How to test Growave before going live

You can set up and test Growave features before making them available to your customers. If you want to install Growave widgets on an unpublished theme, explore the settings, and ensure everything functions as expected before launching, follow this guide.

Manage themes in Shopify

A theme in Shopify determines the appearance and layout of your online store. You can add multiple themes to your Shopify admin, but only one theme can be published at a time. The published theme is what customers see when they visit your store, while unpublished themes are stored in the Theme library.

To learn more about managing themes in Shopify, refer to Shopify’s theme management guide.

Install Growave and activate App embeds for an unpublished theme

Go to Growave's page in the Shopify app store and click Install. When installing, the onboarding wizard allows you to choose the unpublished theme and activate App embeds for it while keeping them disabled on the live theme. This ensures that your customers won’t see Growave widgets while you test and configure them in the unpublished theme.

You can learn about all available widgets and the pages where they can be integrated from our guide on Onsite widgets.

Test the Rewards program

Growave's Rewards app runs on the backend and applies across all themes, including live and unpublished ones. If you want to test it without allowing real customers to earn points or redeem discounts, you can restrict participation.

Limit the Rewards program

To restrict participation to specific users (e.g., only your team members), follow these steps:

1. Go to Shopify admin → Customers → select test accounts and add relevant tag.

2. In Growave admin, navigate to Rewards → Settings → Rewards availability and set up eligibility so only users with that tag can participate:

When access is restricted, Growave’s Rewards widgets will only be visible when you log in with a tagged test account.

Set up the Rewards program

Once access is limited, you can configure and test Growave’s Rewards features:

• Adjust Rewardable amount settings for order-based rewards.
• Enable earning rules to test the rewarding process.
• Create spending rules to redeem earned points.
• Set up a Referral program, including rewards for referring customers and referred friends.
• Create VIP Tiers and define enrollment criteria (available starting from the Growth plan).

Configure rewards notifications

Ensure that reward-related emails match your brand’s tone and design. You can customize the notification content in the Rewards → Notifications section:

📖 Learn more about Rewards notifications

You can also adjust notification visuals in Branding → Emails (these settings apply to all Growave email notifications):

📖 Read more about Email branding in Growave

Adjust Rewards branding

Growave offers the Rewards branding menu, where you can adjust colors, fonts, icons, and more to match the Rewards widgets to your brand style:

📖 Explore Rewards branding options

Manage review request emails

While testing, review request emails should be disabled to prevent customers from receiving them before you're ready. To disable them:

1. Go to the Reviews → Notifications
2. Disable notifications using toggle buttons.

You can customize the email templates as needed later.

3. For testing, click the "Send test email" button from the email customization page:

📖 Learn more about Reviews notifications

Test other Growave features

Wishlist

1. Go to Wishlist → Settings → and Enable the Wishlist app.
2. Adjust the Wishlist setting according to your needs:

📖 Learn more about Wishlist settings

Disabling Wishlist reminders is not required when testing Growave with an unpublished theme.

📖 Learn more about Wishlist notifications

Instagram UGC

Ensure your Facebook and Instagram accounts are connected with Growave and set up the Instagram shoppable gallery for your storefront.

📖 Follow this guide to set up Instagram UGC

Launch Growave on your live theme

When you are ready to go live after setting up and testing Growave features, follow these steps:

• Remove the test eligibility tag in the Rewards settings.
• Enable Reviews notifications.
• Activate App embeds for the live theme. To do that:

1. In Shopify, go to Online Store → Themes.
2. Choose live theme → click Customize and enable App embeds for Growave.

3. Integrate all necessary widgets and extensions into the live theme from the Onsite widgets page in Growave’s admin panel.

📖 Learn more about all Growave widgets and extensions

If you have any questions or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team at support@growave.io or via the chat icon in the bottom right corner.