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Forms

A form is what you put on your storefront to ask somebody for their email address. It can be a popup, a card in the corner, a bar across the bottom, a full-screen panel, or a block that sits inside one of your own pages.

Forms live under Content → Forms. This guide is split into chapters, one for each part of the work; each section below says what is true and names the chapter that has the rest.

Your forms

Every form is a card on the Forms screen, showing an image of the form as you are building it. To make one, press New form on Content → Forms; it asks for a starting point or an example first, then a name. A form's own page shows what is live, and every publish keeps the version it replaced. All of it is in Your forms.

Editing a form

On the left you build the form; on the right you watch it, running the same code your storefront runs. Test and preview lets you meet it the way a visitor does, and anything that would stop it publishing is listed under the preview by itself. All of it is in Editing a form.

How a form looks

Pick anything in the form and Style shows what it looks like right now: text, background, border, corners, shadow, padding and margin. Format sets the shape it takes and how it closes, and the mobile view keeps its own values. All of it is in How a form looks.

Where it appears, who sees it, and when it opens

Opens, Where and Shown to are three questions behind Settings, and a visitor sees the form only when all three are true. Nothing you change there reaches anybody until you publish. All of it is in the chapter Who sees a form, and when.

Exit intent

Exit intent opens a form when somebody moves to leave your store — on desktop, the moment the mouse heads up past the top of the page. It cannot open on Shopify's checkout, where no form in your theme can appear, so it catches people before checkout: on a product page, after adding to the cart, or anywhere else on your store. On mobile there is no leaving to see, so a backup opens it — 70% of the way down the page in the starting point and the examples.

Pair it with the cart. A form whose button goes back to the cart should only reach shoppers whose cart has something in it; an empty cart is a poor place to land. The Cart rule decides that: Has items for the form that goes back to the cart, Is empty for a second form with a different offer that goes to your home page or a collection. The cart is checked at the moment the form would open, so an add-to-cart since the page loaded counts, and if it cannot be read the form does not open. The Exit intent starting point comes with Has items; the examples include one of each. All of it is in Exit intent and the cart, in the chapter Who sees a form, and when.

Publishing a form

Publish puts your working copy on your storefront, and it is the only thing that changes what visitors see. Popups, corner cards, bars and full-screen forms also need forms enabled on your store — one switch in Shopify's theme editor, offered early and never required before you publish one. All of it is in Publishing a form.

What a form collects

A form fills blanks and never overwrites what you already know; consent is the one exception, because a signup is the person's most recent answer. A form can also ask for a phone number and give a discount code away. All of it is in What a form collects.

Who can do what

Anyone on your team except a viewer can create, edit and publish forms — and that includes saying what a form gives away, because the block only ever names a discount that already exists. A viewer can look.

The discount itself is made in Shopify, by somebody with a Shopify login that may manage discounts. And enabling unique codes for a discount is done from the discount, by a marketer, manager or owner.

Publishing a form is a different permission from sending a campaign, and that is deliberate: a form goes on your own storefront, comes off again in one click, and everybody it collects arrives by their own act. Sending email cannot be undone.