pre-purchase” offer is an upselling offer that’s displayed to customers before they complete the purchase, whereas the post-purchase upsell is promoted after the customers have completed the checkout.

What is the best A/B testing app for Shopify?

GemX: CRO & A/B Testing app is our #1 recommendation, not just because we’ve built it, but because it’s backed by years of experience and expertise in the Shopify CRO domain.

What are the benefits of A/B testing a pre-purchase offer?

By A/B testing your pre-purchase offer, you could make robust decisions that are backed by real data and enhance your user experience. A/B testing also allows you to increase your average order value (AOV) and helps you boost your store’s revenue.

Topics: 

Sales Funnels