Managing Duplicate Products

This article is only relevant to brands that are not on Shopify Plus!

When you create and save a new Pricing Test in the Intelligems app, we will create a duplicate of each product that is in the test in your Shopify account - we will use these duplicate products to run your Price Test. In most instances, we recommend using the original PDPs and only introducing the duplicate products upon add-to-cart.

To make sure that products are not displaying multiple times in places like third-party channels and collections, inventory is being properly tracked, shipping profiles are set up correctly, and discount codes still work, you will need to follow the below steps to make a few changes to how the duplicate products are set up in Shopify.

You will need to follow these steps for every Price Test you set up.

Step 1: Finding duplicate products in Shopify.

The tag price_test will be added to all duplicates created by Intelligems, as well as a few additional tags specific to each test and test group.

However, the easiest place to access and check the status of your duplicate products is from directly within the Intelligems app! Next to any price test in the app, click the three dots on the far right to see more options, and then select "View Duplicates". This will bring you to the duplicates status page. From here, you can:

• See the status of duplicate products - you will be warned about any issues in the top left, as well as in the Shopify Status and Sync Status columns!

• View duplicate products in Shopify - you can view all duplicates for this test by clicking the View Duplicates in Shopify button at the top, or individual duplicates by clicking on the icon in the View in Shopify column!

Navigating to your duplicate products through the Intelligems app will automatically filter your Shopify products by a tag that we have added for the experiment ID, meaning you will only see duplicate products for that specific test. There should be one product for each non-control group. So, if your test has three groups total, you should see two duplicate products.

If you would like to see duplicate products that have been created for any test, you can navigate to the Products menu and filter for products with the price_test tag.

Step 2: Remove duplicate products from third-party channels.

Follow these steps to remove the duplicate products from all channels other than Online Store and any that you use for reporting. This prevents any channels from showing multiple versions of the product with different prices.

1. Select all the products using the checkbox in the top left.

2. Select the three dots in the menu that pops up, followed by Exclude from sales channel.

3. De-select Online Store and any channels you use for reporting.

4. Select Make products unavailable.

Step 3: Remove duplicate products from collections.

Follow these steps to remove the duplicate products from all collections. This prevents both versions of duplicate products from appearing in collections on the website.

1. Select all the products using the checkbox in the top left.

2. Select the three dots in the menu that pops up, followed by Remove from collection(s).

3. Select all collections.

4. Select Save.

If you use auto-collections on your site, specifically to power any collection pages, you may need to do a couple extra steps here to exclude duplicate products from those pages. How you manage this may depend slightly on how you have your auto-collections set up, but we typically find that updating the duplicate products 'Product Type' to 'Test Products' and then excluding that product type from any auto-collections to be a great solution. Please reach out to [e-mail] if you have questions on this.

Step 4: Configure inventory tracking.

The following steps will allow you to keep an accurate count of duplicate products sold during the test and reconcile inventory after the test. However, stores manage inventory differently - some through Shopify, some through an app, and some have another method. Please consider how selling duplicate products will impact your inventory tracking before following these steps and launching a test.

If you have inventory that turns over or sells out quickly, it may make sense to use this Duplicate SKU Sync App so that the inventory syncs between your products.

If your store uses a third-party application to manage inventory, please skip these steps. Please also note that third party apps that track inventory by SKU should not be affected by duplicating products as SKUs are copied to the duplicates. However, any app that uses product IDs or variant IDs to track inventory may need to be configured with the duplicate products. Pease reach out to [e-mail] if you have questions or concerns!

1. Set the inventory quantities for all duplicate products to zero, either through Shopify’s bulk editor or by clicking into the Shopify product page for each duplicate product.

2. Turn on Continue selling when out of stock for all variants.

If you use Shopify to track inventory, you will need to reset this option to 'Stop selling when out of stock' once an item in your store goes out of stock.

Step 5: Add duplicate products to custom shipping profiles, if necessary.

This step is only necessary if you have custom shipping profiles configured through Shopify. If only the General Shipping profile is used, you can skip this step.

If any of the products you are testing are in a custom shipping profile, you will need to add the duplicate products to the same profile following these steps:

1. From the Shopify admin console, navigate to Settings → Shipping and Delivery.

2. Click Manage rates for the relevant custom shipping profiles.

3. Within the shipping profile, click Manage Products.

4. Add the relevant duplicate products and variants to each custom shipping profile. You can search for price_test to show only the duplicate products. Click Done when you have selected all of the relevant products.

5. Back on the shipping profile page, click "Save".

Step 6: Add duplicate products to discount codes.

This step is only necessary if you have discount codes configured for specific products or collections. If you do not have discount codes or all your discount codes are configured to apply store-wide, then you can skip these steps.

1. Navigate to the Discounts tab on the left hand side of the Shopify admin page.

2. Filter for the discount code(s) you would like to add the duplicate products to. To quickly filter to discounts that may need to be edited, add a filter for Active status, and Amount off products and Buy X Get Y for type.

3. Select any codes that apply to Specific products where the products they apply to are part of the test. Use the search bar or browse feature to add all duplicate products that the discount should apply to. Keep in mind there should be one version of each product for each group in the test.

If you have any discount codes that apply to Specific collections, you will need to create a collection with the duplicate product(s) first and then add that collection to the discount.

Step 7: Configuring search apps, if necessary.

If you use a search app, such as Searchanise, you may need to hide duplicate products in the search app. You can do this by adding price_test to "Hide products with these tags" in your search app settings.

Step 8: Set the draft duplicate products to Active in Shopify

Duplicate products are created by Intelligems in draft mode. Before previewing or starting the test, set each duplicate product's status to active in the Shopify admin. Draft products cannot be added to the cart.