Install on Shopify
On Shopify, Whence comes as an app. There is no code to paste: the app adds its web pixel for you, and one switch in your theme turns on visit recording.
Step 1: Add Whence to your store
Install Whence from the Shopify App Store and approve the access it asks for. The app opens inside your Shopify admin.
Step 2: Accept the terms
The first time, the app shows Before you start. Tick I agree to the Terms and the Data Processing Agreement, on behalf of my business. (1), then click Continue (2).
Nothing is set up in your store until you do. Whence then creates your account and adds its web pixel to your store.
Step 3: Open the theme editor
The app opens the Set up your 2-in-1 pixel guide at the top of its page. In its first step, click Open the theme editor (1). Your live theme opens with the Whence app embed, Visit analytics, already selected.
If you closed the guide, the app shows Turn on Whence in your theme instead, with an Open theme editor button that does the same.
Step 4: Turn on the app embed and save
In the theme editor, under App embeds, switch Visit analytics on and click Save. Whence records nothing until it is on.
Step 5: Check that the first visit arrives
Open your store in a new tab, come back to the app and click Check again (2 in the previous capture). The line under the step reads Waiting for the first visit. Open your store in a new tab, then check again. until the first visit arrives.
The guide then moves on to connecting your ad platforms and testing them: see Set up your 2-in-1 pixel.
What Whence receives
| From | What |
|---|---|
| The Visit analytics app embed | Every visit on your theme pages, with its replay. |
| The Whence web pixel | Page and product views, add to cart, checkout started, payment info submitted and checkout completed, including on checkout pages, where the app embed does not run. It sends events only, never a replay. |
| Your orders | Read from Shopify every 15 minutes, starting with the last 60 days, and tied to the visit that placed them. |
On Shopify, Whence can send purchases to your ad platforms from the server, not only from the browser. That is not the case on other platforms. See Conversions funnel.
First-party tracking comes with the app: the tracker and what it sends go through your store’s own domain, at /apps/whence, which ad blockers do not cut the way they cut a third-party address. If you changed that proxy path in Shopify (Settings, Apps, Whence), set it back to apps/whence, otherwise Whence uses its own domain. See First-party tracking.
Consent
Whence follows Shopify’s Customer Privacy API: Shopify’s free cookie banner (Settings, Customer privacy) and any consent app connected to it. There is nothing to connect. Whence does not show a banner of its own. See Which cookie banner to use.
The manual path, without the app
The Install screen of the Whence dashboard also has a Shopify tab (1): paste the block in theme.liquid, just before the closing </head> tag, with Copy (2) on Paste this block.
That block is tied to the theme (paste it again if you switch themes), and it gives you the tracker only, without the web pixel or the order reading that come with the app. Use the app.