The links in your header and footer

Until you make a menu of your own, your storefront shows the links the theme came with. Online Store → Navigation replaces them with yours. It is on every plan, and a saved menu that is active reaches shoppers as soon as you save it.

1. Add a menu

Choose Add menu. A menu belongs to one place, so the dialog asks for two things:

• Name, for you. It is never shown to shoppers.
• Location: Header or Footer.

The two locations read their links differently, and the dialog says so as you choose:

• Header: each top-level item is a link across the top. An item with sub-items becomes a dropdown.
• Footer: each top-level item is a column heading and its sub-items are the links under it. An item with no sub-items becomes a single-link column.

Choose Create menu.

2. Type your links

Choose Add link for each one. A link is a Label, which is the words a shopper reads, and a Link, which is where it goes. Paths on your own store start with a slash: / for the home page, /products for everything you sell, /collections, /contact, /blog, or /collections/<the collection> for one collection. A full web address works too, for something that is not on your store, and the toggle beside a row opens that link in a new tab.

The small + under a row adds a sub-item, which is how you build a dropdown in a header menu or a column in a footer menu. The handle at the left of a row moves it up or down; the order here is the order shoppers see.

Choose Save menu. If this menu is not the active one yet, the message says so: Set this menu as active to show it on your storefront.

3. Set it as active

Choose Set as active. The menu is badged Active, and the message reads Your storefront shows it now.

That is the whole of it. There is no publish step: an active menu you save shows on your storefront within a few seconds, whichever plan you are on. You can keep several menus for one location, for example a seasonal one, and switch which is active without retyping anything.

What a menu cannot remove

The links to your privacy, shipping and returns and terms of service pages are always reachable from the footer, even when your own footer menu does not list them. Those pages are published under your store's name as your own policy, so the platform keeps them reachable. See Your policy pages.

If it does not work

• Save menu is greyed out. Nothing has changed since the last save. Edit a label or a link and it wakes up.
• You saved but the storefront still shows the old links. Either the menu is not active (look for the Active badge and use Set as active), or you are inside the few seconds a storefront page stays cached. Refresh once.
• A link goes nowhere. The path is wrong. Open your storefront, go to the page you meant, and copy the part of the address after your store's domain, slash included.
• The header shows links you did not type. Your active header menu is a different one, or you have none and the theme's own links are still showing.

Email support@shoponent.com with your store name if anything here does not match what you see. We read and answer every message.