Set up Friendzy: test it on a copy of your theme, then go live

You have seen what Friendzy does: your customers invite a friend into your store, browse it together and talk it over beside the product. This guide takes you from there to Friendzy running on your store, without any customer seeing it before you are ready. You test it on a copy of your theme, set it up, try a shared session yourself, and only then switch it on for everyone.

1. Make a copy of your theme to test on

The safest place to try Friendzy is a copy of the theme your store already uses. The copy stays unpublished, so your customers never see it, and you test with your own products, prices and layout.

1. In your Shopify admin, open Online Store. It opens on your themes.
2. Beside your live theme, open the … menu and choose Duplicate (not Duplicate in Canvas).

The copy appears under Draft themes, unpublished. You will switch Friendzy on in it once Friendzy is installed (step 4). Leave your live theme as it is for now.

Another way: a development store

If you have a Shopify Partners account, you can test on a development store instead. Download your theme from Online Store → … beside your live theme → Download theme file, upload it to the development store under Online Store → Import → Upload zip file, and install Friendzy there. A development store's trial never ends and it has no session limit, but Growth's features are not part of it, and it only has the products you add to it. A development store asks visitors for its password, so give it to anyone you invite.

2. Install Friendzy and choose a plan

Install Friendzy from the Shopify App Store:

https://apps.shopify.com/friendzy

Friendzy opens inside your Shopify admin, on its Home page.

The first 14 days

From the moment you install, you have 14 days with no plan to choose and no card: up to 500 shared sessions, and store advisors for your team. A shared session is a shopper's session that a friend joined, counted once. When the 14 days end, your store moves to the Free plan by itself. There is nothing to cancel. Creator rooms and the other Growth features are not part of these 14 days; to try them, start Growth's own 14-day trial.

The plans

Subscription, in Friendzy's menu, shows the three plans and how many sessions you have used this month.

• Free: no charge, no card and no time limit. 51 sessions a month, for your shoppers and your team together. There is no team of store advisors on Free; you can still start a session yourself to show a customer round.
• Starter, USD 9 a month: 100 shared sessions a month, and store advisors for your team, whose sessions are unlimited.
• Growth, USD 19 a month: 500 shared sessions a month, Creator rooms, friends seeing what is in each other's cart, more reward campaigns and priority email support.

Starter and Growth each start with a 14-day free trial: press Start 14-day trial on the plan and approve it in Shopify. Its 14 days start when you approve it, even during your first 14 days, and nothing is charged during them. If you decide not to keep the plan, choose Switch to Free on the Subscription page before the trial ends; otherwise Shopify bills the plan when those 14 days end. Every paid plan is billed through Shopify.

Reaching a plan's sessions never cuts anyone off. Shoppers who already use Friendzy keep it, invite links always work, and only shoppers who have never used it wait for the next month or a larger plan.

3. Set it up

Friendzy's Home page starts with four short setup steps:

1. Adjusting to you. Friendzy looks at your store and suggests what you sell. Confirm it or pick the closest match; the next steps are shaped by it.
2. Privacy. The pages, and parts of pages, a friend must never see. Your account, cart, checkout and order pages are always private; add any others, such as a wholesale page.
3. Roll it out. Who sees Friendzy: everyone, 1 in 10 or 1 in 4 of your visitors, or only returning visitors who have not bought yet.
4. Go Live. Switching Friendzy on in your live theme. Leave this one until you have tested on the copy (step 4): it finishes only once Friendzy is running on your live storefront.

Short on time? Auto-configure for me fills in the first three steps with what most stores start with, and leaves you only Go Live.

Everything else is in Configuration, in Friendzy's menu, in this order:

• Introducing Friendzy to your customers: who sees it, campaign links, how strongly it is offered, and your Friendzy buttons.
• Appearance: its theme and colours, what shoppers appear as, and how it fits around your theme.
• Customer experience: what shoppers are called, how they send the invite, and what friends can do for each other while they shop.
• Host controls: what the person who started a session may do about the people in it.
• Rewarding customers: optional. Thank shoppers who bring a friend with one of your discount codes.
• Store advisors: your staff, answering shoppers from their phone or computer. Starter and Growth.
• Creator rooms: creators host a room of their own on your store. Growth.
• Connect Friendzy to your tools: tell another system when a session starts, a friend joins, a session ends or a reward is earned.
• Customer privacy: what friends never see.

Your free custom style. Our team designs a look for Friendzy that matches your store, free for a limited time. It sits at the top of Configuration → Appearance: book a call there to get yours, turn it on or off whenever you like, and press Request changes to tell us what you would like different.

