When you set up a new store on Shopify you need to choose a theme. A theme is a pre-built template that makes it easier and faster to launch an attractive looking website. Different themes have different styles and layouts so you can select the one that best suits your brand, your product range and the overall feeling you wish to convey to your customers.
You can choose from one of many Shopify free themes, a third-party developer’s free or premium themes or, if you require a fair amount of customisation, you can hire your own developer.
If you choose a theme developed by Shopify it will have a Powered by Shopify branded link in the footer as shown in the image below.
This branded link is a nice marketing hack by Shopify to promote their brand and any of your website visitors clicking on the link will be directed to the Shopify website.
In e-commerce you need to do all you can to build trust with consumers so that they will feel comfortable enough to hand over their credit card details and make a purchase.
If you recently started an e-commerce business, or are about to start one, you are at a disadvantage. Consumers aren’t familiar with your brand or the quality of your products. They might also worry more than usual about whether they will receive the products they order from you and whether their personal and credit card information will be handled securely.
As Shopify is a well known e-commerce brand you might decide to leave the Powered by Shopify message at the bottom of your website to help boost trust and, once your business is more established, remove it.
However, whilst Shopify’s brand awareness is great among e-commerce merchants, Shopify isn’t a consumer brand so doesn’t have high recognition among consumers. Adding trust badges from well known brands like Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Norton and Google are likely to provide much greater levels of trust than the Shopify brand. You might want to check out this great research from CXL to understand which trust badges or site seals create the most trust with consumers.
If you have a more established Shopify store, or run a brand with an existing bricks and mortar presence and are expanding into eCommerce using Shopify, you should remove Powered by Shopify from your site immediately.
Why? In one word, credibility. According to CXL, it takes about 1/20th of a second for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they’ll stay or leave. A consumer might quickly scan your website, see Powered by Shopify, and assume (incorrectly) that your site runs on an off-the-shelf website builder. In other words, they think you’re not that invested in your website so why should they spend their hard earned money with you? Many great brands run on Shopify but this is not something they want to shout about to their customers.
You have three options for removing the Powered by Shopify text from your website:
1. Open the Shopify App on your mobile device and press the Store icon in the bottom right corner.
2. In the Sales channels section press Online Store.
3. Press MANAGE THEMES
4. Under Current theme you’ll see your current theme. Press the Actions dropdown box and select Edit languages.
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the Password page section. Locate the last field Powered by shopify html. Delete “Powered by {{ shopify }}” and type a single space using the spacebar on your keyboard.
6. Press the SAVE button at the top to save your changes.
1. Log into Shopify admin on your desktop computer
2. Click Online Store under Sales Channels in the navigation menu on the left
3. Click Themes
4. You’ll see your current live theme at the top of the screen. Click the Actions dropdown menu and select Edit languages.
5. On the Languages screen type “powered” into the Filter search box.
6. In the Checkout & system / Links section click in the Powered by Shopify box and type a space using your space bar.
7. Go to the next section General / Password page and in the Powered by shopify html box highlight the text “Powered by {{ shopify }}” and type a space using your space bar.
8. Scroll back up to the top of the screen and click the Save button on the right to save your changes.
That’s it, you’re done. Any Powered by Shopify text on your site has been replaced with an invisible space. Please note that if you decide to change your Shopify theme in the future you will need to repeat the steps above as the changes you made only apply to the theme you selected.
For those of you with some programming knowledge you might prefer to completely remove the Powered by Shopify related code from your website theme. Alternatively, if your site runs on a non-sectioned theme you might need to remove the related code.
Shopify has two different types of themes—sectioned themes and non-sectioned themes. Non-sectioned themes were phased out of the Shopify Theme Store at the end of 2016 so if you opened your store after this date it is likely that you have a sectioned theme for your site. If your theme was purchased outside the Shopify Theme Store or you had a custom theme built by a developer you will need to check whether or not it supports sections.
Here are step-by-step instructions to remove Powered by Shopify related code from both sectioned themes and non-sectioned themes.
1. Log into Shopify admin on your desktop computer
2. Click Online Store under Sales Channels in the navigation menu on the left
3. Click Themes
4. You’ll see your current live theme at the top of the screen. Click the Actions dropdown menu and select Edit code.
5. You’ll now see the the Shopify file directory on the left and code editor on the right. Scroll down the file directory listing to find:
Click the relevant file to open it in the editor.
6. Open the code search box:
7. Type or copy & paste {{ powered_by_link }} into the search box and hit the enter/return key.
8. Delete the following code:
Make sure to delete everything from the opening to the closing tags.
9. Depending upon the theme you use there might be more than one instance of the powered by code. For example, Shopify’s current default theme called Debut uses the code twice. Click the down arrow in the search box to find the next occurrence of the code and repeat Step 8 above.
10. Click the Save button on the top right of the Shopify code editor to save your changes.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully removed Powered by Shopify from your site. Should you decide to change your Shopify theme in the future you will need to repeat the steps above as the changes you made only apply to the theme you selected.
