Your storefront’s footer links to four policy pages: shipping, returns, privacy, and terms and conditions. A fifth page, Our story, tells customers who you are. This article shows you how to read and finish the starter text a new store begins with, write a page from blank, fill the details only you know, add your other languages, check each page as customers will read it, and publish it.
You find the editor in the sidebar under Storefront: open Policy pages (opens in a new tab). The Store owner and the Store manager can edit these pages. Sales staff cannot, and Policy pages is not in their sidebar. See Staff roles: what each one can see and do.
Your four policy pages and your story
The screen has one tab per page. Each tab is a separate page with its own text, its own status and its own Save.
| Tab | What it tells customers | Where the storefront links it |
|---|---|---|
| Shipping | Where you deliver, how long it takes, what it costs, how tracking works | Footer, Help column |
| Returns | How long customers have to return something, its condition, how to send it back, how you refund | Footer, Help column, and the returns form on the customer’s order page |
| Privacy | What details you keep, why, who sees them, and how a customer asks about them | Footer, Company column |
| Terms & conditions | Who you are, how orders and prices work, payment, your responsibilities, which law applies | Footer, Company column |
| Our story | Who you are, how you started and how you make what you sell | Footer, Company column, and the button in your home page’s About section |
The storefront only links a page that is published. An unpublished page has no link, so customers never reach a page that is not ready.
At the top of the editor you see the page’s status:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Live or Not published | Whether customers can open the page now. It shows the saved page: ticking or unticking the box below changes nothing until you save. |
| A count such as 2 to fill in | How many highlighted blanks are left, in all your languages together. It is not shown when none are left. |
| Saved and a date | When the page was last saved. It is not shown on our starter text until you save the page for the first time. |
| Published on the storefront | The box that decides whether the next Save puts the page on your storefront or keeps it off. |
| A ! badge on a tab | The page is still our starter text and you have never saved it. Point at the badge to read This is still our starter text. Read it through and fill the highlighted blanks before you rely on it. It shows once the pages have loaded. |
Below that, under The page, is your store’s main language, always open, then one card for each of your other languages. Save sits at the foot of the editor.
Each of the other tabs works the same way. Layal Boutique’s pages, for example:
Note
These pages are your store’s own statements to its customers. We do not give legal advice, and neither does our starter text or the AI draft. If you are unsure about a clause, have it checked before you rely on it.
The starter text a new store begins with
You never start from an empty page. When your store is created, we write its four policy pages as starter text, in every language your store sells in. Each page is already split into the sections a policy of that kind needs, with a short clause under each heading and a highlighted blank wherever the decision is yours, such as how many days a customer has to return an item.
On each policy tab of a new store you see:
- Not published, and no link to the page in your storefront’s footer yet. Our words never reach your customers until you have read them and published the page yourself.
- The ! badge on the tab.
- A count such as 16 to fill in. It counts every language: in a store that sells in English and Arabic, the starter Returns page has 8 blanks in each.
- The starter sections in the editor, with the blanks highlighted in Your storefront.
These are the sections each page starts with:
| Page | Its starter sections |
|---|---|
| Shipping | Where we ship · Dispatch and delivery times · Shipping costs · Tracking your order |
| Returns | Returns window · Condition of returned items · How to return an item · Refunds · Items we cannot accept |
| Privacy | What we collect · How we use it · Who we share it with · Your rights · Contacting us |
| Terms & conditions | Who we are · Orders and prices · Payment · Our responsibilities · Governing law |
To finish a starter page, read every section, fill each blank with your own detail, change or delete any sentence that is not how your store works, then publish it. You can also replace a whole language with an AI draft written from your settings: see Draft a policy page with AI.
The ! badge goes the first time you save the page, published or not. From then on the page counts as your words.
The setup list counts these pages: Publish your policy pages reads 4 of 4 pages not published on a new store, and stays open until all four policy pages are published. Our story is not part of it. See The setup list before your first publish.
Tip
Under How to return an item, the starter Returns page tells customers to contact you, then offers a sentence in brackets: [If your plan includes returns, you can add: You can also open your order and choose Request a return.] On Starter and up, customers can send a return request from their order page, and the form links to your returns page once it is published. Keep the sentence without its brackets if you take returns that way, or delete it. See Handle a return.
