Giftnote Go-Live Checklist

• Make sure the Giftnote app embed is enabled in the Shopify theme

• Gift message widget is visible on your storefront (product page, cart, and/or checkout)

• Shop Pay is enabled inside the checkout extension settings (Shopify Plus only)

Notifications

• Klaviyo flows are approved as transactional (if using Klaviyo)

• Native Giftnote emails are disabled (if using Klaviyo)

• SMS template is reviewed and customized

gift card product (skip if you don't sell gift cards)

• Gift card product created from scratch in Shopify (not converted from an existing product)

• Vendor field set to exactly Giftnote

• Track inventory is unchecked on every variant

• This is a physical product is unchecked on every variant

• Old or native Shopify gift card product is unpublished

• Only one Giftnote gift card product is live

Carrier tracking

• Shipping carriers are mapped in Giftnote settings

• Carriers match the names Shopify uses for your fulfillments

Test orders

• Test order placed from your live storefront (not from Shopify admin)

• Gift message appears in the Giftnote dashboard

• Test order marked as Delivered in Shopify admin

• Recipient received the gift notification (email and/or SMS)

Full details

Enable the Giftnote app embed in your live theme

The Giftnote app embed is a master toggle that controls whether the gift message widget renders on your store. Without it, nothing appears — even if the widget block has been added to your theme.

1. Open your Shopify admin and go to Online Store → Themes

2. Click Customize on your live theme

3. Click the App embeds icon in the left sidebar (it looks like a puzzle piece)

4. Find "Giftnote" in the list and toggle it on

5. Click Save in the top-right corner of the theme editor

Important: Publishing a new theme resets the Giftnote app embed to off. If you switch or publish a different theme at any point, you'll need to re-enable this toggle.

If you don't see Giftnote in the App embeds list, the app may not be fully installed. Go to Apps in your Shopify admin, open Giftnote, and confirm the installation is complete.

Confirm the gift message widget is visible on your storefront

After enabling the app embed, verify the widget appears where your customers will see it.

1. Open your live store in a new browser tab (use your public storefront URL, not the Shopify admin preview)

2. Navigate to a product page and look for the gift message button (e.g., "Send as a Gift" or your customized button text)

3. Add a product to your cart and open your cart drawer or cart page — confirm the widget appears there too (if you've configured it for the cart)

4. Proceed to checkout — confirm the widget appears in checkout (Shopify Plus only)

If the button doesn't appear on a specific product page, that product may not be assigned to a template with the Giftnote widget block. Go back to the theme editor and check that the widget block is added to that product page template.

What to check for:

• Button text, color, and placement match your expectations

• Clicking the button opens the gift message modal

• The modal lets you enter a recipient name, email or phone, and a gift message (up to 210 characters)

If the widget appears on desktop but not mobile (or vice versa), this is typically a theme CSS conflict. Contact support at support@giftnote.com with your store URL and a screenshot of what you see.

Enable Shop Pay in the checkout extension (Shopify Plus only)

Approximately 30% of checkout traffic uses Shop Pay. If you don't enable this setting, those customers won't see the gift message option at checkout.

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes → Customize

2. Navigate to the checkout page in the theme editor

3. Click on the Giftnote checkout extension block

4. Look for the Shop Pay settings section — it's inside a collapsed drawer that's easy to miss

5. Enable the Shop Pay visibility toggle

6. Click Save

[Orange callout] If you don't see the Giftnote checkout extension at all, your store may not be on Shopify Plus. The checkout extension is only available on Shopify Plus plans. For non-Plus stores, the product page and cart drawer widgets are your primary gift message placements.

Verify Klaviyo flows are approved as transactional (if using Klaviyo)

Klaviyo must approve your Giftnote notification flows as transactional before they'll send to gift recipients. Without transactional approval, Klaviyo will only send to contacts who have opted into marketing — and almost no gift recipients have.

1. Open your Klaviyo account and go to Flows

2. Find each Giftnote flow (they'll be named things like "Received Gift Order," "Gift Card Delivered," etc.)

3. Click into each flow and check the flow status — it should show Live and Transactional

If a flow shows "Live" but not "Transactional," it hasn't been approved yet. Transactional approval typically takes up to 24 hours — submit the request at least one day before your planned go-live date.

What gets a flow rejected by Klaviyo: Call-to-action buttons, promotional imagery, discount codes, or split-test blocks. Klaviyo requires transactional flows to be purely informational. If your flow was rejected, remove those elements and resubmit via Klaviyo's live chat.

Important: Any edit to an already-approved Klaviyo template requires re-submitting for transactional approval. The template reverts to non-transactional during the review window. Avoid editing approved templates right before go-live or during peak gifting periods.

