Getting started

GrowthFlow tests funnels you already have. Visitors from your ads arrive on a smart link such as https://go.yourstore.com/spring, GrowthFlow sends each one to one of your pages, and every Shopify order is credited back to the page the visitor saw. This page walks through the whole loop once; each step links to its full guide.

You need:

• a Shopify store on its own domain (for example yourstore.com),
• access to the DNS settings of that domain,
• two or more pages you want to compare, each on an https:// address.

1. Connect a domain

Open Domains in the sidebar. Under Add domain, type a subdomain of your store’s domain in Hostname — go.yourstore.com is a good choice — and select Add.

The page then shows one CNAME record to add at your DNS provider. Add it, leave the page open, and wait for the status to move from Pending to Active: first CNAME detected, then Certificate issued. This usually takes a few minutes after the record is in place.

Full guide: Connect your domain.

2. Create a smart link

Open Links and select New link. Choose your domain, give the link a Path such as /spring, and fill in:

• Destination — where visitors go when no experiment is running, for example your collection page;
• Fallback URL — where visitors go if the destination can’t be served, for example your home page.

Select Create link. Saving publishes the link; it is live within a minute once the domain is active.

3. Start an experiment

Open Experiments and select New experiment. Pick the link, name the experiment, and add a variant for each page you want to compare: a name, a weight (whole percentages that add up to 100) and a destination URL. One variant is the Control — usually the page you use today.

Select Create draft, check the experiment page, then select Start and Start experiment. From then on, visitors to the link are split between the variants, and each visitor keeps their variant on later visits.

Full guide: Create a smart link and an experiment.

4. Connect Shopify

Open Integrations, then Shopify. Each store connects through its own app, created in Shopify’s Dev Dashboard: register the store under Register a store with its Store domain, Client id and Client secret, then install the app from the install link Shopify generates for your store. Once it is installed, orders arrive by webhook and the web pixel carries the visitor’s click through checkout.

The full guide, Connect your Shopify store, is coming soon.

5. Send traffic and read the results

Use the smart link as the destination URL of your ads. GrowthFlow keeps every query parameter your ad platform adds (utm_source, click ids and so on) and adds two of its own, gf_cid and gf_var, which is how an order is matched to the click.

• The experiment page shows Results: unique Visitors and Clicks per variant, each variant’s Share of visitors next to its configured Weight, and a daily chart.
• Orders lists your Shopify orders with the click and variant each one is credited to, and the orders GrowthFlow couldn’t match.

The guides How attribution works and Reading your results are coming soon.

Troubleshooting

• The domain stays Pending. The CNAME record isn’t visible yet, or it points somewhere else. See Connect your domain → Troubleshooting.
• The smart link answers “Link not configured”. The domain isn’t active yet, or the link was saved less than a minute ago. On Links, check that the link shows Live; if it shows Not live yet with a Publish now button, select it.
• Visitors land on the fallback URL. The link has no destination and no running experiment, or the variant they were assigned can’t be served. Check the link on Links and the variants’ Health on the experiment page.
• Orders show as unattributed. The visitor’s click didn’t reach the store. If your ads send visitors to a page outside Shopify first, that page must pass URL parameters through to the store; Landing pages outside Shopify is coming soon.