Installation guide

How to install Flow-e on your Shopify store

Three steps, about five minutes. You never touch theme code: Flow-e is switched on with a toggle in the theme editor.

What you need

A Shopify store with the Online Store channel enabled.
A theme that supports app embeds (every Online Store 2.0 theme, Dawn included).
The store owner role, or a staff account allowed to install apps and edit the theme.

Install the app from the Shopify App Store

From the Flow-e App Store listing, choose Install. Shopify shows you the requested permissions and asks you to approve them: they are all read-only, and they let Flow-e read catalog, inventory, orders and customers in order to answer. At no point are you asked to type your store address.

Open Flow-e on the App Store

Sign in to the portal and copy your key

Right after you approve, you land on the Flow-e portal, where the configuration lives: widget appearance, catalog, knowledge base, conversations. The store is linked automatically. On Integrations → Installation you'll find your API key, needed for the next step.

If you don't have a Flow-e account yet, this is where you create one: the store stays linked to that account.

Go to the Flow-e portal

Switch Flow-e on in the theme editor

From the portal, the Open the theme editor button takes you straight to the right place. If you'd rather do it by hand, here are the steps from the Shopify admin:

1Open Online Store → Themes.
2On the live theme, click Customize.
3At the bottom left, open App embeds and find Flow-e.
4Turn the toggle on, then paste the API key into the field that appears.
5Click Save at the top right. The widget appears on the storefront immediately.

Which pages it appears on

Flow-e appears on every storefront page — home, collections, product pages, static pages and cart — because the block is injected at the end of the page. You don't need to enable it template by template.

How to switch it off

Turn the toggle off in the theme editor and save: the widget disappears from the storefront and there's no need to uninstall the app. If instead you uninstall the app from Shopify, Shopify itself closes the subscription and Flow-e stops reading store data.

Recognising signed-in customers (optional)

The block has a second field, Identity Secret Key. It is only needed if you want Flow-e to recognise customers who already have an account, so it can remember their orders and preferences. The signature is computed by Shopify, so the key never reaches the public storefront pages. Left empty, the widget treats everyone as an anonymous visitor.

If your theme doesn't show «App embeds»

App embeds only exist on Online Store 2.0 themes. On a vintage theme that entry doesn't appear: get in touch and we'll give you the version to add to the theme, or help you move to a compatible one.

Something not adding up?

Write to us and a person answers, not an automated form.