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Spin the wheel

What it is

A wheel is a block you add to a form. Somebody types their details and presses your spin button. The wheel turns, slows down past your best prize, and lands on the prize they won. Your prize page then shows that prize's name, its discount code and its button.

Everything else about the form stays the form's: who sees it, when it shows, when it starts and ends, and what people already on your list see. Start a new form from one of the three wheels, or add the Spin the wheel block from Content in the form editor:

• Spin to win — first name and email address, then the spin.
• Welcome wheel — the same shape for your email list, in welcome words, with four first-order discounts as its prizes.
• Email + text wheel — the email address on the first panel, then the wheel beside a box for their phone number. The number is optional, so nobody has to give one to spin, and No thanks sits beside the spin button. Your store needs text messages enabled before you can publish it.

Each one opens with four prizes waiting for you to choose their discounts.

Where the wheel sits

On desktop the wheel sits beside your words when the panel's layout is Image on the left: the wheel takes the image's place. The three wheel forms start that way. Change the wheel's column under Spacing, as Wheel width. On mobile the wheel goes on top and its lower part tucks under the fields.

Any other layout puts the wheel back at the top of your words, and a wheel you add from Content lands there too, above your heading. To take the wheel off, open it (the Wheel line under Layout, or the wheel in the preview) and press Remove the wheel at the bottom. Your words stay, and the form can still go live: your prize page stays as a plain page that says thank you, with your "no code" words instead of the prize, and the spin button reads "Sign up" unless you wrote your own words. A prize's own page goes too, unless another button still leads there. Undo puts it all back.

Prizes and odds

A wheel has two to five prizes, and every prize has a chance of at least 1%. The chances are whole numbers and must add up to 100% before the form can publish. The total sits beside Prizes and turns green when it is right.

Each prize has three sets of words:

• The label goes on the wheel. Keep it short — the wheel tells you when a label gets too small to read on mobile, and the form will not publish until it fits.
• The name on the prize page fills in {{prize}} on the page that shows what they won. It can be longer: "A free Lip Duo" where the label says "FREE LIP DUO".
• The button has its own words, so a long product name never has to fit on one.

The wheel repeats your prizes until it has at least eight slices, and no two slices side by side are ever the same color. There is no setting for the number of slices, their colors or the size of the wheel.

The featured prize

The star on a prize row marks the featured prize: the one the wheel slows down beside before it lands. It makes every spin feel close. It never changes anybody's chances — the prize is decided by your odds, and the spin only shows the result. A new wheel features the prize with the lowest odds.

Everyone wins something

Every slice is a discount, so everybody who spins wins one of your prizes. Each prize needs a discount from your Shopify store before the form can publish — choose it in the prize's own row, the same way you choose one for a discount code block. A prize can give each person a code of their own — one code per person — or one shared code.

A shared code needs Shopify's one-use-per-customer limit. In your Shopify store, set that discount to one use per customer, or give each person their own code; the form will not publish a shared-code prize without one of the two. We never set a usage limit on your codes.

One prize per person

Somebody who spins again, from another browser or on another day, lands on the same prize and sees the same code while it can still be used. We know them by the email address or phone number they type. Once their code is used, expired or ended, they see your page for people already on your list instead, and never a second code.

Changing a prize's name, slice label, button, fine print or discount after people won it, or taking the prize off the wheel, sends them to your page for people already on your list, because their code was won under the old terms. Changing the odds, or giving a prize a page of its own, keeps them on their prize.

What this cannot stop is somebody typing a new email address each time: to us, that is a new person. Your Shopify store's own limit of one use per customer is checked at checkout, so it stops the same customer using a second code from the same discount. Codes made on different days count as separate discounts in your Shopify store, so that limit cannot stop those.

People already on your list

What somebody already on your list sees is the form's own setting, "When someone already on your list signs up", with its usual three choices. With Thank them or Give them a VIP gift, they still spin: the wheel coasts to a stop on no slice, the center glows, and your page for them shows.

Give them the offer lets them spin for your prizes like anybody else.

