StoreFronts
What is a StoreFront?
A StoreFront is the customer-facing website and checkout that UltraCart hosts for you. It serves your pages, your product listings, and the checkout your shoppers pay through. Hosting, the content management system, and the checkout are all included with your UltraCart account, so you do not pay a separate web host to put a store online.
The rest of the UltraCart back office stays where it is. Items, orders, shipping, integrations, and account configuration are managed from the main menu and feed the StoreFront automatically. A StoreFront is the presentation layer on top of the account you already have.
Three ways merchants run a StoreFront
Pick the shape that matches how much of your site you want UltraCart to serve.
| Approach | What UltraCart serves | Good fit when |
|---|---|---|
| Full website | Home page, content pages, blog, product pages, cart, and checkout | You want one system for the whole site and no separate hosting bill |
| Checkout only | Cart and checkout, linked from buy buttons on your existing site | Your marketing site already lives on WordPress, Squarespace, or a custom build |
| Hybrid | The parts you choose, for example product and category pages, with the rest hosted elsewhere | Your catalog benefits from live UltraCart data but your content team works in another tool |
If you are running checkout only, see Using a StoreFront as a Checkout Only. Item and order data stays reachable from an external site through the REST API, so a checkout-only setup still gives you programmatic access to everything in the account.
What comes with your account
Every UltraCart account starts with two StoreFront hosts, named after your merchant ID, such as merchantid.ultracartstore.com and merchantid.ultracartdev.com. You can point either one at a custom domain. Adding more hosts beyond those two requires a purchased SSL certificate, which is covered in Change Store Web Address.
Two hosts is enough to run a live site and a development copy of it. Duplicate Entire StoreFront copies content and settings from one to the other, so you can rehearse a redesign before customers see it.
Terms used throughout these docs
- StoreFront: one hosted website and checkout, with its own domain, content, theme, and settings. An account can hold several.
- Theme: the design package that controls layout and styling. You install a theme, activate it, then customize it.
- Template: a single file inside a theme that renders one kind of page, such as an item page or the receipt. Templates are written in the StoreFront template language.
- Visual Builder: the drag-and-drop editor used to lay out pages, menus, and emails on themes that support it.
- Checkout: the screens a shopper moves through from cart to receipt.
Before you start
You need an active UltraCart account, and a user with StoreFront access if you are not the account owner. Permissions are granular, so the menu items and screens described below appear only when your user has rights to them. If a screen named here is missing, check your user permissions first.
Finding your StoreFronts
Hover over StoreFronts in the main UltraCart menu to see every StoreFront on the account, then select one to open its dashboard. Everything past that point applies to the StoreFront you selected. Content, appearance, and settings are per StoreFront and never shared, which is what makes it practical to run separate brands, a staging copy, or a checkout-only host side by side.
The StoreFront menu, section by section
The left-hand menu inside a StoreFront is grouped into nine sections. Here is what each screen does and where the detailed documentation lives.
General
Core identity and hosting settings for this StoreFront.
| Screen | What you do there | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| General | Set the store name, logo, and favicon, control public visibility, change the domain, and duplicate the StoreFront | Change Store Web Address, Upload a Store Logo, Customize the favicon, Duplicate Entire StoreFront |
Appearance
Everything that controls how the StoreFront looks.
| Screen | What you do there | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Themes | Install a theme from the gallery, preview it, activate it, and adjust the settings of the active theme | Choosing a theme, Installing a new theme from the gallery |
| Templates | View and edit the source of the templates in the active theme's directory, with a search box for finding one quickly. The same files are reachable through the File Manager; this screen is the faster way in | Editing a template, The StoreFront template language |
| CSS | Add rules to override.css, which is included on every page of the StoreFront | Overriding theme CSS properly |
Many templates reference containers and components. On themes built for the Visual Builder, those containers and components are generated by the Visual Builder editor, so edit them there rather than in the template source. Hand-editing generated markup is overwritten the next time the page is saved in the builder.
Content
The pages, posts, menus, and merchandising that make up the site.
| Screen | What you do there | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Pages | Manage every page on the StoreFront. Each page has a template applied to it, and the template is what drives what the page renders, which is how blog pages and item pages get their content | StoreFront Pages, Editing a template |
| Advertising | Manage advertising placements on the StoreFront | |
| Blog Posts | Write and manage blog content, which templates then render | Getting started creating a blog, Creating a blog post |
| Experiments | Run A/B tests and split tests against pages and checkout | Experiments and split tests |
| Menus | Manage the navigation menus that the Visual Builder or your templates pull in | StoreFront Menus |
| Search | Configure on-site search, including faceted search and the backup search | Adding search to your StoreFront, Faceted search |
| Search Engine Optimization | Manage titles, meta descriptions, canonical links, sitemaps, and robots.txt | Adding SEO to your web site, Sitemap locations |
| Social | Configure social profile links and sharing | StoreFront Social |
| Store Locator | Publish physical store locations on a map. Requires a Google API key | StoreFront Locations, Providing store locations, Using Google Maps in your store locator |
| Upsells | Build post-purchase and pre-checkout upsell funnels. This is included with StoreFronts at no extra charge, and it covers what merchants often buy a separate upsell platform for | StoreFront Upsells, Pre-checkout upsells |
| Languages | Add languages and manage translated content and static text | StoreFront Languages |
Communication
A full email and SMS marketing platform, included with StoreFronts. See StoreFront Communications for the setup order.
