Handover documentation
The store handbook
Everything the team needs in order to run this store without calling a developer. Written for the person who will actually be doing it, not for a developer.
How the theme is put together
The store runs a customised Dawn based theme. Every block you see on the storefront is a section in the theme editor, which means you can reorder, hide or duplicate any of them without a developer.
There are three files you would ever need to open, and you will probably never need to open them. Everything else is a setting.
| Where | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Online Store, Themes, Customise | Every homepage block, the header, the footer, colours and typefaces |
| Settings, Colours | The five brand colours. Change one and it updates everywhere |
| Settings, Typography | Cormorant Garamond for headings, Jost for everything else |
| Content, Metaobjects | Care notes, spec rows and made in text, reused across products |
Before you change anythingDuplicate the live theme first: Online Store, Themes, the three dots, Duplicate. Work on the copy, preview it, then publish. This takes ten seconds and has saved every store that has ever done it.
Adding or editing a product
- Products, Add product. Use the title exactly as it should appear, starting with The: The Hunter Collar, not Hunter Collar (leather).
- Description: two or three short paragraphs on why it is made this way. Do not put specifications here, they belong in the metafields below.
- Media: upload the images at 2000 by 2000 pixels, square, on the paper background. First image is the one that appears in the grid.
- Pricing: enter the price including GST. Leave Compare at price empty unless it is genuinely on sale.
- Variants: Colour first, then Size. Always in that order, because the product page reads the first option as the colour swatch row.
- Organisation: set Product type to the category (Collars, Beds, Bowls) and add the collection tags dog or cat. The automated collections use these.
- Metafields: fill Material, Made in, Care and the Spec rows. These render as the details table without any theme work.
- Search engine listing: edit the title and description. Aim for 55 characters and 150 characters. Save.
| Metafield | Type | Used on |
|---|---|---|
| custom.material | Single line text | Product page pull quote and details table |
| custom.made_in | Single line text | The trust list under the buy button |
| custom.care | Multi line text | Care accordion |
| custom.specs | List of single line text | Details and materials table |
| custom.short | Single line text | The one line under the title in the grid |
| custom.fit_note | Single line text | Sizing hint next to the size selector |
Editing the homepage
Online Store, Themes, Customise, Home page. The sections are in the order they appear on the page and each one can be dragged.
| Section | What to edit | Image size |
|---|---|---|
| Hero plate | Eyebrow, heading, body, two buttons, image, caption | 2400 x 1350 |
| Promise bar | Four pairs of heading and one line | None |
| Two houses gallery | Three framed links, heading and caption each | 1600 x 2400 |
| Featured products | Pick a collection or pick products by hand | From product |
| Story split | Eyebrow, heading, up to three paragraphs, one image | 1200 x 1500 |
| Review band | Two quotes with attribution, background colour | None |
| Journal row | Choose a blog, set how many posts | 1600 x 1067 |
Image ratios matterEvery frame crops to a fixed ratio. Upload at the size in the table and nothing will be cut off. If you must upload something else, set the focal point in the Shopify media editor and the crop will follow it.
Reviews and ratings
Reviews run on Judge.me Awesome, chosen because it renders server side, so the star ratings are in the page source for Google rather than being drawn by JavaScript afterwards. The styling is ours, not the app's default.
- Apps, Judge.me, Settings, to change the request email timing. It currently sends fourteen days after delivery, with one reminder at twenty eight days.
- Reviews come in unpublished. Apps, Judge.me, Reviews, to approve or reply. Replies appear on the storefront under the review in the studio box.
- Photo reviews earn a fifteen percent coupon automatically. That rule is under Settings, Coupons.
- To feature a review on the homepage, star it in Judge.me and it appears in the review band.
Do not delete bad reviewsThe one and two star reviews are load bearing. A product page with only five star reviews converts worse than one with a 4.8 average and a visible complaint answered well. Reply, do not delete.
| Where the rating shows | Source |
|---|---|
| Product grid card | Judge.me aggregate, cached in a metafield |
| Product page summary and histogram | Judge.me widget, our stylesheet |
| Google rich result | Product schema, AggregateRating, rendered server side |
| Homepage review band | Featured reviews from Judge.me |
Payments, shipping and tax
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Payment providers | Shopify Payments, PayPal Express, Afterpay, Zip |
| Wallets | Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay |
| Currency | AUD only, prices entered GST inclusive |
| Tax | Australia 10 percent GST included in the displayed price |
| Shipping profile, general | Free over $150, otherwise $9.95 standard, $14.95 express |
| Shipping profile, bulky | Beds, towers and stands, $19.95 under $150, courier |
| International | NZ, SG, HK, UK, US with duties prepaid at checkout |
| Fraud | Shopify risk analysis, manual review over $500 |
- Settings, Shipping and delivery, to change a rate. There are two profiles, General and Bulky, because a bed costs three times what a collar costs to send.
- Settings, Taxes and duties, Australia, keep Include tax in prices switched on. Turning it off changes every price on the storefront.
- Settings, Payments, to add a provider. Afterpay and Zip messaging on the product page updates automatically from the price.
Keeping the store fast
The build scores in the nineties on mobile. That number is not permanent and there are exactly three ways it usually gets lost.
| Risk | What to do instead |
|---|---|
| Installing an app that injects script into every page | Check the app's script tags before installing. A popup app that adds 200KB of JavaScript costs more than it earns |
| Uploading a 4MB hero image | Upload at 2400 pixels wide. Shopify serves WebP and resizes, but it cannot fix a photograph that was 8000 pixels to begin with |
| Adding a third font | Two families are loaded and both are self hosted. A third adds a render blocking request for the sake of a heading nobody will notice |
- Run PageSpeed Insights on the homepage, a collection and a product page once a month, on mobile.
- Compare against the numbers recorded in the delivery notes. A drop of more than ten points almost always follows an app install.
- Uninstalling an app does not always remove its script tags. Check Online Store, Themes, Edit code, theme.liquid for leftovers.
SEO and structured data
| Page type | Structured data emitted |
|---|---|
| Home | Organization, WebSite with SearchAction |
| Collection | CollectionPage, ItemList, BreadcrumbList |
| Product | Product, AggregateRating, Review, Offer, shipping and return policy, BreadcrumbList |
| Journal post | Article, BreadcrumbList |
| Questions | FAQPage |
- Write the meta title as the product name, a comma, then the material. Keep it under 60 characters.
- Write the meta description as a sentence a person would read, not a keyword list. Under 155 characters.
- Never change a product handle once it is live. If you must, add a redirect under Online Store, Navigation, URL redirects.
- Alt text on every image describes the object and the colour, because that is what someone using a screen reader needs and what Google Images indexes.
Test before you trustPaste a product URL into Google's Rich Results Test after any theme change. A broken review snippet costs the star rating in search, which is the single most valuable thing on the page.
Launch checklist
- Remove the password page under Online Store, Preferences.
- Check every product has a price, an image, stock and a metafield set.
- Place one real order end to end, then refund it, to confirm payments, email and the packing slip.
- Confirm the notification emails carry the brand: Settings, Notifications, Customise.
- Connect the domain and force HTTPS. Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Set up Google Analytics 4 and the Meta pixel through Shopify's own integrations rather than pasting script tags.
- Turn on the abandoned checkout email and the review request email.
- Take a full theme backup: Themes, three dots, Download theme file.