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Who sees a form, and when

Opens, Where and Shown to are three questions, on three cards behind Settings. They are saved the way the rest of the editor is saved: they write themselves as you work, and nothing you change there reaches anybody until you publish. Who sees your form and what your form says go live together, in one act.

The three are read together, never one at a time, and two of the cards say so at the top:

A visitor sees this form only when Where, Shown to and Opens are all true.

A form kept to your sale pages, shown only to people you have not met, opening after a scroll, is met by the visitors who are all three of those things — and by nobody else.

How it opens

Opens lists the ways a form can open: as the page loads, after a delay, after a scroll, when someone looks like they are leaving, or when they click something on your page. A form can have more than one, and you say whether any one of them or all of them must happen.

Opens is the list of ways your form can open. A new form has one of them:

A selector you have not finished typing holds that one field, the way a blank page address holds a rule:

Type what a visitor clicks. Nothing is saved until you do.

Clear the field to type a new selector and nothing is saved meanwhile — your form keeps opening on the one it already had. Empty is not a thing a form can open on, so it is never written down.

A form can have more than one way to open. Add another way it opens puts a second row under the first, and a control appears above them asking whether you mean any of them or all of them:

The form opens as soon as any one of these happens.
The form opens only after every one of these has happened.

All of these is how you ask for your most engaged visitors — thirty seconds and half the page — rather than a mistake. There is a ceiling, and the control says what it is when you reach it:

Four ways to open is as many as one form can have.

Opening as soon as the page loads is the one that cannot join a list. A form that opens immediately has nothing left to wait for, so the control will not act and says why where you are pressing:

A form that opens right away has nothing to wait for. Choose another way it opens first.

Leaving a page is something you can only see on desktop with a mouse, and most people who visit your store are on mobile — so a form that opens on the way out also carries a backup, and the backup is not optional. On a form with one way to open you choose it under Format, beside the preview; on a form with several, it sits on the exit row itself. The row says which:

On mobile there is no way to tell that someone is leaving, so your backup is used instead. Choose it under Format.

Where it appears

Where decides which pages of your store a form may appear on: an Only on these pages list, a Never on these pages list, and a row of kinds of page. Leave them all empty and the form can appear anywhere, and a page in both lists never shows it.

Where is about the page, not about the person on it. A form that names nothing here can appear anywhere, and the card says so rather than sitting blank:

This form can appear on any page of your store.

Two lists, because that is how you would say it out loud. Only on these pages and Never on these pages. Each row is a way of matching plus an address you type:

starts with ▾ /collections/sale

The three ways of matching are is exactly, starts with and contains. Starts with is the one you usually mean — a collection, a blog, a whole section of the store — and it is what a new row arrives set to. There is no does not contain, because that is contains in the second list: one idea instead of two.

The address is the part after your domain, and the card says how it is read:

The part after your domain — /collections/sale. Capitals and anything after a ? are ignored. One address works in every market, so do not add a market prefix such as /en-gb.

A trailing slash is ignored too, so /pages/about and /pages/about/ are one page. The question mark is the part worth knowing: it is what keeps a rule working when an ad or a campaign link adds tracking to the address, which is exactly the traffic you paid for.

Markets and second languages are already taken care of, and this is the part that would otherwise bite you quietly. A store selling into several markets serves the same collection at /collections/sale and at /en-gb/collections/sale, and a rule written one way would have matched one market and missed the other — so an exclusion you wrote to keep a form off your sale pages would have kept working at home and stopped working abroad. Write the address the way you write it for your main market. We take the market off the front before the rule is read, so one address covers all of them.

Because of that, an address with a market prefix in it is refused: a rule written as /en-gb/collections/sale would be read as /collections/sale and match every market, which is the opposite of what typing it says. Take the /en-gb off the front and the rule covers Britain along with everywhere else.

One address a rule can miss while your theme is catching up: a market's own home page. Your main market's home page is /, and every other market's is read as its own address — /en-gb, say — until your theme has the current version of our block. If you want a rule about home pages in every market before then, name each one.

Both lists empty means anywhere. Name pages in both and the card tells you which wins:

A page in both lists is never shown the form.

Never is asked first, and nothing in the other list can out-vote it — otherwise you would be left with a rule you believe is working.