Our story
Our story is the page that tells customers who is behind the shop: open Our story (opens in a new tab). Unlike the four policies, it has no starter text, no ! badge and no blanks to fill, and it is not part of the setup list. Every store opens it on an empty page:
- “Nothing written here yet”, with the line “Tell customers who you are, how you started and how you make what you sell. The button in your home page’s About section links here once you publish it.”
- One button, Start from blank. AI cannot draft your story, because nothing in your settings says why your store exists, so the page has no AI drafting buttons.
- At the foot of the editor, Translate to other languages and Save, as on every page. Translate stays greyed out until your main language has a section; once the story is written, it translates like any other page (see Translate into your other languages with AI).
Write it the way you write any page: headed sections, sentences and points. Once it is saved with Published on the storefront ticked:
- the button in your home page’s About section appears and opens it;
- the footer’s Company column links it as Our story.
Until then the About section shows without its button, so customers never meet a link to an empty page. In the Storefront Studio, the About section’s Button field says “The button shows once your “Our story” page is published.” with a Write your story link that opens this tab. See Write your storefront text.
Start from blank: sections, paragraphs and points
A page is a list of sections. Each section has a heading, then sentences, a list of points, or both. You never type any code: the storefront builds the page from what you write.
If you delete every section of a page and save, the page is empty again. An empty page shows “Nothing written here yet”. On a policy page it offers Draft with AI from my settings and Start from blank; on Our story, only Start from blank.
To write a page from blank:
- In the sidebar, open Policy pages.
- Select the tab of the page you want to write, for example Returns.
- Select Start from blank. A first empty section appears.
- Type the section’s heading, for example Exchanges.
- Type the first sentence in the line below it.
- Add what the section needs, using the buttons under it.
- Select Add section for the next part of the page, and repeat.
- Select Save.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Heading field (Section heading) | The section’s title, shown in bold on the storefront. |
| A text line (“Write a sentence a customer can act on.”) | One paragraph. It grows as you type. |
| Add text | Adds another paragraph to the section. |
| Add point | Adds a bullet point. A point is one line: Enter does not break it, and a pasted line break becomes a space. |
| Delete (bin beside a line) | Removes that paragraph or point. |
| Move up / Move down | Moves the whole section one place. The first section cannot move up, the last cannot move down. |
| Delete section (red bin) | Removes the section at once, without asking. Nothing changes on the storefront until you save. |
| Add section | Adds a new section at the end. |
| Draft again with AI | On a policy page, replaces this language’s sections with a fresh AI draft, after asking. Not on Our story. See Draft a policy page with AI. |
A section with no heading and no text is left out when you save. Text is plain: there is no bold, link or colour inside a sentence.
The highlighted blanks to fill
Anything inside square brackets is a blank: a detail only you can supply, such as [number] days or [your email or phone number]. The starter text and the AI draft both use them.
- In Your storefront, every blank is highlighted in yellow, with the line “Highlighted text is waiting for a detail only you can supply.” under the page.
- The section that holds a blank gets a coloured edge in the editor.
- The status line counts them, in every language of the page: 16 to fill in.
To fill a blank, click into the line, select the bracketed words and type the real detail over them, brackets included. For example, replace [number] with 14. Some blanks are instructions rather than a gap, such as [Add any other condition, or delete this sentence.]: follow them, then delete the bracketed words. The count drops as you go.
Because square brackets mark a blank, any brackets you type yourself also count as one. Use round brackets in your own wording.
Write your other languages
If your store sells in more than one language, each other language has its own card under your main language. The card shows the language and how many sections it has (Sections: 3), with Empty when nothing is written in it.
- Select the language’s card to open it.
- Edit its sections the same way. On an empty card, use Start from blank or, on a policy page, Draft with AI from my settings in that language.
- Select Save. One Save keeps every language of the page.
On a new store each language already holds its own starter text, so the blanks are counted in every language. An AI draft in Arabic or French comes back in that language, headings included, and its blanks are written in that language too, such as [اكتب هنا تفاصيل «…».] or [À compléter : ….].
A customer who reads your store in a language the page is not written in sees it in another language you wrote, so the link never leads nowhere. The same goes for a language that has headings but no text under them: customers reading that language are shown a language that has text. To learn which languages your store sells in, see Set your store’s languages and currency.
Translate into your other languages with AI
Instead of writing each language by hand, you can translate your main language into all the others in one go. AI translation is on Starter and up.
- Write and check the page in your store’s main language.
- Select Translate to other languages at the foot of the editor. It reads Translating… while it works.
