Previewing Your Store

You can preview your store and see how various objects appear or behave. Previewing your store is very important part of maintaining your store and improving the shopping experience.

Why Preview?

There are many different reasons to preview your store. Most people preview their store so they can see how it looks after they make changes to the design or layout. Other times people preview their store so they can see how specific products appear or how wording or text changes appear.

What You Can Preview

There are many different objects you can see when you preview your store:

Tip: When you preview your store you can place a test order to see how shoppers experience the buying process on your store (see How Test Orders Work or Placing Test Orders for more information).

Design Version vs. Live Version

When you preview your store you can select to view the design version or the live version of different objects on your store. Whether you choose to view the design or live versions depends on what you want to see:

Design – The design version of your store shows objects with "design" status, including any items that have a future start date (like an offer, or a product). The design status is given to any object that has been created and saved, but not yet been deployed to the store. If an object does not have a version with design status the version with deployed status will be seen.

Keep in mind that an object can have a version that is in design status and a version that is in deployed status. Design status does not mean the object has never been deployed, just that the specific version that is in design status has not been deployed.

Note: If you select to view styles, themes, content layouts, or offers with design status you will see those objects with either design status or deployed status. This includes any offers that have a start date set in the future (but not those that have expired).

If you select to view Site Optimizer tests with design status, you will see any test that has the following status: draft, pending start, and in progress. If you choose to view Site Optimizer tests with deployed status you will see any test with the in progress status.

Live – The live version of your store shows objects with "deployed" status. The deployed status is given to the last version of the object that was deployed to the store.

Note: If you cannot change a toggle from design to live (the toggle is set to Design and disabled) it means that there is not a deployed/live version of the object to preview.

What Happens if the Object is Changed While Previewing

If you are previewing your store (or an object) and you or another user makes changes to the object you are viewing the preview will update to show those changes if you update the preview or reload the preview window. For example, if you are previewing a deployed (live) style and another user makes changes to that style and deploys, when you update your preview the preview will show the changes the other user made.

Locales

When you preview your store you can select the locale you want to view.

The locales you can select from are all the locales that have been enabled for your store.
If you are previewing a specific locale and an object (such as a product) is not localized for that locale (but still available in that locale) the product will use the setup (such as the long description) for the default locale.
If you are previewing a specific object (such as a product) and you are viewing a locale that the product is not set up to support you will receive an error. You cannot preview objects in locales for which they have been restricted.