Launch, pause, relaunch, or archive variations

Updated

Learn how to publish variations to production and unpublish them by changing their status.

Optimize uses different status states to move variations in and out of production. When you create a new variation, it is initially saved as in a draft state. You can change the status of a draft variation to ready, which places the variation in the queue to launch (i.e., go live) the next time you publish your site. 

What are the variation statuses?

  • Draft — a new variation that have never been published
  • Ready — a draft variation has been queued to publish. It will go live the next time you publish your site.
  • Paused — a once published variation has been unpublished or a traditional test is in the off state
  • Archived — an unpublished variation has been removed from active development

Traditional tests

In traditional test optimizations, all variations share the same status — you launch, stop, and relaunch the optimization, not individual variations. Go to the Insights tab > All optimizations > your optimization.

AI-optimized and manual personalizations

In AI-optimized optimizations and manual personalizations optimizations, you can change the status of individual variations.

How to mark variations as ready

Variations marked as ready go live the next time you publish your site.

While editing the optimization:

  1. Click the Optimizations dropdown in the top bar
  2. For one variation: To the right of a variation, click the Options icon > Mark as ready
  3. For all variations: Click the Down arrow icon on the Launch all variations now button > Mark as ready

How to launch variations directly

You can skip the ready state and launch draft variations directly.

While editing the optimization:

  1. Click the Optimizations dropdown in the top bar
  2. For one variation: To the right of a variation, click the Options icon > Launch now
  3. For all variations: Click Launch all variations now > Continue to publishing > Publish to selected domains

How to pause a live variation

Pausing a live variation instantly unpublishes it from production — no additional "Publish" action is required.

While editing the optimization:

  1. Click the Optimizations dropdown in the top bar
  2. Click the Options icon to the right of a variation > Pause

If all variations in the optimization are live, you can alternatively click Pause all from the Optimizations dropdown.

Note

Reminder — it's not possible to pause individual variations in a traditional test. Review your options.

How to relaunch a paused variation

When you're ready for a paused variation to go live again, you can relaunch it. If you did not edit the variation, relaunching it will instantly push the variation live to your site. If you edited the variation, publish your site after relaunching the variation.

While editing the optimization:

  1. Click the Optimizations dropdown in the top bar
  2. Click the Options icon to the right of the variation > Relaunch

How to archive a paused variation

If you have no plans to relaunch a paused variation (e.g., it's a poor performer), you can archive the variation.

  1. While editing the optimization:
  2. Click the Optimizations dropdown in the top bar
  3. Click the Options icon to the right of the variation > Archive

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