- Read each translated card. They open by themselves, and the preview switches to the first one.
- Select Save.
When it is done you see “Translated. Read them through before you publish.” A translation uses AI translation credits: one for every heading, paragraph and point, for each language it fills. A line the translation could not fill costs nothing. See How AI credits work.
If something goes wrong, nothing in the editor changes:
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| “Could not translate this page right now. Try again.” | Try again in a moment. |
| “This page is too long to translate in one go. Split it into shorter sections.” | The page has more than 200 headings, paragraphs and points in all. Shorten it, or write the other languages by hand. |
| “You have used all AI translation credits for this month.” | Your credits come back at the start of next month. Until then, write the other languages by hand. |
The button is there only when your store sells in more than one language, and it stays greyed out until your main language has at least one section. Free sells in one language, so a store on Free has no other-language cards and no Translate button. Moving up to Starter lets you sell in both English and Arabic, and includes AI translation. If your plan ever lacks AI translation while your store has other languages, the button carries a padlock, and selecting it names the plan that includes it, with See plans. See Plans and what each includes.
Warning
Translating replaces everything already written in your other languages for this page, including text you wrote by hand and our starter text. Nothing is saved until you select Save: if the result is not what you wanted, leave the page without saving.
Preview, in each language
Your storefront shows the page as a customer on a computer reads it: your store’s published fonts and colours, the page title in that language, and the line “Last updated today”. The chip beside the title, EN or AR, says which language you are looking at.
- Find the language you want to check: your main language at the top, or one of the cards below.
- Select Preview beside it. The button turns to Previewing, and the panel shows that language, right to left for Arabic.
The preview follows every keystroke. Opening another tab brings it back to your main language.
Publish: tick Published on the storefront, then Save
There is no separate Publish button. A page goes live when it is saved with Published on the storefront ticked.
- Fill every blank, in every language.
- Tick Published on the storefront at the top of the editor.
- Select Save.
You see “Page saved.”, the status turns to Live, the ! badge goes, and the storefront links the page. If the save fails, you see “Could not save the page.”; your text is still on screen, so select Save again.
Changing a live page later works the same way: edit, then Save. Customers see the new version as soon as it is saved.
When publishing is refused
A published page has to say something. If the page has headings but no text under any of them, or nothing at all, saving it with Published on the storefront ticked is refused with “Write the page before you publish it. A heading on its own says nothing to your customers.” Nothing is saved: the page stays as it was, Not published, or Live with its last saved text. Write at least one sentence under your headings, then save again. You can still save an empty page with the box unticked; it is then off your storefront.
A page longer than 500,000 characters, all its languages together, is refused with “This page is too long to save. Keep it under 500,000 characters across all its languages.” A policy page is never that long in practice; if you see it, split long passages into shorter sections and remove anything pasted twice.
Publishing with blanks left
If you save with Published on the storefront ticked while blanks are left, the console stops and asks first.
- Cancel goes back to the editor without saving. Fill the blanks, then save again.
- Publish anyway saves and publishes the page with the brackets showing.
A blank left on a live page reads as a promise nobody made, such as “you can return an item within [number] days”. Fill it first unless you have a good reason.
Take a page off your storefront
- Open the page’s tab.
- Untick Published on the storefront.
- Select Save.
The status turns to Not published and the storefront stops linking the page straight away. Your text stays in the editor, ready to publish again. A policy page off the storefront also reopens the setup list’s Publish your policy pages task. Taking Our story off hides the About section’s button again.
Leaving with changes not saved
The console asks before you lose words you have not saved.
- Leaving the screen (another sidebar item, for example) opens “Unsaved changes”. Cancel keeps you on the page; Leave page leaves and throws the changes away.
- Opening another tab asks the same question about this page, with Discard changes to go on.
If the pages do not load
If the console cannot fetch your pages, it shows “Could not load your pages.” with Try again. Your pages and your storefront are not affected. Select Try again; if it keeps failing, check your connection and reload.
A role that cannot open policy pages, such as Sales staff, does not see Policy pages in its sidebar; opened from a link, the page says You do not have permission to do this. Ask the Store owner to change the staff member’s role if they need it: see Staff roles: what each one can see and do.
What to do next
- Let AI write a first draft from your settings: Draft a policy page with AI.
- Answer the questions customers ask most: Add questions to your FAQ page.
- Handle returns the way your returns page promises: Handle a return.