Only on these kinds of page is the other way to narrow it, and it is a row of toggles rather than an address: Home, Product, Collection, All collections, Blog, Article, Page, Cart, Search. They are Shopify's own kinds of page, in your store's words.

Checkout is not one of these — a form in your theme cannot appear there.

A kind and an address narrow each other; they do not add up. Collection chosen, and contains /sale, is one rule about collection pages whose address contains /sale — not two chances for the form to appear.

A row you have not finished typing holds the whole rule back, and the card says so while it waits:

Type a page address. Nothing here is saved until you do.

An address matching nothing would be a rule meaning nothing, so the editor holds it rather than refusing to save your form. It is worth finishing before you publish, though: a rule being held is a rule narrowing nothing, and a form that shows up more widely than you meant is the surprise that costs you.

We do not always know which page somebody is on. The forms code that runs on your storefront is part of your theme, and a store still serving an older copy of it does not tell us the page at all. So this card asks the question the consent and location rules ask — When we cannot tell — with its own reason underneath:

Until your theme is updated, we may not know which page someone is on. Choose what should happen then.

Do not show the form is where it starts, and it is the careful answer: until your theme catches up, a page rule shows the form nowhere rather than everywhere. The updated code reaches your store on its own; there is nothing for you to do.

Only people who came from one link

A link rule, at the foot of the Where card, shows a form only to people who arrived on a link carrying a name and value you choose — one ad, or one email. Not when turns it round. Use your own link names, never an ad network's click ID.

A page rule reads the address and ignores everything after a ?, so a tracking tag on an ad can never break it. When the tag is exactly what you want to aim at — a form only for people who clicked one ad, or one email — add a link rule at the foot of the Where card:

Only when ▾ the link has utm_ID = testing

Take the name and the value from the link itself. In a link like yourstore.com/?utm_ID=testing, utm_ID is the name and testing is the value. You can paste the whole utm_ID=testing into the first box and it is split for you. Capitals do not matter, and leaving the value empty matches the name with any value — every link carrying a utm_source, say, whatever it says.

Not when turns it round: everybody except the people who arrived on that link, which is how you keep a signup form away from people who came from your own newsletter.

Use your own link names, such as utm_source or utm_campaign, not an ad network's click ID. Some browsers — Safari among them — remove click IDs such as gclid and fbclid from the link before your store ever sees it, so a rule on one of those will not match those visitors. The utm_ names are left alone.

Only the link of the page someone is on counts. Nothing on your storefront remembers it, so somebody who lands from your ad and then clicks through to another page no longer carries the tag, and the rule no longer matches them there. If the form should catch them, let it open on the page they land on.

A value cannot be an email address. Addresses in a link are never read, and the card says so rather than saving a rule that could never match. Nothing a link carries is kept, either: it is read to answer this one question and then dropped.

Like the page, the link is not always known — a store still serving an older copy of the forms code does not tell us — so the card has its own When we cannot tell, starting at Do not show the form.

Who sees it

A new form starts with one rule already on it: it is hidden from people who are already subscribed, and everybody else sees it. That is not a law, it is a rule like any other. It sits on a Consent card, and you can turn it around, point it at a different consent state, or remove it so the form shows to everyone who visits your store.

Add a rule about is a row of compact + buttons: Location, Consent, New or returning, Segment and Device. Each rule you add appears as a card headed by its subject, with a trash at its top right; a kind your form already has is grayed, because a form only ever asks each of these once.

A consent rule is one sentence, and it is the sentence a new form is born carrying:

Do not show ▾ the form to people whose Email ▾ consent is Subscribed ▾

It has two directions. Show means only people in that consent state see the form. Do not show means everybody except them does. The words between the controls stay the same whichever way you set it, so the rule reads as one thing rather than two.

And it asks about one channel at a time. The middle control is Email or Text messages, so a form whose whole purpose is to collect telephone numbers can say do not show it to people who already hear from us by text without caring what their email consent says — and the other way round. A new form starts on Email; change it and the rest of the sentence keeps its meaning exactly.

Somebody you have never met is neither subscribed nor anything else — most people on a storefront are exactly that — so this rule shows them the form. If you would rather it did not, When we cannot tell, at the bottom of the same card, is where you say so.