On the Email + text wheel, the wheel is on the second panel. With Thank them or Give them a VIP gift, somebody already on your list is shown your page for them right after the first panel, so they never reach the wheel. Choose Give them the offer if you want them to spin too.

When it runs

A wheel runs when its form runs. Use the form's Schedule to start and end the promotion. The official rules show those dates, or say that there is no end date when you have not set one. With no start date set, the rules say it began the day the form first went live with a wheel on it — publishing a change later does not move it.

An end at midnight stops the form as that day begins, so the rules name the day before as the last day.

The prize page

The page your spin button leads to is the prize page, and it fills in from the prize somebody won. When a wheel is on a form, that page offers four more blocks:

• Prize name — a heading that says You won {{prize}}!. Rewrite it as you like; {{prize}} can go in any heading or paragraph on a prize page.
• Prize code — the code they won, or your own words when there is no code to show.
• Prize button — that prize's button.
• Fine print — that prize's fine print.

A prize page cannot be the first panel, only your spin button may lead to it, and it does not carry a discount code block of its own: its codes come from the prizes.

Splitting a prize off

Open a prize and tick "Design this prize's page separately" to give it a page of its own. The new page starts as a copy of your prize page, named after the prize, and only somebody who wins that prize lands on it. Untick it to put the prize back on the shared page.

The separate page is deleted when you untick it, unless another prize or a button still leads there.

Where a prize's button goes

Each prize's button goes to your store with the code applied, to one page of your store with the code applied, to one product straight to checkout with the code applied, or to a web address. The code goes on their cart the moment they win, and the button takes it with them as well, the same way a "Shop with my code" button on any form does.

A product, at checkout adds one of the product you choose and opens checkout with their code on it — handy for a free product prize. Type in the Product box to search your catalog and pick one. The button's words change to "Check out with my" and the product's name, which you can rewrite. Its discount has to take that product off with nothing else needed, so the form will not publish when the discount:

• is a "buy X, get Y" discount, or asks for a minimum order or a number of items;
• is free shipping, which adds no product;
• does not apply to that product; or
• applies to collections rather than to products — we cannot tell from here which products a collection holds, so in Shopify set the discount to apply to specific products and choose this one.

We check the discount with your Shopify store when you publish. If we cannot reach it, publish again in a moment. When somebody has no code to carry, the button opens the product's page instead and adds nothing, so nobody is sent to checkout with a full-price item they thought was free.

Any ordinary button on a panel that shows a discount code can go to a product straight to checkout too. On a prize page, that button carries whichever prize landed there, so the discount of every prize that lands on the page has to pass the same check. When the wheel's panel has more than one spin button, every page those buttons lead to is checked the same way.

Looks, finish and logo

Pick one color and a look, and the wheel works out every slice from it. Carnival is the boldest, Classic pairs your color with cream, and Two-tone, Tonal and Candy sit in between. A black, white or gray color gives a black, white or gray wheel.

Wood gives the wheel a wooden rim, brass pegs and a clapper; Flat is a clean pointer and plain rim. Your logo goes in the center, which does not turn: a round logo fills it, and a wide one fits smaller, never cropped.

Sound

The wheel clacks as it passes each peg and rings when it stops, starting only when somebody presses spin. A speaker button on the wheel mutes it for them, and their browser remembers it. A device set to silent spins silently, and the wheel never stops music somebody is already playing.

People who have asked their device for less motion see the winning slice light up instead of a spin.

Official rules and odds

"Official rules and odds" sits under your spin button and opens the rules inside the form. They list each prize by its full name with its chance, you as the sponsor, the dates the form runs, "No purchase necessary. One prize per person.", and each prize's fine print.

Every new wheel shows it. Clearing Show official rules and odds in the wheel's settings hides it, and takes the odds off the page with it. Some places, including Canada, require a promotion to show its odds.

You're the sponsor

You run this promotion, and the rules name you as its sponsor. Type your business's name in Sponsor. Some places regulate prize promotions — for example New York and Florida when the prizes total more than $5,000, and Rhode Island over $500 — so check the rules where you sell. We do not review your promotion for you.