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When you install Layers from the Shopify App Store, your store goes through a guided onboarding process before you can access the full dashboard. Most of the setup is automatic. You do not need to upload data or write configuration ahead of time.

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What happens after installation

  1. App installs and syncs: Layers connects to your Shopify store and begins syncing your product catalog.
  2. Search-quality bootstrap: In parallel, Layers seeds the search stack with your historical search data and drafts a brand description and autocomplete prompt.
  3. Baseline evaluation: Once the catalog is indexed and seeded search data is ready, Layers runs a baseline evaluation against your top historical queries to give you a starting score.
  4. Onboarding complete: Once the bootstrap finishes, you get full access to the dashboard and all features.

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Who becomes the store owner

When you install Layers for the first time, Layers assigns ownership in this order:
  1. You are signed in to Layers. If you install while signed in to an existing Layers account, that account becomes the store owner. Layers does not look up any store emails.
  2. Shopify confirms the account owner. If Shopify can verify your store’s account owner, that person becomes the store owner and can sign in right away.
  3. Store contact email. If Shopify cannot confirm the account owner, Layers creates a new account from your store’s contact email. Completing the Shopify install confirms your identity, so the account is verified right away. You can access the dashboard without a verification email.
For security, Layers never uses the store contact email to sign in to an existing Layers account. If the contact email already belongs to a Layers user, install into that account by signing in to Layers first, then installing the app. Layers may also add your store’s contact email as a Member so your team can sign in. Layers creates that member account as verified. Layers skips it if the email already belongs to a Layers user. Layers uses your store contact email exactly as it appears in Shopify, including shared addresses such as info@ or support@. Reinstalling the app does not change ownership. If your store already has a Layers owner, that owner keeps ownership and dashboard access. Layers adds the Shopify account owner as an Admin member instead. If they already have a membership, Layers keeps their existing roles unchanged. The Owner can transfer ownership to another member at any time. You can also invite or remove teammates from Settings → Users & Invites.

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Pending onboarding

After installing from the Shopify App Store, Layers redirects you to a Pending Onboarding screen. This screen confirms that your store installed successfully and that the search-quality bootstrap is in progress. During this time:
  • Layers is syncing your product catalog from Shopify.
  • Layers is reading your historical search data and seeding query clusters, your brand description, and the autocomplete curation prompt.
  • You do not need to take any action.

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What Layers seeds automatically

You don’t need to export search data, write a brand description, or draft an autocomplete prompt before going live. On install, Layers will:
  • Seed historical searches. Layers pulls the last 30 days of your storefront search terms from Shopify and uses them to build the initial query clusters that power autocomplete and search analytics.
  • Draft a brand description. If your store description in Layers is empty, Layers reads your storefront’s SEO and meta description and summarizes them. AI-driven features like autocomplete curation and search instructions use this description.
  • Draft an autocomplete prompt. If your autocomplete curation prompt is empty, Layers generates a starter prompt based on your seeded searches and brand description, then runs the first curation pass.
  • Run a baseline evaluation. Layers fires one baseline evaluation against your top 250 seeded queries so you can compare future changes against a starting score.
All of these run automatically on a brand new install. There is no flag to enable. Anything Layers generates (brand description, autocomplete prompt) is a starting point you can edit later. Layers will never overwrite text you have already saved.

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Suggested sort orders

Once onboarding finishes, Layers reads your catalog’s shape and drafts one sort order it thinks fits your store best. Signals include product count, price spread, how often you publish new products, and how concentrated sales are in a top-selling few. The draft runs after the sort-window backtest, so it can pick a trending recipe when short-horizon windows predict sales well and stick to steadier windows when they don’t. The draft is created unpublished, tagged with a Suggested · Beta badge on the Sort Orders list, and opened as a publish request for you to review. Nothing on the storefront changes until you approve the publish request. You can edit the draft first, publish it as-is, or delete it if it isn’t a fit. Layers picks from a fixed menu of options so the draft is always predictable:
  • Best selling (14 days) or Best selling (30 days) — for catalogs with steady turnover.
  • Best selling (trend-weighted) or Trending — for catalogs where the backtest shows a short-horizon window predicts sales best. See the Trending sort recipe.
  • Newest — for catalogs that publish frequently.
  • Price: high to low or Price: low to high — for premium or deal-driven catalogs with a wide price spread.
If your store doesn’t have enough recent purchase history yet, Layers retries the draft two weeks later so a new store gets a suggestion once real data is in.

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Reviewing what was generated

After onboarding completes, you can review and edit anything Layers seeded:
  • Brand description — Settings → General in the Layers dashboard.
  • Autocomplete curation prompt — Settings → Autocomplete. See Configure autocomplete curation.
  • Baseline evaluation results — Lab → Evaluation runs.
  • Suggested sort order — Sort Orders. Rows Layers drafted for you carry a Suggested · Beta badge; open the pending publish request to review or edit before it goes live.

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Next steps

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Troubleshooting

If your store has been in the pending onboarding state for longer than expected, or if the brand description or autocomplete prompt did not generate, contact the support team for an update on your store’s status.