Who counts as "met" is somebody whose browser the app recognizes — they have given your store their email address at checkout, or signed up on a form, on that browser. A signup is also what makes a visitor known in the first place, so a form earns its place twice. The Returning visitors help page explains how recognition works and how long it lasts.

A location rule is one sentence, and you finish it:

Show ▾ the form to people in United States × Canada × + Add a country

It has two directions, and they are the two choices in that first control. Show means only the countries you name see the form. Do not show means everybody except them does — the shorter way to say "everywhere but the United States", and the only way that does not involve listing every other country on earth. It is one list either way. Changing the direction never changes which countries are in it, and never loses your answer.

You search for a country by name, never by a code. Type "United Kingdom" or just "UK"; you never see a two-letter code anywhere. Each one you pick becomes a chip in the sentence, with an × for taking it off again. The search puts itself away as soon as you pick one, so the rule you are writing is never hidden behind a list of countries — + Add a country brings it back with the cursor already in it, and Escape or a click anywhere else closes it too.

Three countries show at a time, and the rest sit behind and 4 more. Press it and they all open in place; press it again and they fold back up. The number counts what is hidden, so three chips and and 9 more is twelve countries. A country you have just picked is always on screen.

Nothing is saved until you choose the first country, and the card says so while it waits. A rule with no countries in it would not mean anything, so the editor holds it for you rather than refusing to save your form. Taking the last country back off does the same thing — it is not an error, and nothing else you have done is at risk.

Narrowing a country to certain regions

A country rule can be narrowed to regions in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Each of those countries gets a line under the rule that starts at Everywhere, and you change it to Only in or Except and name the regions.

Some countries can be narrowed further. Under the sentence, each of them gets its own line:

In United States: Except ▾ Texas × + Add a region

The countries this works for today are the United States (the fifty states and the District of Columbia), Canada (provinces and territories), Australia (states and territories) and the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). Every other country offers no line at all, and the rule covers the whole of it.

Every line starts at Everywhere, which means the whole country and stores nothing. The other two answers are:

Regions work exactly like countries: you search by name, each one becomes a chip with an ×, the search puts itself away as soon as you pick one, three show at a time, and nothing is saved until you name the first region. Switching between Only in and Except keeps the regions you have named and changes what they mean.

The direction at the top of the sentence still decides. Do not show the form to people in United States · In United States: Except Texas is shown in Texas, and everywhere outside the United States — the line says who the rule is about, and the first control says what being named does.

Two forms, one store, which is the shape most people want:

Between them, everybody in the United States sees exactly one of the two, and nobody sees both.

Where the region comes from, and what happens when there isn't one. The platform tells us the state or province from the visitor's connection, the same way it tells us the country. It cannot always — some connections, some phone networks and some company networks say nothing about it, and it goes missing more often than the country does. When it cannot tell, the form is not shown, unless you say otherwise in When we cannot tell on the same card. That one answer covers both: the country and the region.

Every rule that can be unanswerable asks you one more question: what happens when we cannot tell. Most people on a storefront are people you have never met, so this decides far more often than it sounds like it will. "Do not show the form" is the careful answer; "show it anyway" is the right one when the whole point of the rule is to reach somebody new. It works the same way in both directions of a location rule: the careful answer always means fewer people see the form.

Showing it to a segment

A Segment rule shows a form to the people in one of your segments, or to the people not in it. It can only answer for somebody whose identity your store has verified, so for most storefront visitors When we cannot tell decides — set it deliberately.

Segment is one of the tiles under Add a rule about, and the rule it adds is one sentence:

People in this segment ▾ Bought in the last 90 days

The first control is the direction — people in it, or people not in it. The second is which of your segments it is about: a search field listing your segments with the most profiles first, each with its last count beside it. Type a few letters of the name to narrow it.

A segment rule can only answer for somebody whose identity your store has verified, and most people on a storefront are not:

A segment rule can only match someone whose identity your store has verified. Everyone else is decided by “When we cannot tell”.

Verified is the word the profile screen uses, and it means the same thing here: their address reached you through your store's own records — an order, a customer account, a checkout your store completed — rather than through a form somebody typed an address into. Somebody who has only ever typed an address is not verified, and this rule cannot answer for them either.

