Shopify Theme Installation

User Events

Retail Cloud Connect uses two Shopify components to capture storefront user events correctly: an App Embed and an App Pixel. Enable both to collect model training data, segment visitors into Shopify markets, and capture conversions.

App Installation Overview Table on the Dashboard and Theme Installation pages.

When Enable App Embed is clicked, Shopify opens the Theme Editor for the current theme
Confirm that the User Events App Embed is activated, then click Save to exit the Theme Editor

Shopify uses App Pixels to create strict, isolated environments on the online store. Retail Cloud Connect uses Shopify-controlled APIs to support performance, security, and privacy for merchants and shoppers.
All pixels, including the Retail Cloud Connect App Pixel, are visible in the Customer events page of Shopify settings.

Training on Existing Traffic

The User Events App Block also supports optional training on existing Shopify storefront traffic before the store fully switches to Nimstrata search and browse results.

Current options include:

Track Shopify Search Results
Track Shopify Collection Pages

This can be helpful when merchants want to:

Prepare for an A/B test
Let AI Commerce Search learn from existing shopper behavior
Gather training data before launching a new search experience

Cookies

Enabling the Retail Cloud Connect App Embed and App Pixel places cookies on the Shopify storefront:

rcc-identity - The prefix of the myshopify.com domain, used to identify the Shopify store
rcc-market-id - The ID of the market shoppers are shopping from, used to provide location-specific search results
rcc-visitor-id - An anonymized UUID for each Shopify store visitor, used to provide personalized search results
rcc-track-search - Whether Shopify-native search traffic should be captured for model training before launch
rcc-track-collection - Whether Shopify-native collection traffic should be captured for model training before launch

These cookies support personalized product discovery on the first-party Shopify storefront, so merchants typically classify them as functional cookies. Without rcc-visitor-id, personalized results do not work.

Shopify merchants are responsible for accurately classifying cookies within their designated cookie management tools.

AI Commerce Search personalization is limited to the Shopify storefront. It is not used for external ad targeting. For more details, review the Google Cloud terms also referenced in Nimstrata's Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions:

AI Commerce Search for Industry terms for data use

https://cloud.google.com/retail/data-use-terms

App Blocks

Search and collection App Blocks use the connected app project and the default_search serving configuration. Recommendations AI blocks have their own Serving Configuration ID setting because each recommendation block can use a different model or placement.

Published Theme Status

The Retail Cloud Connect Shopify App dashboard checks installation status on the selected theme. If merchants configure an unpublished theme first, the dashboard may still show a component as incomplete until the selected or published theme matches those changes.

Search Results and Collection Pages

Retail Cloud Connect ships dedicated App Blocks for the Shopify Search and Collection templates.

Both blocks support:

Style
Show Search Bar
Content Position
Results per page
Results per row
CSS Wrapper Class
Pagination Style

The Search Results App Block installs on Shopify's default search template.

The Product Grid App Block installs on Shopify's default collection template and additionally supports Show Collection Description.

The Recommendations AI App Block can be installed on more than just product pages. The dashboard installation status focuses on the product-page recommendations block, but the current extension supports:

Product pages
Collection pages
Cart pages
Home page
Blog posts
Articles
Standard pages

The default serving configuration is recently_viewed_default.

Common settings include:

Serving Configuration ID
Header Text
Sub-Header Text
Show Sub-Header Text
Number of Recommendations
Results per row
Style

Autocomplete is enabled separately from the main search results App Block and is designed to enhance the theme's primary search box.

The Shopify extension includes an Enable Shopify Autocomplete setting that can use existing Shopify search traffic to help train the model.

Autocomplete attaches to input[name="q"] search fields. Add data-rcc-autocomplete="off" to a specific search input when that input should keep the theme's native autocomplete behavior.

Autocomplete can take a few days to start learning from existing search traffic and typically one to two weeks to mature on active stores.

The Document Search App Block can be added to Shopify page templates when document search is enabled for the store.

The block requires an Engine ID from the connected document search setup and renders ten document results per request. Document Search uses the storefront language and country from Shopify localization.

For document search prompts and Google Cloud settings, see Google Cloud.

Theme Compatibility

Retail Cloud Connect works best with Shopify Online Store 2.0 themes that support App Blocks.

If the current theme does not support App Blocks, contact Nimstrata for assistance with deploying Retail Cloud Connect on that theme.

Online Store 1.0 Theme Assets

Nimstrata hosts static assets on Cloudflare's CDN for Shopify merchants using Online Store 1.0 or other manual theme installs where Shopify App Blocks are not available.

Asset	URL
Search & Collections JS	https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/search-react.js
Search & Collections CSS	https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/search-react.css
Autocomplete JS	https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/autocomplete.js
Autocomplete CSS	https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/autocomplete.css
Recommendations JS	https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/recommendation-react.js
Recommendations CSS	https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/recommendation-react.css
Document Search JS	https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/document.js
Document Search CSS	https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/document.css

Additional Guidance

For best performance, only include assets when they are required to render App Blocks, for example:

{% # Your theme.liquid file %}

{%- if request.page_type == 'search' or request.page_type == 'collection' %}
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/search-react.css">
    <script defer src="https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/search-react.js"></script>
{%- endif %}

{%- if request.page_type == 'product'
  or request.page_type == 'collection'
  or request.page_type == 'cart'
  or request.page_type == 'index'
  or request.page_type == 'page'
  or request.page_type == 'blog'
  or request.page_type == 'article'
%}
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/recommendation-react.css">
    <script defer src="https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/recommendation-react.js"></script>
{%- endif %}

{%- if request.page_type == 'page' %}
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/document.css">
    <script defer src="https://assets.retailconnect.app/shopify/latest/document.js"></script>
{%- endif %}

Manual installs may also need to define window.Nimstrata before the script loads. Online Store 2.0 App Blocks generate these values automatically. See Window Nimstrata Properties before adding custom storefront JavaScript.

Product Card Builder and Styles

Use the following pages to customize how App Blocks look and behave:

Product Card Builder to design the storefront product card
Styling App Blocks to apply custom CSS
Custom Components for advanced product card behavior
Custom No Results Page for branded search and collection empty states