Set up your shop page

Your shop page is the one link you share everywhere. The Storefront tab in your dashboard controls all of it, split into five smaller tabs so nothing is buried.

Keep your shop closed until you are ready

Your shop page goes live the day your shop is created. If you signed up to look around first, you can close the door while you work.

Open Storefront and stay on the Your shop tab. Under the card that shows your web address is a card headed "Who can see your shop", with a switch beside the line "My shop isn't ready for customers yet". Turn it on and your shop page, your products, and your collections stop opening for anyone but you. Your shop also comes out of Google.

Nothing is deleted and nothing in your dashboard changes. Your orders, your quotes, your messages, and every link you have already built all carry on exactly as they were. While the shop is closed that card turns amber and its label reads "Closed — only you", so you cannot forget you are in that state. Turn the switch off and everything is back, at the same web address.

The five tabs

Your shop holds your name, your town, your welcome words, your logo, and your photo — plus your look (the theme) and the page layout, which decides which sections appear and in what order. Empty sections never show, so you cannot end up with a bare spot. Shops that show a real face and a real town win more orders from strangers. This tab is also where your web address lives: the card for moving your shop to your own domain, and the card for embedding your shop inside a website you already have — one switch and a snippet you paste into Shopify, Squarespace, or WordPress. When a customer pays from inside your website, the payment step opens in a full browser tab, because card checkout will not run inside another page.

What's on the page holds the content itself: your gallery photos, your story, reviews, the banner strip, and your pickup and shipping details.

Local pickup is switched on when your shop is created, so your listing pages say "local pickup available" from your first day. Under that switch there is a box for where and when they collect — "Porch pickup at 412 Maple St, any day after 4pm. Text me when you're on your way." Whatever you type there is what your buyer reads the moment they choose pickup, and again on the page that tracks their order. Fill it in and nobody has to message you to ask where you are. Leave it blank and they are told you will be in touch with the details, which is honest but costs you a message each time.

How customers order controls the order form itself. Turn steps on or off to match how you work. One of them is "Straight or arched lettering". Leave it on and the wording step offers a buyer four shapes — Straight, Arched, Top arched and Bottom arched — and the preview draws the curve they picked, so an owner who stitches more than one arch can let a buyer say which one. Turn it off if your fonts or software do not curve text, and the form stops asking: all three curves go away and every word stitches straight across. The font choices themselves live with your fonts on the Designs page, under Fonts — this tab points you there.

Run a sale holds shop-wide sales, your announcement bar, and the seasonal dress-up — a one-click seasonal color for your page.

Getting found on Google holds the basics that help your page show up in search.

Why your shop isn't showing on Google yet

Open Storefront and choose the Getting found on Google tab. The card at the top, "Can Google find your shop?", tells you whether your shop page is open to Google and how many of your products Broidry has put on the list of pages it gives Google.

If the card says your shop is closed, Google is told to leave it out. Turn off "My shop isn't ready for customers yet" on the Your shop tab to open it.

If the card says yes, nothing on Broidry is keeping Google out. Google adds new pages on its own schedule, and for a brand-new shop that can take several days to a few weeks. Other pages that link to your shop help Google find it sooner, like your Facebook page, your Instagram bio, or your Google Business Profile.

The link on that card, "See which of your pages Google has so far", opens a Google search that shows only your shop's pages. When it shows your pages, Google has added them.

Under the card, the Search title and Search description boxes choose the words Google shows for your shop. Leave them blank and Broidry writes them from your shop name and the words already on your shop page.

Proving to Google that your shop page is yours

Two different Google things get called "verifying," and they work differently. A Google Business Profile is the listing with your hours and reviews that shows up on Maps. Google verifies that itself, by mailing a postcard, calling, or asking for a short video of your workspace. Your Broidry address goes in its Website box, and nothing on your shop page has to change for it.

Google Search Console is the other one: Google's free tool that shows which searches bring people to a page. To add your shop page there, Google asks you to prove the page is yours, and one of the ways it offers is an "HTML tag," a line that starts with <meta name="google-site-verification". Copy that whole line.

Open Storefront and choose the Getting found on Google tab. Under the Search description box is a box called Google verification code. Paste the line there, press Save search info, then go back to Google and press Verify. Broidry keeps only the code and puts the tag on your shop page for you, so it does not matter whether you pasted the whole line or just the code.

When you add the page in Search Console, use the URL prefix choice and type your full shop address, https://broidry.com/s/ followed by your shop's name in the address, exactly as it appears at the top of your Storefront page.

Change your web address

Your web address is built from the shop name you typed when you signed up. Most new shops settle on their real business name a little later than that, so you can move it.

Open the Storefront tab in your dashboard. The first card at the top is called Your shop page, and it shows the address your shop sits at. Under that address is Change this address. Choose it, type the name you want, and save.

Spaces and capital letters turn into dashes and lowercase when you save, so Sunshine and Bliss Embroidery becomes sunshine-and-bliss-embroidery. If another shop is already using the address you typed, Broidry says so instead of saving it.

Your old address keeps working, and it always will. A link you already texted a customer, a card you handed someone at a fair, and a QR code you already printed all still open your shop.