4. Test it on the copy

Now switch Friendzy on in the copy you made in step 1, and only there:

1. Open Online Store. Under Draft themes, choose Edit theme on the copy.
2. In the theme editor, open App embeds, turn on Friendzy App embed, and press Save.
3. In the theme editor's … menu, choose Preview to see the copy as a shopper would. The link button in the preview's bottom bar copies a link to it, valid for two days, to open on your phone or send to someone.

Previews of your other themes, and the theme editor, always show Friendzy, whatever you chose in Who sees Friendzy.

In the preview, do what a customer would:

• Open a product page and look at how Friendzy sits with your theme, on a phone as well as a computer.
• Press Invite a friend, under Add to cart, and start a session.
• Invite someone: send the invite link to a colleague, or open it yourself on a second device. It opens the copy you are previewing, so they join you there. Each invite link lets in one person, on one device: to invite someone else, share again for a new link. Browse together, send a message, and share a product.
• Open one of your private pages and check the friend does not see it.

If anything looks wrong, contact us straight away (see Contact us, at the end of this guide). We would rather fix it with you now than have a customer find it.

5. Go live

Before you go live

• You have tested Friendzy on the copy (step 4).
• Friendzy shows in the right language.
• Privacy is set: the pages a friend must never see are listed.
• Your reward is set, if you use one (Configuration → Rewarding customers).
• You have tried a shared session with someone joining from another device.
• You have chosen who sees Friendzy, in Roll it out on Home.

Switch it on

Choose one of these:

• From Friendzy: on Home, in the Go Live step, press Open theme editor, under Enable the app embed. Your live theme opens in the theme editor with Friendzy on; press Save there.
• By hand: Online Store → Edit theme on your live theme → App embeds → turn on Friendzy App embed → Save.
• Publish the copy: Friendzy is already on in it. Only do this if you have not changed your live theme since you made the copy, or those changes will not be in it.

Then press Check my storefront in the Go Live step until it says Confirmed on your storefront, and press Complete setup. From then on, Home shows a flight check instead of the setup steps.

6. Keep testing on your live store, without spending sessions

Once Friendzy is live, you and your team can go on trying it on your real store as often as you like. A test session works in full, with invites, chat, calls and carts, but it never counts against your plan's sessions, earns no reward and stays out of your Metrics. Whether a session is a test is settled the moment it starts. There are four ways to make one:

• Open your store from Friendzy. Anything you open from the Friendzy admin is a test. In Configuration → Testing on your own store, press Open my store as a test: the tab it opens stays a test for an hour.
• The theme editor and preview themes never count. Nobody shops there.
• Test mode on this device. In the same section, turn on test mode for 30 minutes on this device. Every session from that browser is a test until it ends, and a banner at the top of the Friendzy admin says until when. To test on your phone as well, scan the QR code that appears when you turn it on.
• Staff devices. Add the phones and computers your team uses for the store: every session from them is a test, with no expiry and no limit. Add this device adds the browser you are in. Add a colleague's device makes a link and a QR code, valid for 24 hours, for one device or for as many as you choose: send the link on WhatsApp or by email to open on a laptop, or let a phone scan the code. Whoever opens it names the device, and their browser opens your store.

You can tell a test session by the small Test tag at the top of Friendzy on your store. In Store advisors, a request from a test session is marked Test, and Configuration → Testing on your own store shows how many test sessions you had this month.

A staff device never counts, whoever is holding it. If a phone is lost or a colleague leaves, press Forget beside that device straight away; Forget all clears the whole list. A device you forget counts again from its next session.

7. What to expect after you go live

These pages in Friendzy tell you how it is doing:

• Metrics: the visitors your shoppers brought in, the invitations they sent, the friends who joined and how many invitations turned into a join. Below that are the activity by day, the pages talked about most, the launch funnel that shows where shoppers stop before a friend joins, the purchases, and what each campaign link did. Most counts arrive the next day; the number of shoppers live right now is current. Purchases need measuring switched on. Go Live and Metrics both offer Turn on measuring, and Shopify asks your permission. Orders count from the day you switch it on, not before. It sends Friendzy order totals only, never who bought, and only once a shopper has accepted analytics where your store asks for consent.
• Home: once setup is done, a flight check says whether Friendzy is on your storefront, whether Friendzy's side is set up, and how your plan stands, with the shared sessions of today beside it.
• Support → App health: whether Friendzy is live on your storefront, with Check again. If Home says Friendzy's side is failing, Fix installation sends your store's settings to our servers again. You can press it once a minute.
• Subscription: the shared sessions used this month, out of your plan's allowance.

