Everything you need to install the app, build your first page, publish it to a draft theme, and fix the common hiccups along the way.
Getting started
Most merchants publish their first page within 15 minutes of installing.
Find ConvertCanvas in the Shopify App Store and click Install. The app opens embedded inside your Shopify admin — no separate account or password is needed. Approve the requested permissions so ConvertCanvas can read your products and write to a draft theme.
From the dashboard, click New page and pick a surface: product, landing, collection, or cart. Start from a blank canvas or a starter template, then drag widgets from the library — buy box, sticky add-to-cart, countdown timer, trust badges, reviews strip, free-shipping bar, and more — onto the page. Edit text inline and preview across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
Click Publish. ConvertCanvas compiles your design into native Online Store 2.0 files — a JSON template plus Liquid sections — and syncs them to a draft copy of your theme. Nothing touches your live theme. Use the preview link to check the page exactly as customers will see it.
Open Online Store → Themes → Customize on the theme you published to (or the live theme once you're happy). Use the template dropdown at the top of the theme editor to select your new ConvertCanvas template, then assign it to the product, page, collection, or cart you want it to appear on. Save — you're live.
Core concepts
Four ideas explain almost everything the app does.
A surface is the kind of Shopify page you're building: product, landing, collection, or cart. Each surface comes with its own starter templates and surface-specific widgets — a buy box makes sense on a product page, a cart upsell on the cart. Plan limits count pages per surface, so the Free plan's 3 pages can be split however you like.
Widgets are the building blocks you drag onto the canvas. The library ships 22 conversion-focused widgets — buy box, sticky add-to-cart, countdown timer, trust badges, reviews strip, free-shipping bar, stock indicator, guarantee box, and more. Every widget compiles to production-ready Liquid, CSS, and a small amount of vanilla JavaScript — no runtime framework, no iframes.
Publishing always targets a draft theme, never your live theme. ConvertCanvas syncs the compiled files to the draft, gives you a preview link, and waits for you to assign the template in Shopify admin when you're ready. Your customers see nothing until you say so.
oxa- prefix
Every file ConvertCanvas writes is prefixed with oxa- — templates like
product.oxa-spring-launch.json and sections like oxa-buy-box.liquid.
The app only ever creates or updates its own managed files and refuses to touch reserved
template names, so your existing theme files are never overwritten. Files are plain Liquid
and JSON, fully readable and editable in Shopify's code editor.
Troubleshooting
Publishing puts the files on the theme, but Shopify doesn't apply them automatically. Open Online Store → Themes → Customize, check that you're editing the theme you published to, and use the template dropdown at the top of the theme editor to confirm your ConvertCanvas template is assigned to the product, page, or collection in question. Unassigned templates exist on the theme but never render.
This usually means the theme copy drifted — for example after switching themes or editing files
by hand. Open the page in ConvertCanvas and click Republish to recompile and
re-sync all managed oxa- files. A republish is safe: it only rewrites
ConvertCanvas-owned files.
Your published pages keep working. Because ConvertCanvas compiles to native theme files, the
oxa- templates and sections live in your theme like any other code and don't call
back to our servers. You lose the ability to create and edit pages in the builder, and you can
delete the managed files from the theme code editor at any time.
The Free plan includes 3 pages, Basic includes 25, and Plus is unlimited. You can archive pages you no longer need to free up slots, or upgrade from the billing page inside the app — the new limit applies immediately.
Yes. Every published section exposes native theme-editor settings — spacing, animations, visibility, and widget-specific options — so quick tweaks never require reopening the builder. For structural changes, edit in ConvertCanvas and republish.
We answer every message personally — usually within one business day. Include your store URL and a screenshot if you can; it speeds things up enormously.
Contact support