So this is the rule where When we cannot tell decides most of the time. Set it deliberately rather than leaving it: on this one card it is closer to the main question than to an edge case.

Choosing a segment here is what lets your storefront ask about it at all. Nothing else grants that — not a form that mentions the segment, not a campaign that uses it. Until you pick it in this row your storefront cannot ask whether anybody is in it, and once you have, it can ask about that segment and no other.

The segment's name never leaves this app. What your form carries is a meaningless id. Segment names describe your business, and everything a storefront sends is readable by anyone who cares to look.

A row with nothing chosen holds the rule, the way a blank address does:

Choose a segment. Nothing is saved until you do.

If you have not built one yet, the row says where to:

You have no segments yet. Build one under Audience, then come back.

And a rule pointing at a segment you have since deleted names it as A segment that is no longer in your store, rather than drawing an empty menu. The rule is still narrowing your form, so the row says it is there.

A rule about a segment that is gone shows the form to no one, and When we cannot tell does not change that. That setting is your answer to "what if I cannot tell whether this person is one of mine" — and with the segment deleted there is nobody to be unsure about, so there is no question for it to answer. The same holds the other way round: anyone not in this segment stops matching too, because that sentence is about a segment as well. Take the row off and the rule stops narrowing your form.

If we could not look your segments up at all, the row says that instead — A segment we could not look up just now — because a segment that is gone and a lookup that failed are two different things to do something about. A failed lookup is not read as a deleted segment: nothing is guessed, and your form holds where it is until the lookup works.

Removing the row takes the permission back. Your storefront could ask about that one segment because you chose it here; take the rule off and it cannot ask any more.

Which device someone is on

Device is three toggles — Desktop, Mobile and Tablet — and one of them is always on. A rule you have just added has all three on, which narrows nothing until you take one off.

A tablet is its own answer — it is not counted as a desktop.

That is the part worth reading twice. A tablet is neither of the other two, so Desktop on its own does not reach one, and neither does Mobile on its own.

The device comes from the screen, not from what the browser calls itself. That is the honest reading and it is right nearly every time, but the edges are real and have no better answer anywhere: a desktop screen you only ever touch can read as a tablet, and a mobile with a keyboard and mouse attached can read as a desktop.

This rule has the blind spot the page rule has. A store still serving an older copy of the forms code does not tell us the device either, so until your theme catches up a device rule cannot be answered for anybody — including a rule with all three selected. When we cannot tell, on the same card, is what decides meanwhile, and left where it starts it means the form is not shown.

How often one person sees it

Frequency is a cap, a window, and two waits: one after somebody signs up, one after somebody closes the form. A new form waits 30 days after either. Both are yours: type a different number, or type 0 and the form will not wait at all. A box you empty reads 0 again as soon as you leave it — empty and 0 are the same answer.

At most and Within go together: at most 3 times within 30 days. 0 times means no limit — never "show it no times" — and a limit needs its days. Set the times above 0 and leave the days at 0, and the screen says the days are missing: the limit is not kept until you enter them.

Signing up and closing are both answers, and asking again the next morning is how a popup becomes the reason somebody leaves. The wait after a signup is the one that matters most — somebody who has just given you their address has already done the thing the form asks for.

When the form runs at all

Schedule is one of the groups behind Settings in the editor's toolbar — and it is a different question from who sees the form. A form that is live but outside its schedule is still live — it simply is not shown until its window comes round. Pausing is still yours, and still a separate act.

Start and End are a date and a time. Set a start of August 19, 9:00 am and the form appears at nine that morning; set an end of August 19, 5:00 pm and it goes quiet at five. Leave either one empty — it says No start or No end — and there is no bound on that side.

Only on these days is a row of seven. Every day is on unless you disable one.

Only between these hours is a window in the day. An end time earlier than the start time runs overnight: 9:00 pm until 6:00 am belongs to the day it starts on — so if you have also chosen days, that window runs on Saturday night and into Sunday morning only when Saturday is one of the days you chose.

Every time here is your store's own clock, the one Shopify holds for your store, and the group names it under Start and End. It is never the visitor's: a 9-to-5 window is your shop's morning, not the morning of somebody reading in another country.

Like every other rule, this one waits for Publish and is kept in the version history with everything else.