Managing Duplicate Products when Redirecting to Duplicate PDPs
For stores not on Shopify Plus, Intelligems can duplicate products for Price Tests. Here we'll walk you through the steps to configure and activate these duplicate products.
Overview
In specific, more complex cases, we may use 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. However, there are certain instances where using the PDP for the duplicate product may be necessary, including:
Testing subscription products with most subscription providers
Testing significant PDP changes
In order to use the duplicate PDPs, you will need to confirm that both Should Duplicate Products and Should Redirect are enabled in the Advanced Settings menu in the Intelligems app. If you do not see this option, you may need to request access to this menu by contacting our support team here.
To make sure that products are hidden from 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 these 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 our support team if you need assistance with 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 though other methods. Please consider how selling duplicate products will affect 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.
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 if 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 as needed
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: Configure 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: Configure duplicate products in third-party apps
The following steps will help you configure duplicate products within third-party apps, if necessary.
Note that if you don't see your duplicate products in a third-party app, you may need to set your duplicate products to 'Active' status in Shopify in order to access them. Don't worry - as long as you've completed the above steps, users won’t be able to navigate to these pages until the test is live, unless they are given the URL directly, as long as you completed all the steps above.
Configuring subscription management apps.
There are many subscription management apps, but the documentation for configuring duplicate products on some of the apps we’ve come across can be found at the following links:
Most applications for ratings and reviews offer a solution for grouping products so that multiple products display the same ratings and reviews. We recommend utilizing these features to ensure that duplicate products display the same content as the original products.
There are many different ratings and reviews apps, but the documentation for creating groups on some of the apps we’ve come across can be found at the following links:
