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Installing NextIntent is three steps: add the app, turn on the app embed in your theme editor, and choose a mode. The app reads your store on its own, so there is nothing to type before it can start.

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What you need

  • A Shopify store with the Online Store sales channel (the app speaks on your storefront pages).
  • Permission to install apps and edit the theme. On a staff account, ask the store owner for the Apps and channels and Themes permissions.
  • Nothing else. No developer, no code, no tracking script to paste.

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Step by step

1

Add the app

Open NextIntent in the Shopify App Store and choose Install. Shopify shows the permissions the app asks for: reading products, discounts, shipping and policies (to build the facts it may say), reading orders (to credit a sale to a moment), and writing a small set of app-owned metafields on your shop and products. Approve them.The app opens on its Home page. In the background it is already reading your store. See What it reads from your store.
2

Turn on the app embed

In the app, Home → Finish setup shows “Turn on the app embed”. Choose Open theme editor, or go there yourself: Online Store → Themes → Customize → App embeds → NextIntent. Switch it on and save.This is the one switch that puts NextIntent on your storefront. It adds one small script to every page. Nothing appears to shoppers yet. See The app embed for what the embed does and why it is a theme setting rather than a script you paste.
3

Check it is live

Back in the app, Home shows “Live on your storefront” within a few seconds of the first visit. If it does not, open your storefront in a new tab, load one page, and look again. See Verify it is live.
4

Pick a mode

You start in watch mode: the app records what it would have said to each stuck shopper and shows nothing to anyone. This is free and you can stay in it as long as you like.When you want shoppers to see the sentence, go to Settings → What NextIntent may do and turn Messages on. That is active mode. Shopify asks you to approve the plan first (5% of orders from shoppers NextIntent spoke to, under a monthly cap that starts at $250). See Watch mode and active mode and Pricing.

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What happens at install

The moment the app is installed it does four things, all in the background:
  1. Creates a NextIntent site for your store and links it to your .myshopify.com domain.
  2. Reads your shipping profiles, refund policy, active products and discount codes and builds the facts sheet. See What it reads from your store.
  3. Writes a few app-owned metafields on your shop (the site id, the free shipping line, how to speak on the page) so the theme embed can find them without you typing anything.
  4. Adds a “NextIntent note” field to every product in Products, empty until you fill one in. See Product notes.
Nothing is shown to a shopper as a result of installing. Only the Messages switch does that.

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Why the install is built this way

Most cart apps in the App Store ask for a script to paste, a popup to design, and an email template to fill in before anything works. Merchants in the category’s reviews complain about setup that takes an afternoon and about things appearing on the store before they asked for them. NextIntent reads the store instead of asking you to describe it, and shows nothing until you turn Messages on. The two minutes are real: install, one switch, done.

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If you uninstall

Uninstalling turns Messages off and stops the storefront script at once. The app keeps the store record for 48 hours in case you reinstall, then Shopify’s shop/redact webhook asks NextIntent to erase everything for the store, which it does. See Privacy and data.