Case Study
Direct Response
Live 50/50 split test vs. Shopify Checkout + Shop Pay. Neck to neck CVR. More revenue per visitor. 42.13% checkout conversion. $98.30 AOV.
Post-purchase upsells, VIP membership, and autoship drove higher RPV vs. Shopify native.
157 orders from 314 checkouts. Matched Shopify Checkout + Shop Pay neck to neck.
Lifted by post-purchase upsell and VIP membership capture built into the checkout.
The Full Story
Most merchants have a great Q4. Then Q1 hits and the cliff is real. This brand didn't just hold — they accelerated.
This merchant had built turned an idea into a real business:~800 active subscribers, $30K+ monthly recurring revenue, a skincare brand that had hit $150K+ in December and was scaling into Q1. All of it running through Shopify Payments and SEAL Subscriptions.
He didn't wait to find out. He chose Phoenix proactively — for tokenized subscriber vaulting, custom checkout and post-purchase upsell infrastructure, and the ability to own and port his subscriber list if he ever needed to.
The split test came after the migration decision, not before it. He ran it to answer one question: did moving to Phoenix cost him anything on conversion?
On a single day in February 2026, This merchant ran Phoenix and Shopify's native checkout side by side. Real traffic. Real orders. Both experiences tracked in real time.
Phoenix started behind, a normal pattern during warmup as a new checkout environment builds trust with fresh traffic. Over the course of the day, with real orders flowing through both paths, the gap closed steadily.
By end of day, with approximately 1,000 visitors per path, Phoenix had closed to neck to neck with Shopify Checkout + Shop Pay on conversion rate. The CVR gap was under 2.5%.
The insight wasn't just that Phoenix matched CVR. It was that the post-purchase infrastructure with upsells, downsells, VIP membership, autoship. Phoenix was building more revenue per visitor even while CVR was still catching up.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Checkout CVR | 42.13% |
| Revenue per Visitor | $37.85 |
| Average Order Value | $98.30 |
| Payment Abandon Rate | 8.46% |
| Total Revenue (1 week) | $11,700 |
| Total Orders | 119 |
| Checkouts Started | 314 |
| Total Sessions | 376 |
The merchant moved 100% of his traffic to Phoenix after seeing the data. The risk wasn't testing — the risk was assuming Shopify native was the ceiling.
Merchant Testimonial
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