Connect Shopify

Connecting Shopify lets Siren Cloud record your shop’s paid orders, credit them to the collaborators who referred them, and reverse commission when an order is refunded. You add five webhooks in your Shopify admin, paste Shopify’s signing key into Siren Cloud, and add a referral script and a checkout pixel to your shop. There’s no Shopify app to install.

Admins and Platform Managers can connect Shopify. Each Property holds one Shopify shop. To connect a second shop, use a second Property.

Give the Property your shop’s address

The Property’s “Site URL” decides where referral links point. Siren Cloud uses one Site URL for the whole organization, taken from an active Property that has one. The collaborator portal fills it into its link maker, and emails that include a collaborator’s referral link use it too. The Shopify setup doesn’t ask for it, so an Admin enters it, either in “Add property” or later with “Edit Property” on the Property’s page. Use the address shoppers visit, such as https://shop.example.com, or your myshopify.com address if the shop has no domain of its own.

With no Site URL on any Property, the portal’s link maker starts empty, and each collaborator types in a page of your shop. A link to any page that carries the referral script records the visit, so a link to a product page works as well as one to the home page.

Start the setup

Open the setup in one of two ways.

• From the Property: on its page, click “Add integration”, then “Shopify” (Admins only).
• From Settings > Integrations: click “Connect” on the Shopify card, or “Manage” once a Property has Shopify. With one Property, or when one Property already has Shopify, the setup opens straight away. With no Property, Siren Cloud asks you to add one. With several, it lists them: click “Connect here” on the one you want.

To connect Shopify on a second Property, use that Property’s own “Add integration”.

The setup screen numbers its steps, and these sections follow them.

1. Add the webhooks

Click “Start setup”. Siren Cloud shows the webhook URL for this Property, and the Property’s Integrations card lists Shopify with “Waiting for its signing secret”.

2. Paste the signing key

Stay on the Webhooks page in Shopify. Below the list of webhooks, Shopify shows the key your webhooks are signed with. Copy it, paste it into “Signing secret” in Siren Cloud, and click “Connect”. The Integrations card now shows Shopify as “Connected”.

3. Add the referral script to your theme

The setup shows the Property’s tracking line for Admins, or a longer script for Platform Managers. Either one records referral visits and adds each visit to the shopper’s cart.

If you switch to a different theme later, paste the script into the new theme too.

4. Add the checkout pixel

Shoppers who use “Buy it now”, Shop Pay, Apple Pay, or another express checkout skip the cart. The checkout pixel credits those orders. Copy it with “Copy pixel code” on the setup screen.

5. Place a test order

Open one of your collaborator’s referral links, then place an order through it. A collaborator copies their link from their portal. You can also build one: your shop’s address with ?ref= and their Tracking ID added, such as https://shop.example.com/?ref=casey. The Tracking ID is on the collaborator’s page under Manage > Collaborators. In Siren Cloud, open Track > Conversions. The order appears, credited to that collaborator.

Shopify test orders count as real sales in Siren Cloud. After the test, open Track > Conversions, tick the test conversion, and click “Reject”, or use a real order that you refund in full.

To watch your programs credit a sale without a real order, send a test sale from your dashboard first, as Test Your Setup Before Going Live describes. Siren Cloud marks it Test and never pays it, and you delete it from the dashboard when you’re done.

What Siren Cloud records

• A paid order becomes a sale, in your shop’s currency, with product, discount, shipping, and tax lines. Tips and duties become an “Other charges” line.
• A full refund reverses the commission. A partial refund is recorded on the transaction, and each reward that hasn’t been paid out is recalculated for what the customer kept, as Partial refunds describes. Siren Cloud keeps a refund that arrives before its order for up to 30 days and applies it once the order is recorded.
• Each discount code on an order counts as a coupon use, so a code linked to a collaborator credits them. Shopify sends a code the first time a shopper uses it, so to link a code before then, add it yourself with “Add code” under Track > Coupon codes, as Manage Coupon Codes describes.
• Your products appear under Track > Products, where you choose who owns each one, as Manage Products on Siren Cloud describes. A recorded order’s shopper appears under Track > Customers, with their email kept only as a keyed hash.

Siren Cloud doesn’t convert currencies, so when an order has a line in a currency a percentage program doesn’t pay in, the program’s whole reward is worked out at face value and held for review, as Sales in another currency describes. A program that pays in that currency pays those sales without a hold. A distributor leaves out lines in a currency it doesn’t pay in, and a note on the transaction says so. A program or distributor that pays in a custom currency earns on lines in your organization’s currency.

How an order finds its collaborator

Siren Cloud looks for the referral in three places, in order: the visit the referral script added to the cart, the checkout pixel’s record for express checkouts, and the referral link on the page where the shopper first landed.

An order with none of these waits up to 48 hours, in case the checkout pixel’s record arrives late. After that, Siren Cloud credits it to a returning customer’s earlier visit, a collaborator whose coupon was used, or the product’s owners, if any of these apply. On a returning customer’s order, a program that pays lifetime commissions pays again, and a program whose engagement already turned into a sale pays nothing more. Otherwise the order earns no commission.

If orders don’t show up

“Connected” means only that a signing key is saved. Siren Cloud doesn’t test it. If orders don’t appear:

1. In Shopify, open Settings > Notifications > Webhooks and check the deliveries for each webhook.
2. If deliveries fail because the signature is invalid, the key is wrong. Copy it again and use “Replace signing secret” in Siren Cloud. Replacing the key keeps the same webhook URL and tracking line.
3. If deliveries succeed but the order isn’t credited, check that the referral script is in your current theme and the pixel is connected, and that the shopper arrived through a referral link.

Disconnect Shopify

“Disconnect Shopify” on the setup screen, or removing Shopify from the Property, stops Siren Cloud accepting the webhooks at once, and the referral script and checkout pixel stop working too. Conversions already recorded stay. Connecting again gives the Property a new webhook URL, script, and pixel, so update all three in Shopify.

Limits

• One Shopify shop per Property.
• Subscription orders arrive as ordinary sales. Siren Cloud doesn’t record Shopify subscription renewals.
• An order that’s cancelled but not refunded isn’t reversed. Refund it to reverse the commission.
• Shopify test orders count as real sales.