How customers find one product

Three things on your shop page get a customer to the right product without scrolling your whole catalog.

The first is your shop categories. A category is a heading you make yourself for the menu on your shop page, and it can have subcategories under it. A shop that makes spirit wear might have a category called Schools & Teams with a subcategory for each school, so a parent clicks Schools & Teams, then their school, and sees only that school's pieces. On a computer the menu runs down the left: All items, then your categories with their subcategories indented under them, then your item types under the heading Shop by item. On a phone the menu is a row of buttons across the top, and choosing a category brings up a second row with its subcategories.

Make your categories on the Products page, in the card called Shop categories. Type a name and choose Add category, then choose Add a subcategory under it for each one you want. The arrows beside each name move it up or down, and the menu on your shop page follows that order. Rename and Delete sit on the same line. Deleting a category never deletes products, it only takes them out of that category.

To put a product in a category, open the product and check the category under Shop categories. A product in a subcategory also shows under the category above it, so a product in Kohler shows under Schools & Teams without a second check. To put many products in at once, choose Change or delete several on your Products page, pick the products, and choose the category under Add to a category.

A category only shows on your shop page once at least one product is in it. Each one has its own web address: choose Copy link next to it on the Products page, and the link opens your shop page with that category already chosen. It is the link to post in a school's parent group or a team's group chat. Renaming a category keeps its link the same, so a link you already posted keeps working.

The second is your tags. Once you have a category with a product in it, your shop page menu shows your categories and no longer lists your tags, so the menu stays short. Until then, every tag you put on a product becomes a group a customer can click on your shop page. On a computer your tags are listed down the left under the heading Collections, next to the sections Broidry works out from item type, with a count beside each one. On a phone they run across the top as a row of eight, which are the ones you have used on the most products, and the rest sit behind a button that says how many more there are.

Tags are the part of this you name yourself. The sections above them are your item types, so they say Sweatshirts and Hoodies and Totes & bags and nothing else. A tag can say anything: Christmas, Teacher gifts, Game day, Baby. Put the same tag on several products and it becomes a collection, whatever those products are made from.

You do not have to put a tag on one product at a time. Pick the products on your Products page, choose Change or delete several, and type the tag under Tag them as a group. It goes on all of them at once and keeps the tags each product already had. The box next to it takes a tag back off the ones you picked, which is how a seasonal collection comes down in January.

Tag lists go messy over time, in every tool that has them. You end up with Christmas and christmas gifts and embroidered christmas, all meaning one thing, and your shop page shows three headings where there should be one. Your Products page has a card called Your collections that lists every tag you use and how many products carry it. Rename a tag there and it changes on every product at once. Rename one to match another and the two become a single collection. Remove one and it comes off everything, leaving the products themselves exactly as they are.

The card also tells you how many of your tags are on a single product each. A tag one product uses is not a collection yet, and those are the ones worth folding into a tag you already use. Broidry never keeps a tag you have stopped using, so there is nothing to sweep up afterward — the moment no product carries a word, it stops showing on your shop page.

The third is the search box. It sits above your products once your shop has more than twelve of them, and it looks at every product name and every tag. Two words narrow it further than one, and the order does not matter. A search is its own web address, so a customer can send it to someone or come back to it later.

Both of these run on your own words. A product named Senior class of 2026 and tagged sweatshirt is found by someone searching senior, or sweatshirt, or both. Naming your products the way your customers say them out loud is the whole trick.

Make it look like you

Pick a theme, or let the setup helper suggest one from how you describe your shop. The Match my logo's color button pulls your logo's main color into the page. The theme carries your colors and type through every page a customer sees, including their order form and tracking pages. Add a meet-the-maker photo so customers can see the person making their piece.

The promises your listing pages make

Under the order button on every listing page, Broidry shows two short promises to your buyer. They are switches, not fixed text, and they live under What's on the page, in the box called What your listing pages promise. Check that both are actually true of your shop, because a promise you do not keep is worse than no promise at all.

The first is "Real embroidery, made to order — not printed." Leave it on if you stitch. You do not have to turn it off just because you also print: Broidry takes the promise off any listing that is not embroidery, on its own. It goes by two things — the craft you set on the listing itself, and the listing's own words, so a title with DTF, sublimation, HTV, heat transfer, vinyl, screen print, or graphic tee in it never carries the promise.

Turn the switch off only if you want the promise gone from your embroidered listings too.

The second is "You approve every detail before it's stitched." Leave it on if you send a proof or confirm the wording before you thread the machine. Turn it off if you stitch straight from the order, so you are not promising a step you do not actually do.

If you also work by hand

In that same box there is a third switch: "I do some of my work by hand." It is off by default, and while it is off, anything Broidry writes for you is checked so it can never describe machine embroidery as hand embroidered or handmade. That check exists to protect you, because calling machine work handmade is the kind of claim that costs a shop its reputation.

If you genuinely do hand embroidery, hand-finishing, or sell handmade pieces alongside your machine work, turn it on. Broidry then stops rewriting those words out of your own copy and keeps your wording as you typed it. It still will not invent a hand-work claim you did not make — turning the switch on only stops the correction, it does not start adding the words for you.