Disable native Giftnote emails (if using Klaviyo)

If your Klaviyo flows are live and Giftnote's built-in email templates are still active, recipients will receive two emails for every gift — one from Klaviyo and one from Giftnote. Disable the native templates the moment your Klaviyo flows go live.

1. Open the Giftnote app in your Shopify admin

2. Go to Settings → Notifications

3. Toggle off each native email template

[Gray callout] If you can't find the Notifications section, look under the main Settings tab within the Giftnote app — not in Shopify's notification settings.

Note: SMS is sent from Giftnote's own platform, not through Klaviyo. Even with Klaviyo handling emails, your SMS templates remain active in Giftnote. To customize the SMS message, look for the items tagged with an orange SMS label in the same Notifications section.

Review your SMS template

Gift message SMS notifications are sent directly from Giftnote (not from Klaviyo or any other provider). The SMS character limit is 210 characters — this is a standard SMS constraint, not a Giftnote limitation.

1. In the Giftnote app, go to Settings → Notifications

2. Find the items with the orange "SMS" tag

3. Click into each SMS template and review the message text

4. Edit the content at the top of the template if you want to customize it

5. Save your changes

Set up your gift card product correctly (if selling gift cards)

Gift card product misconfiguration is the single most common cause of gift card delivery failures. If any of these settings are wrong, gift cards can fail silently — no error message, no notification to you or the customer.

Verify each of these settings on your Giftnote gift card product:

Important: Discount codes will not work on Giftnote gift cards. This is expected behavior, not a bug.

If you previously used Rise.ai, Govalo, or another gift card provider, make sure those products are unpublished and those apps are deactivated before going live with Giftnote gift cards. Running two gift card systems simultaneously causes duplicate issuance and conflicting widget displays.

Confirm your shipping carriers are mapped

Giftnote uses carrier tracking data to trigger delivery-triggered gift notifications. If your carriers aren't mapped correctly, gift messages won't send when parcels are delivered — and there's no error notification when this happens.

1. Open the Giftnote app in your Shopify admin

2. Go to Settings → Carriers (or the carrier/tracking section)

3. Review the list of mapped carriers — each carrier should match the name Shopify uses in your fulfillment records

4. Confirm each active carrier is toggled on

If your carrier isn't supported (some local same-day couriers and newer fulfillment networks aren't), use Shopify's built-in order status as the trigger instead. Mark orders as Delivered in your Shopify admin, and Giftnote will fire the gift notification based on that status change.

Giftnote automatically scans your last 500 orders to detect which carriers you use. If you've recently switched carriers or added a new one, it may not appear automatically. Add it manually.

Carriers with known tracking gaps: FedEx, Shopify Fulfillment Network, DoorDash, and some local same-day couriers may require the manual "Delivered" status workaround above.

Place a test order from your live storefront

This is the most important step. A test order placed from your storefront is the only way to verify the entire gift message flow end-to-end. Orders placed through the Shopify admin bypass the gift message widget entirely — they will not appear in your Giftnote dashboard.

1. Open your live store in a browser (your public storefront URL — not the Shopify admin)

2. Add a product to your cart

3. Click the gift message button and fill in the gift details — use your own email and phone number as the recipient

4. Complete checkout and pay — use a real payment method (a 100% discount code can bypass payment processing and cause the test to fail; use a low-value product or a Shopify gift card for $1, then refund afterward)

5. In your Shopify admin, go to Orders and find your test order

6. Mark the order as Delivered (click Mark as fulfilled, then update the tracking status to Delivered)

7. Check your email and phone — you should receive the gift notification within a few minutes

8. Open your Giftnote dashboard and confirm the order appears with the correct status

If the gift message doesn't appear in the Giftnote dashboard after checkout, double-check that you placed the order from the storefront (not the Shopify admin) and that the Giftnote app embed is enabled on your live theme.

For complex setups, run three test orders:

Notes

You're ready to go live when all three of these are true:

1. The gift message widget is visible on your production store (not just a staging theme)

2. A real gift order has been received and appears in your Giftnote dashboard

3. The correct notification was delivered to the recipient (via Klaviyo or native Giftnote emails)

Timing considerations:

• Klaviyo transactional approval takes up to 24 hours — submit the request at least one full business day before your planned go-live

• If you need to launch quickly (during a peak season or holiday rush), go live with Giftnote's native emails first and add Klaviyo afterward

• The most common go-live delay is waiting for Klaviyo email template design — don't let this block your launch

After go-live:

• Monitor your Giftnote dashboard during the first week for any orders stuck in an error state

• If you publish a new theme at any time, remember to re-enable the Giftnote app embed — theme publishing resets it

Related articles

• How to Add the Gift Message Widget to Your Store

• How to Connect Klaviyo to Giftnote