Online Store Preferences Overview – SHOPLINE Help Center

The Preferences section contains foundational settings for managing your online store’s SEO, customer privacy, storefront access, event tracking, and search engine visibility. These settings help merchants optimize how their storefront appears online, manage customer data collection, control store access, and configure marketing and indexing tools.

This article provides an overview of the available settings in the Preferences section and links to detailed setup guides for each feature group.

Accessing the Preferences Section

From your SHOPLINE admin, go to Online Store > Preferences.

Note: Depending on your subscription plan, installed apps, and enabled features, some settings may vary or be unavailable.

Managing Store SEO & Discoverability

The SEO and discoverability settings help merchants improve storefront visibility in search engines, optimize storefront sharing appearance, and manage how crawlers and indexing services access storefront content.

Store SEO Settings

The Store SEO settings allow you to configure your storefront’s page title and meta description, which affect how your storefront appears in search engine results. You can also preview your storefront’s search result appearance before publishing changes.

For detailed instructions on configuring storefront SEO settings, please refer to "Managing Store SEO Settings."

URL Structure Settings

The URL Structure settings allow Enterprise merchants to customize the URL formats used for products, collections, blog articles, and custom pages. A clear and consistent URL structure helps preserve existing URL formats and supports seamless traffic migration without SEO loss.

For detailed instructions on configuring URL structures, please refer to "Customizing Your URL Structure (Enterprise Plan Exclusive Feature)."

Store Link Thumbnail Images

The Store Link Thumbnail settings allow you to upload a default image used when your storefront link is shared on social media platforms, messaging apps, or external websites. This helps create a more consistent and professional storefront sharing experience.

For detailed instructions on configuring storefront sharing preview images, please refer to "Setting Up Store Link Thumbnail Images."

robots.txt Management

The robots.txt settings allow you to manage how search engine crawlers access and index storefront pages. This feature is commonly used for advanced SEO management and crawler access control.

For detailed instructions on configuring robots.txt settings, please refer to "Managing robots.txt for Advanced SEO."

LLMS.txt Management

The LLMS.txt settings allow you to manage how AI crawlers and large language model (LLM) services interact with your storefront content. This helps merchants control AI indexing visibility and crawler access behavior for AI-related services.

For detailed instructions on configuring AI crawler access settings, please refer to "Managing LLMS.txt (AI Crawlers) for Your SHOPLINE Store."

Sitemap.xml Settings

The Sitemap.xml settings allow you to manage the default sitemap generated for your storefront or upload custom sitemap files when needed. Proper sitemap configuration helps search engines discover and index storefront content more efficiently.

For detailed instructions on managing sitemap settings and search engine indexing behavior, please refer to "Managing Sitemap.xml Settings."

Managing Store Access & Privacy

The store access and privacy settings help merchants control storefront accessibility, manage visitor restrictions, and configure customer data collection and consent behaviors.

Store Access Restrictions

The store access restriction settings allow you to manage password protection, restricted regions, IP blacklists and whitelists, and anti-crawler configurations. These settings help merchants control who can access the storefront and limit unwanted traffic or indexing behavior in different operational scenarios.

For detailed instructions on configuring storefront password protection, please refer to "Setting Up Password Protection for Your Store."
For detailed instructions on managing region restrictions and IP access controls, please refer to "Managing Store Region Restrictions and IP Blacklist/Whitelist."
For detailed instructions on configuring crawler protection settings, please refer to "Managing Store Anti-Crawler Settings."

Restricting Store Access to B2B Customers (Enterprise Plan Exclusive Feature)

The Restrict access to B2B customers setting lets you lock your entire online store to B2B account holders only. When enabled, any visitor who is not logged in with a verified B2B company account, including unauthenticated users and regular B2C customers, is automatically redirected to the B2B login page.

To enable B2B-only store access:

From your SHOPLINE admin, go to Online Store > Preferences.
Scroll down to the Password protection section.
Toggle Restrict access to B2B customers on.

The setting takes effect immediately. To restore normal store access at any time, toggle Restrict access to B2B customers off.

Notes:

This is an Enterprise plan exclusive feature.
This setting only applies to SHOPLINE’s native Enterprise B2B feature. If you are using the B2B & Wholesale Solution app, this setting will have no effect on your store.

What visitors experience when B2B-only access is enabled:

Non-B2B visitors (including unauthenticated users): Attempting to access the store redirects them to the company login page. Without a verified B2B company account, they cannot view any store content.
B2B company customers: Attempting to access the store redirects them to the company login page. After successfully logging in with their B2B company account, they can browse the store and access all content.

Privacy Settings & GDPR Compliance

The privacy settings allow merchants to configure how customer personal data is collected before consent is granted. Depending on your compliance and operational requirements, you can manage customer consent behavior and configure GDPR-related privacy settings. Some consent-based configurations may also require the Privacy Banner app.

For detailed instructions on configuring customer privacy settings and GDPR compliance options, please refer to "Managing Customer Privacy Settings and GDPR Compliance."

Managing Marketing & Event Tracking

The marketing and event tracking settings help merchants measure storefront performance, analyze customer behavior, and support advertising attribution and remarketing activities.

Event Tracking Tools

The Event Tracking settings allow you to connect supported advertising and analytics platforms, including Facebook Pixel, Conversions API, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Ads. These integrations help merchants monitor conversions, measure campaign performance, and optimize marketing strategies.

For detailed instructions on configuring Meta and Google event tracking integrations, please refer to "Managing Event Tracking Tools and Advertising Integrations."