Preferences

Open Online Store › Preferences. Preferences set how your online store greets visitors before it opens.

Send visitors to the right place

By country sends someone arriving from outside to the market of the country they are in. By language sends them to the language their browser asks for, if you sell in it. Each is off until you tick it. Search engines are never sent anywhere, so they see all your addresses, and someone who chooses a country or language on your store stays with their choice.

Language tags for search engines tell Google and others about the other languages and countries of each page. Leave it on unless an SEO tool or adviser asks you to manage those tags another way.

Password protection

Keep the store closed while you get it ready. Visitors see an “Opening soon” page and need the password to come in. Search engines are kept out.

• Restrict access with a password: tick it to close the store, and choose a Password of at least 4 characters. Share it with those who may look around early.
• Message for visitors: shown on the “Opening soon” page.
• Let business customers sign in: for a store only your business customers may use. It is always shown, and works once the store is closed with a password. With the store closed, a buyer of one of your companies signs in with a code sent to their email, and needs no password. Everyone else stays out. A buyer you remove from their company is shut out within a day. Add buyers under Customers › Companies, and turn on customer accounts in Settings › Customer accounts.

• To change the password, type a New password. Leave it empty to keep the current one. A new password asks everyone to enter it again.

The page says whether the store is Open to all or Closed to visitors. Untick the box and save to open the store to everyone.

Let an SEO tool in

Let an SEO tool in is always on the page; while your store is closed, Create a pass creates a pass, so a tool can check your store before it opens. Add it to the tool as a Cookie header. It works for 30 days or until you change the password, and it is shown only once.