The first numbers come with the first sessions. A shared session counts once a friend joins it, so expect them as soon as your customers start inviting people, not before.

8. Introduce Friendzy to your customers

Friendzy is live on your store. Now your customers need to know it is there and what it is for. Everything in this step is already in the Friendzy admin, and most of it works on every plan, Free included. Where something needs Starter or Growth, it says so.

Before you announce it

• See it live first. Open a product page of your own store on your phone and look for the Invite a friend button under Add to cart. On Home, the Go Live step of setup says Confirmed on your storefront once Friendzy has been seen there, and after setup the flight check's App embed line reads On your storefront. Until then, the admin asks you to finish Go Live before you tell anyone.
• Announce it widely once every visitor sees it. If Who sees Friendzy shows it to a share of your visitors, most customers who read your announcement will look for a button they do not have. Raise the share to every visitor first, or announce it only through your own links (see Only the people you invite, below).
• Wait if your sessions are used up. When a month's shared sessions run out, shoppers who have never used Friendzy stop seeing it until the next month or a bigger plan. The admin tells you when that happens; announce it once they can see it again.

Ready-made announcements

Open Guide in Friendzy's menu and unfold Announce it to your customers. It holds lines you can paste for eleven places: the announcement bar, a text block on your product pages, Instagram and Facebook, email, SMS or WhatsApp, an FAQ answer, Pinterest, TikTok, the order confirmation, the packing slip and a blog post. Each comes with where it goes in Shopify, such as Theme editor → Header → Announcement bar → Text, and is written for your kind of store (bridal, fashion, furniture and home, and others) in the language you pick. Every plan.

The lines say Invite a friend, the button's standard label. If you renamed the button, change the lines to match.

Most channels also give you a link that opens Friendzy on your store, in this form:

https://your-store.com/?friendzy=1

Whoever taps it lands on your store with Friendzy open, ready to invite a friend, and someone new to it is offered a short tour. On Growth the link ends in ?shop-together=1 instead, so it does not name Friendzy. Both forms work on every plan, so a link you have already sent never stops working when you change plans.

A few seconds of two phones on your own store show Friendzy better than a photo, and the card suggests what to film for your kind of store. On Growth we film those clips for you, on your own store: ask us.

If you email only some of your customers, for example a segment in Klaviyo or Shopify Email, that changes who hears about Friendzy. It does not change who sees it: Who sees Friendzy decides that.

A shopper guide page on your store

In the same card, Add the guide page puts a page on your store, at /pages/friendzy, that tells shoppers what they can do with Friendzy. Shopify asks for your permission once, then Friendzy keeps the page up to date. The Learn more link in Friendzy's prompt opens it, so shoppers stay on your store. If your store is in more than one language, Friendzy can add the page in each of them. Without it, Learn more opens our own shopper guide instead. Every plan.

Who sees Friendzy

The Roll it out step of setup, on Home, asked who sees Friendzy (step 3). You can change it any time in Configuration → Introducing Friendzy to your customers → Who sees Friendzy, which offers more:

• How many: every visitor; 1 in 2, 4, 10, 20 or 50 of them; or nobody but the people who open your links.
• Which visitors: every visitor, first-time visitors, visitors who come back, or visitors who come back but have not bought yet.

Raising the share keeps everyone who already sees Friendzy. While only some visitors see it, Metrics compares the purchases of visitors who were shown Friendzy with those who were not. Every plan.

Only the people you invite

Prefer to keep Friendzy for customers you choose, such as a VIP list? In Who sees Friendzy, choose “Nobody: only people who open your links”. Nobody else sees the button. Put your link in any email, message or post: whoever opens it sees Friendzy on that device for 90 days, and the friends they invite always get in. Every plan.

A link for each campaign

Under Who sees Friendzy, Campaign links gives each email, WhatsApp message, SMS or post a link of its own, with a word you pick, such as spring-email or whatsapp-vip. You can keep up to 20. Metrics then shows each word on its own: the sessions its link started, the invite links made in them, the friends who joined, and the orders and revenue that followed. Removing a word keeps its numbers so far. The word shows in the link your customers see, so pick one you are happy for them to read. Every plan.

How Friendzy is offered

Shoppers can only use Friendzy if they notice the button. In the same Configuration section, How Friendzy is offered decides how much Friendzy asks for itself:

• A hint, and nothing more: a small note by the button, shown once.
• A hint, then ask a shopper who is deciding: the recommended setting. The prompt comes only to someone who has read a product page and not added the product to the cart.
• Ask every shopper: the prompt also comes on a timer.

