Header, menus and footer
Chapter 3 of the Decant user guide.
The announcement bar and header sit in the Header group at the top of the editor's section list; the footer is in the Footer group at the bottom. They show on every page.
Announcement bar
The strip across the top of every page, on the deep glass colour. It holds up to four blocks:
- Announcement: Text ("Try before the full bottle · Free samples with every order") and Link. With two or more announcements they take turns every 5 seconds, with a small pause button. Put your most important message first.
- Countdown (one per bar): a live countdown. Label ("Ends in"), End date (format 2026-11-27), End time (24-hour, default 23:59), Time zone (Store time zone, or a UTC offset), Link, and After the deadline: Hide the countdown (default) or Show a message (Message after the deadline, "This offer has closed").
Use a real deadline that is the same for every shopper. Shopify doesn't allow fake countdowns, so don't extend or restart a deadline to create urgency.
Header
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Menu | Main menu | The header's menu |
| Menu style | Mega menu | Mega menu shows a top-level link's child links as columns when they have links of their own. Other top-level links keep a dropdown. Dropdown uses dropdowns throughout. |
| Open menus on hover | On | For shoppers using a mouse. Menus always open on click, tap and keyboard. |
| Show search | On | A search button, with suggestions as shoppers type. Search placeholder: "Search scents, notes and sets". |
| Sticky header | Always | None, Always (keeps the header at the top of the screen) or On scroll up (hides it while shoppers scroll down and shows it again when they scroll up) |
From 990px wide the header is one row: the wordmark (or logo), your menu, then search, account and the bag with its count, split by thin vertical rules. A long shop name takes two lines before anything else gives way. If the menu still doesn't fit, links fold from the end into a More item.
Under 990px the header is the menu button, the wordmark in the middle, then search and the bag. The menu and the account link move into the menu drawer.
Menu promo blocks (up to six) add a small promo to the end of a mega menu panel, and a thumbnail row in the menu drawer: an Image inside a hanging strip, a Heading ("Build a discovery set"), a Link and its Link label ("Three, five or eight samples"). Set Menu item to the exact title of the top-level link it belongs to, such as By family. Each link shows up to two promos, in block order, and promos only appear on links that open a mega panel. A promo with no heading doesn't show. In the theme editor, a promo that can't find its link or is over the limit shows a note.
The account panel's menu is set in Theme settings › Customer accounts.
Building your menus
Make menus in admin under Content › Menus. A mega panel needs three levels: a top-level link (By family), child links that head each column (Fresh, Floral), and links under those. With only two levels a link keeps a dropdown. The presets' footers use your Main menu for the Shop column and your Footer menu for the Help column.
Good links for a perfume shop are your family collections, your discovery set product, a page with the finder on it and a page.how-it-works page. Shopify's filter links work too: you can link to a collection with a filter already applied by copying its address.
Footer
The footer sits on the deep glass colour.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Show brand column | On | Your shop name and About text ("Small measures of good perfume, drawn by hand in Fitzroy, Melbourne.") |
| Text after the copyright | Shown after the copyright line, such as an address or a short note | |
| Show country and language selectors | On | Set up markets and languages in Shopify admin (chapter 14) |
| Show policy links | On | Links to the policies in Settings › Policies |
| Show payment icons | On | The icons for your payment methods |
| Show "Powered by Shopify" | Off |
Add these blocks to fill the columns:
- Menu column: Heading ("Shop") and Menu.
- Text column: Heading ("Visit") and Text.
- Newsletter: Heading ("Subscribe"), Text, and Show Follow on Shop (on), which lets customers follow your store in the Shop app.
- Social media: Heading ("Follow"). Add the links in Theme settings › Social media.