Building a high-quality email list is essential for successful email marketing. That said, many people struggle with choosing a form-building tool and figuring out how to set it up.
Shopify Forms is Shopify's own official form app that solves exactly this problem. It's completely free to use, and lets you intuitively create and set up a newsletter signup form with no programming knowledge required.
This article gives a detailed explanation of Shopify Forms — from its basic features to concrete setup steps and how to combine it with other Shopify apps — with actual screenshots along the way. If you're considering setting up a newsletter signup form, use this as a reference.
What Is Shopify Forms?
Source: Shopify Forms | Shopify App Store
Shopify Forms is Shopify's own form app that makes it easy to generate and display a newsletter signup form for collecting email addresses.
With its live preview feature, you can customize your form while checking wording and color changes in real time, and it integrates easily with Shopify Messaging (formerly Shopify Email) and discount features.
To improve the effectiveness of your email marketing, growing the number of email addresses you can send to is important.
The article below covers email marketing in detail. Feel free to check it out for reference.
Shopify Forms Pricing
Free
Shopify Forms can be used for free.
What You Can Do with Shopify Forms
- Create, edit, delete, and duplicate forms
- Publish or unpublish a form
- Translate a form
- Customize a form's design
- Adjust a form's display position
- Set display conditions for a form (specific pages, a wait time, etc.)
- Display a discount code
- Automatically send an email (requires pairing with Flow)
- Automatically apply a customer tag
- View a dashboard (view count, submission count, conversion rate) 📍
- Check color contrast 📍
📍Reference images
The form app's dashboard
An error shown by the color contrast check
What You Can't Do with Shopify Forms
- Show or hide fields based on a customer's input (conditional logic)
- Create 26 or more forms
- Set 32 or more input fields on a single form
- Check any data beyond view count, submission count, and conversion rate
Shopify Forms Is a Good Fit If You...
- Want a free email signup form
- Want a no-code email signup form
- Don't need an elaborate design
- Use Shopify Messaging for your newsletter
The Basics of Shopify Forms
There Are 2 Form Types You Can Create
Popup Form
A popup form lets you create a form that displays across every page of your online store. You can have it appear as an overlay when customers first arrive, or in a form that follows them as they scroll.
This is useful when you want to display a form to every user across every page. To display a popup form, you need to enable the Shopify Forms embed app in the theme you're using.
Inline Form
An inline form is a form you can display on a specific page or section.
You can limit where a form appears — showing it only on a specific product page, or only on a specific campaign page, for example.
Basic Form Settings
The settings available differ depending on the form type. The table below organizes which settings are available for which form type.
| Setting | Popup form | Inline form |
|---|---|---|
| Popup display | ◯ Available | ✕ Not available |
| Teaser | ◯ Available | ✕ Not available |
| Form | ◯ Available | ◯ Available |
| Success | ◯ Available | ◯ Available |
| Style | ◯ Available | ◯ Available |
| Image | ◯ Available | ✕ Not available |
| Placement | ✕ Not available | ◯ Available |
| Language | ◯ Available | ◯ Available |
| Tags | ◯ Available | ◯ Available |
| Email notifications | ◯ Available | ◯ Available |
| Automation and workflows | ◯ Available | ◯ Available |
Now that you know which settings are available for each form type, let's cover each one in detail.
Popup Display (Popup Form Only)
Popup display lets you choose how the form is shown.
Float displays the form in a format that follows the user as they scroll the page.
Overlay displays the form with the entire page grayed out behind it.
Teaser (Popup Form Only)
A teaser is a widget shown to customers when the popup form has been closed.
Here, you can set the teaser's display position and message for when the popup form is closed.
Form
Under Form, you can customize the actual wording shown on the form, the input fields, disclosure text, and more.
The input fields you can set are:
- Last name
- First name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Birthday
- Customer metafield
(Content types you can set for a customer metafield)
- Single-line text
- Dropdown list
- Radio button
- Multi-line text
- Multiple choice
- Date
- Number
- File upload
The blog article below covers metafields in detail — including content types and how to use metafields. Feel free to check it out for reference.
Success
Under Success, you can set an action for customers once they submit the form.
"Show message" lets you display any message or a discount code after submission.
"Redirect to another page" automatically redirects the customer to a specific page after submission.
Style
Style lets you customize the form's design.
Colors and form fields can only be set for popup forms — for inline forms, you need to configure these on the app block.
Image (Popup Form Only)
Image lets you set an image to display on the form.
You can choose from the following image options:
- No image
- Image on the left
- Image on the right
- Background image
Behavior (Popup Form Only)
Behavior lets you set the conditions under which the popup form is shown.
You can configure fine-grained details — which device to show it on, which pages to show it on, and what timing to show it at.
Placement (Inline Form Only)
Placement lets you set where on a page to place an inline form. You can create a new page for it, or place it on an existing page.
Language
Language lets you translate the text set on your form. You can show a Japanese form to Japanese-speaking customers, or an English form to English-speaking customers, and so on.
Tags
Tags let you apply any customer tag you like to customers who submit the form. In addition to a customer tag in the format "shopify-forms-XXXXXX," you can also set an additional customer tag of your choice.
The "shopify-forms-XXXXXX" format tag can't be removed from the settings.