| Screen | What you do there | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Campaigns | Build and send one-off broadcasts, composed as a series of steps | Campaigns |
| Flows | Build automated sequences triggered by customer behaviour, such as abandoned cart or a welcome series | Flows |
| Calendar | Schedule campaigns and see approval and activation status on a month or week view | Scheduling campaigns with the Campaign Calendar |
| Library | Start from prebuilt and shared campaign, flow, and email templates | Flows public library |
| Lists and Segments | Build static lists, or dynamic segments that recalculate against customer criteria | Lists, Segments |
| Transactional Emails | Edit the order confirmations, shipment notices, and other system emails | Transactional emails |
| Customers | View the customer records tied to this StoreFront | CRM customer profiles |
| Dispatch Logs | Look up one customer by exact email address and see every message dispatched to them | |
| Settings | Set sending domains, default from names and addresses, the postcard return address, Twilio credentials, and email open tracking | Email sending domains, Email delivery options |
Transactional email templates share components such as headers, footers, and logos. Editing one of those shared components changes every transactional email that includes it, so check what else uses a component before you save.
The Customers screen lists customers attached to this StoreFront, but the CRM is the better place to work with them. It shows the full picture across orders, conversations, and marketing activity rather than this StoreFront alone.
Recordings
Session replay and heatmaps for this StoreFront, priced per session rather than per seat.
| Screen | What you do there | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Sessions | Watch replays of real visits, with the event timeline and console output alongside | StoreFront Recordings |
| Segments | Save a filter, such as checkout errors with no order placed, and track how many sessions match over time | StoreFront Recordings |
| Heatmaps | Review scroll, click, and movement maps for a page | HeatMaps |
| Settings | Turn recording on or off, see current and previous billing period usage, and copy the tracking script for an externally hosted site | StoreFront Recordings |
File Manager
Direct access to every file that makes up the StoreFront: theme directories, templates, images, snippets, and static assets. Use it to upload assets, edit code, compare versions, and restore deleted files. FTP reaches the same file system.
Privacy and Tracking
Consent settings and the conversion pixels, analytics, and attribution tools that fire on your pages. The screen is organised into tabs: Privacy, Google, Other, Custom, Trust Logos, Affiliate Networks, UTM Shortcodes, Smart Attribution, and Advanced.
| Tab | What you do there | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy | Configure the cookie notice, IP anonymization, and related consent defaults | Storefront Privacy and Tracking |
| Configure Google Ads conversions, GA4, Tag Manager, and Trusted Stores | Configuring Google Analytics | |
| Other | Configure the built-in integrations for platforms such as Meta, Klaviyo, TikTok, Pinterest, Bing, and Criteo | Configuring other tracking |
| Custom | Inject your own tracking HTML, separately for non-receipt pages and the receipt page | Implementing custom tracking |
| Trust Logos | Show or hide trust badges on the storefront and checkout | Suppressing or showing trust logos |
| Affiliate Networks | Detect traffic from an affiliate network and fire only that network's conversion pixel | Storefront Privacy and Tracking |
| UTM Shortcodes | Map a short code to a full set of UTM parameters, so campaign tagging survives ad blockers and URL stripping | Storefront Privacy and Tracking |
| Smart Attribution | Split conversion credit across touchpoints by role, globally or per platform | Smart Attribution |
| Advanced | Override the continue shopping, catalog, thank you, and payment pending URLs, set the default currency, and set the order hash secret key | Using a custom thank you screen |
Advanced
Technical settings that mostly matter during a migration or a security review.
| Tab | What you do there | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| URI Mapping | Redirect legacy URLs to their new paths, with wildcards, 301 redirects, and spreadsheet import and export | StoreFront Advanced Screen |
| 404 | See which missing URLs visitors and crawlers are hitting, with referrers and hit counts, and map them | StoreFront Advanced Screen |
| PCI | Review the payment script monitor, which inventories the scripts running on payment pages and moves each payment URL from monitor mode to enforcement | StoreFront Advanced Screen |
| reCAPTCHA | Add Google reCAPTCHA keys to protect the contact and affiliate signup forms | reCAPTCHA Configuration |
| Google Autocomplete | Add a Google Places API key to offer address autocomplete during checkout | Enabling and disabling Google Autocomplete |
Server Logs
Per-request logs for the StoreFront, showing the theme and template that rendered each request, the response time and size, the user agent, and any application errors. This is where you start when a page renders wrong or slowly and you need to know which template produced it.
Where to go next
- Building your first site: StoreFront Visual Builder
- Moving an existing site across: Important checklist before migrating and Migration best practices
- Writing templates: The StoreFront template language and Template context variables
- Every how-to in one list: StoreFront Topics
- Common questions: StoreFront FAQ