Shopify full-lifecycle sketch — vision, audit, GitHub workflow, A/B testing (parked 2026-05-23)

DARE.CO.UK · PARKED SKETCH · 2026-05-23

Mirrored from ~/.claude/.../memory/parked_sketch_shopify_full_lifecycle_2026-05-23.md. This is a design sketch parked for future build — read for context, not as a current deliverable.

Dan’s framing for the Shopify workstream. Four pillars to design: (1) vision — what does Audrey-on-Shopify become; (2) technical audit to “green” status; (3) GitHub round-trip workflow for theme code (load/restore for A/B); (4) A/B testing landing pages via unique paths (teen-Audrey-via-Facebook example).

Dan 2026-05-23: “I’ll think about a shopify sketch parameters, meaning, what’s the vision, what’s the technical audit/assessment to get the pages to ‘green’ status, what’s the workflow for using github to load/restore back into shopify, as we A/B test new theme designs, what’s the best method for a/b testing ad’s that have separate unique paths, like ‘lets build a teen-version of audrey, and promote it via facebook — what’s the landing page/click path?’”

Four pillars to design

1. Vision — what does Audrey-on-Shopify become

Open questions: - Is the live store the canonical commerce surface OR a downstream of the Audrey portfolio (audreyinc.com/eras, etc.)? - What’s the relationship between Shopify products and the audrey-archive Wayback substrate? Are they the same items in different framings? - How does the voice-chat-as-storefront pattern (feedback_voice_chat_storefront_pattern.md) plug into the live Shopify catalog? - Does “Audrey” stay a single brand, or does it split (Audrey + Teen-Audrey + Audrey-for-Mothers) across multiple stores or multiple collections on one store?

2. Technical audit → “green” status

What’s the rubric? Likely some combination of: - SEO health — meta descriptions, og:image, sitemap, internal linking, page-speed Lighthouse scores - Theme cleanliness — unused JS/CSS, dead code, broken Liquid references - Catalog hygiene — product titles/descriptions consistent, alt-text on images, collection structure logical, no orphan products - Content freshness — last-touched dates, dormant pages flagged - GSC parity — every important page indexed, no surprises in crawl errors - Lighthouse / Core Web Vitals — pass on mobile + desktop - Accessibility — color contrast, keyboard nav, alt text

Define a per-axis 🔴/🟡/🟢 rubric so an audit dashboard shows store health at-a-glance.

3. GitHub round-trip workflow

The desired loop: 1. Pull current Shopify theme code → GitHub repo 2. Edit in IDE / claude code → commit → push 3. Push triggers Shopify theme deploy (via Shopify CLI or GitHub integration) 4. A/B test new theme against current via Shopify’s built-in theme preview + traffic split 5. Promote winner OR rollback

Shopify supports this via the shopify theme push/pull CLI + GitHub integration (Settings → Online Store → Themes → Connect from GitHub). Question is whether to use that vs roll our own (probably no — official integration covers it).

Repo layout question: one theme per repo? Or one repo with multiple theme branches? Probably the latter — easier A/B branching.

4. A/B testing ad landing paths

The teen-Audrey-via-Facebook example: - We launch a campaign on FB targeting teens - Click goes to a UNIQUE path on the Audrey store (e.g. audreyinc.com/pages/teen or audreyinc.com/?utm_source=fb-teen) - That path has its own copy/imagery/collection-filter optimised for the teen audience - Conversion is measured against this path’s traffic

Mechanisms: - Shopify Page builder — create /pages/teen-audrey as a hand-crafted landing - URL parameter routing — same URL, JS reads utm_source, swaps hero copy/image at runtime - Subdomain split — teen.audreyinc.com → separate Shopify store OR same store with theme-level conditional rendering - Shopify Markets — if teen-Audrey is a true sub-brand with different pricing/inventory, Markets is the right primitive

Each has trade-offs (SEO impact, dev cost, analytic separation). Sketch a decision tree.

Likely shape of the answer

A 4-section runbook at pa/_research/shopify-audrey-lifecycle.md (or similar) with: - Vision section (1-2 paragraphs each on the open questions) - Audit matrix (table of axes × 🔴/🟡/🟢 criteria, plus an “as of date” stamp) - GitHub workflow (concrete commands: shopify theme pull, branch naming, deploy trigger) - A/B landing page comparison matrix (the four mechanisms above × cost/SEO/analytics/setup-time)

Resume conditions

• Dan returns with his draft of the sketch parameters
• A concrete A/B campaign (teen-Audrey or otherwise) needs the landing-path infrastructure
• GSC starts returning data and an audit-to-green workstream becomes the natural next move
• Shopify theme deploy is needed and we want the GitHub round-trip in place first

Cross-references

• project_shopify_audrey_api_unblocked.md — Shopify API access (works, awaiting first consumer)
• feedback_voice_chat_storefront_pattern.md — voice as storefront, builds on top
• project_audrey_business_identity.md — brand framing context
• project_audrey_agent_discoverability.md — sibling SEO/agent-readiness workstream
• project_gsc_three_property_baseline.md — GSC data inflection that unblocks audit work