Email Notifications
Email notifications let you set whether you receive a notification each time a customer submits the form. If you want to be notified, check "Send an email each time this form is submitted."
Automation and Workflows
Automation and workflows lets you create a workflow to automatically send an email to a customer who submits the form.
That said, in practice this simply takes you to the Shopify Flow template page.
How to Use Shopify Forms
How to Create a New Form
Here we'll cover the steps for creating a popup form.
Prerequisite: App Setup
(1) Go to the Shopify Forms page on the Shopify App Store
(2) Click Install
(3) Go to Online Store > Themes
(4) Click "Customize" for the theme you want to display the form on
(5) Click the app embeds icon on the left of the screen
(6) Enable the embed app named Forms
(7) Click "Save"
Step 1: Create a Form
(1) Open the app, and click "Create form"
(2) Select "Popup form" from the type selection
(3) Enter any name for the form
(4) Click "Create"
(5) Customize each setting while checking the preview on the right
For details on each setting, also check the "The Basics of Shopify Forms" section above
(6) Once you've finished customizing, click "Save"
Step 2: Enable the Status
(1) Open the form you created in Step 1
(2) Click "Enable form"
Step 3: Test It Out
(1) Actually visit your online store
(2) Confirm the popup form is displaying as configured
How to Show a Coupon Code After Submission
(1) Open the form you created
(2) Click "Select a discount" in the Success section
(3) Select the coupon code you want to show after submission (or create a discount)
(4) Confirm the coupon code is shown in the preview upon success
(5) Click Save
How to Translate a Form
(1) Open the form you created
(2) Click "Translate" in the Language section
(3) Enter the translated text for each piece of text data
(4) Click "Save"
(5) Switch the language in the preview, and confirm it's translated as intended
(6) Click "Save"
Apps That Maximize Shopify Forms' Effectiveness
Shopify Messaging (formerly Shopify Email)
Source: Shopify Messaging | Shopify App Store
Shopify Messaging is Shopify's own official messaging app. Using this app, store operators can create and send newsletters, analyze data, manage templates, and send SMS — all from within the Shopify admin. You can also send up to 10,000 free emails per month, making it one of the most affordable email apps available.
Using Shopify Messaging, you can send a bulk newsletter to users who subscribed via a Shopify Forms signup form.
The blog article below covers Shopify Messaging in detail. Feel free to check it out for reference.
Shopify Flow
Source: Shopify Flow | Shopify App Store
Shopify Flow is Shopify's own app that automates all kinds of tasks and processes involved in running a store.
Combining it with Shopify Forms lets you run all kinds of initiatives targeting people who submit a form. For example, you can use Shopify Flow to build a workflow that automatically sends an email via Shopify Messaging to users who submit a form.
The blog article below covers Shopify Flow in detail. Feel free to check it out for reference.
RuffRuff 予約販売
RuffRuff 予約販売 helps reduce the lost sales that come up around out-of-stock periods, before a new product launches, or while waiting on restock.
It lets you set up preorder sales on your own Shopify store with surprising ease, letting you register an unlimited number of preorder products and accept an unlimited number of preorder requests. It also lets you prevent preorder and regular products from being ordered together, and can send a restock notification when the arrival date is still undetermined.
It also has unique features not found in other preorder apps, such as "deferred payment," which lets you collect payment before the product ships.
Combining it with Shopify Forms lets you run an exclusive sale or limited offer only for people who submitted the form.
RuffRuff Order Limits
RuffRuff Order Limits is a Shopify app with full Japanese-language support that uses Japan's first implementation of the Cart and Checkout Validation API.
By using the Cart and Checkout Validation API, it brings order-restriction logic — previously handleable only on the storefront — onto the server side. As a result, it achieves a more robust purchase-restriction mechanism that's much harder to circumvent compared to existing order-restriction apps.
You can implement any kind of purchase restriction with a single app — quantity limits, price limits, bundling restrictions, payment restrictions, customer restrictions, access restrictions, and more.
Combining it with Shopify Forms lets you run an exclusive sale only for people who submitted the form.
RuffRuff Order Bonus
RuffRuff Order Bonus is a Shopify app that lets you run discount and gift-giveaway initiatives under any condition you set. Depending on your idea, you can implement all kinds of initiatives — VIP-member-only discounts, volume discounts, first-come-first-served discounts, free shipping on the first order, birthday discounts, limited-time discounts, sample giveaways for purchases of 3 or more, a free gift for a specific product purchase, a gift for orders over a certain amount, and more.
Combining it with Shopify Forms lets you offer a discount or free gift only to people who submitted the form.
Summary
Shopify Forms is an excellent app that covers everything you need to create and set up a newsletter signup form. It's completely free to use, and being Shopify's own official app, its stability and how well it integrates with other Shopify apps are major appeals.
The Main Benefits of Shopify Forms
- Completely free to use
- Easily create a form with no code
- Edit while checking your design with a real-time preview
- Integrates with Shopify Messaging and Shopify Flow
- Multilingual support for going global
- Detailed display condition settings for showing the form at the optimal moment
If you want to start email marketing, cut costs on your existing form tool, or make the most of Shopify's features, Shopify Forms is one of the best options available.
Use the setup steps covered in this article as a reference, and try setting up an effective newsletter signup form on your own store. Through building your email list, work toward a long-term relationship with your customers, and drive higher sales.