The prompt can say what you write instead of ours; shoppers reading another language get ours, translated. Its Learn more link can be switched off. Below it, Your Friendzy buttons sets the Invite a friend button under Add to cart and, if you want one, a button in a corner of your store. Every plan.

Your team and your creators

• Store advisors, on Starter and Growth. The same button can open a chat with your team instead of, or as well as, shopping with a friend. Shoppers can ask for an advisor, and your staff answer from their phone or computer during the hours you set.
• On Free, show a customer round yourself. Free has no team, but on Store advisors, under Start a session of your own, you can press Start a session. Your store opens in a new tab with you as the host. Send the customer the link: you lead, and they see what you show them. These sessions come out of the Free plan's monthly sessions, the same ones your shoppers use.
• Creator rooms, on Growth. Invite a creator, influencer or affiliate by email. They get one link to your store, and everyone who opens it joins their room, chatting with them as they browse your products. The link stays the same, so it can go in a bio.

Which plan each of these needs

• Every plan, Free included: the ready-made announcements and your link, the shopper guide page, Who sees Friendzy, invite-only links, campaign links, how Friendzy is offered, your buttons, and on Free a session of your own to show a customer round.
• Starter and Growth: store advisors, with your team's sessions unlimited.
• Growth: Creator rooms, a link that does not name Friendzy, and clips filmed on your store.

9. Turn it off or roll it back

Switch it off for a while

Online Store → Edit theme on your live theme → App embeds → turn off Friendzy App embed → Save. Shoppers no longer see the Friendzy button, and nothing of Friendzy loads on your pages. Your settings stay in Friendzy, so switching the embed on again brings everything back as it was.

To keep Friendzy only for people you send it to, open Who sees Friendzy and choose “Nobody: only people who open your links”. Everyone else stops seeing the button, and your links keep working.

Delete the copy of your theme

Once you are live, the copy you tested on is no longer needed: Online Store → … beside the copy → Delete.

Uninstall Friendzy

Switch Friendzy App embed off in your live theme first, then uninstall Friendzy from your Shopify admin: Settings → Apps → Friendzy - Shared Shopping → Uninstall app. Shopify asks why: tick a reason, then press Uninstall. Uninstalling cancels your plan, and Shopify stops charging for Friendzy from then on, so there is nothing to cancel first. Friendzy stops working on your storefront, and a link a shopper sent earlier opens your store as usual, without Friendzy. The shopper guide page stays on your store, yours to keep or delete under Online Store → Pages.

10. Troubleshooting

Friendzy does not show on my store

• Check that Friendzy App embed is on, and saved, in the theme you are looking at. Turning it on in the copy does not turn it on in your live theme.
• Check Who sees Friendzy. With a share such as 1 in 10, you may simply not be among the visitors who see it. Previews of your other themes, and the theme editor, always show Friendzy, so check there, or show it to everyone while you test.
• Friendzy steps aside while your theme shows a menu, a pop-up or a drawer, and comes back when it closes. If it stays hidden after one closes, contact us and we will adjust it for your theme.
• If this month's sessions are used up, visitors who have never used Friendzy do not see it until next month or a larger plan. Subscription says so.
• Open Support → App health and press Check again. If Home says Friendzy's side is failing, press Fix installation.

Friendzy is in the wrong language

Friendzy speaks the language of the page the shopper is reading, as your store's languages and markets set it, and English where it does not have that language. If a page is in the wrong language, check that page's language in Shopify. A shopper can also pick another language inside Friendzy, and their choice stays on their device.

It shows in the preview but not on my live store

Previews of your other themes, and the theme editor, show Friendzy whatever you chose in Who sees Friendzy; your live store follows that choice. Check the share and the audience, and check that the embed is on in your live theme and not only in the copy.

A change I saved has not reached the store

Most settings reach open storefronts as soon as you save them. How Friendzy is offered and its appearance apply from the shopper's next page, so open another page or reload.

11. Contact us

If something is not right, or you would rather go through it with us, there are three ways to reach us.

WhatsApp. Reply in the WhatsApp chat we wrote to you from, or press the green WhatsApp button on Friendzy's Support page, beside the support email. That is the quickest.

Email. Write to:

[email protected]

Include your store's address that ends in .myshopify.com (Settings → Domains in your Shopify admin shows it), the page where it happened, what you expected and what happened instead, and a screenshot if you can.

A 30-minute call. Book a time that suits you, and we will go through your store with you:

https://calendar.app.google/mGyDDv55z8Kcxuvp8