Help with 'helpful homepage' and 'onboarding' requirements

Built for Shopify
1

I’ve submitted my app for BFS review and these two keep getting rejected.

Would like some feedback as to what constitutes as acceptable as the app is quite simple and i don’t believe they are really necessary, it just adds to bloat, or if built out like the examples just adds complexity to an already simple situation.

Background:

The app is a functions app which primarily assists users in reordering rates. Once installed, this comes activated by default, there really is no additional steps required to complete the onboarding, the app installs mimicking default shopify behaviour, so already active, already working.

The app home page is basically a settings back, the very first thing you see is a dropdown with the setting to change the ordering, I’m not sure adding another section labeled as ‘onboarding’ and directing customers to this section is necessary at all?

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We did introduce a tour feature, this pops up on first install however popups aren’t allowed, would a 1 step onboarding banner that shows at the top asking them to take the tour be sufficient to satisfy this requirement?

Next is the ‘helpful home page’ requirement. We did add this section to the homepage:

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yet still fails the requirement, there really isn’t any other metric that we can display here, functions run on Shopify servers, we don’t collect the usage metrics, nor from my understanding can we extract function usage metrics out of the API either. what is expected here?

A new one that’s shown up is ability for merchants to downgrade plans (requirement #1.2.3). We use managed pricing, this can be done without developer intervention via the shopify app settings page as per managed pricing functionality, so i believe this is already satisfactory, am i missing something here?

There isn’t really anyway to communicate with the reviewer when submitting for review either.

Thanks

Min

3

Hey again @Min_Liu - hope things are going well :waving_hand: - happy to look into this internally for you to see if we can get a concrete answer. Could you share the name of the app with me here and I’ll dig into this a bit on our side? Thanks :slight_smile:

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Hi @Alan_G it’s Shipping rate power toy.

Thanks

Min

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Thanks @Min_Liu - just wanted to follow up here to let you know I’m still looking into this, but I’m prioritizing it for the next few days and should get back to you soon.

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Hey @Min_Liu - thanks for your patience while I looked into this! Got some updates for you

On onboarding, the issue isn’t actually the onboarding flow itself, it’s specifically the popover auto-opening without user interaction. That’s what’s causing the rejection. The fix would be either make the onboarding inline on the page, or trigger it with a clear “Start onboarding” button or card. Click to open is totally fine, it just can’t auto-open. I realize it’s a Functions only app, but we still do require the app to follow the design program requirements. Let me know if I can clarify anything on this point specifically.

For Helpful Homepages, we are just looking for some basic analytics or totals that would be useful. It doesn’t need to be anything complex - something as simple as a counter showing how many times the app or its features have been used would do the trick. Even though you don’t collect usage metrics, you’d just need to track and surface something on your end (even something lightweight like total activations or configuration changes, number of active rates, hidden rates, and rule‑based rates.).

For plan downgrades, you’re on the right track here! Managed pricing handles this natively, so that should satisfy the requirement. You would need to add an in‑app path to managed pricing (so merchants can get there from the UI).

Hope that helps clarify things, let me know if you have any other questions!

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Hi @Alan_G

Thanks for the feedback.

So with the ‘helpful homepages’, i would argue that a metric to display how many times your rules are saved, or how many rules there are is kind of pointless? the app is fairly simple, the settings fit on the screen without scrolling and the user can just look at the rules section to see how many there are. I would argue surfacing pointless metrics just to satisfy this requirement is more of a detraction than ‘helpful’. Are there any further concessions that can be made for this rule based on the actual type of app as i don’t think it is relevant for all types of apps.

Thanks
Min

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Hey @Min_Liu - thanks for the follow-up, I definitely understand where you’re coming from here.

I checked in with the team on this and the helpful homepage requirement does still apply, even for simpler functions-based apps. I definitely understand that it does feel like adding unnecessary complexity though, but the requirement is part of the design program standards and applies across the board regardless of app type at the moment.

That said, it doesn’t need to be anything complex. For a shipping rate app like yours, something lightweight would work - for example, a summary showing the number of active rates, hidden rates, and rule-based rates. It doesn’t need to be deep analytics, just something that gives the merchant a quick glance at how the app is being used when they land on the
homepage.

I’d also recommend making sure there’s a clear in-app path to managed pricing so merchants can navigate to plan management from within the app UI.

I did just want to make sure that I can help you get set up to pass on the next review without any issues. I’m also going to log your feedback officially here on my side so that we can look into improving the system in the future. Let me know if I can clarify anything on our end here and I hope this helps.

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Cheers thanks you, will work on these.

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No worries @Min_Liu - please let me know if I can help out further here :slight_smile:

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Hi @Alan_G I’ve made all the changes, would you mind giving it another look over and see if the latest will meet the outstanding requirements please?

Thanks

Min

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Hey @Min_Liu, thanks for the update and for putting the work in on these.

Just to set expectations here, I can’t guarantee what the app review team will come back with on the next round since they’re the ones doing the formal review, but I’m happy to take a quick look on my end if you’re able to share a Loom walking through the updated app. That way I can at least flag anything obvious that might still trip up the review before you
resubmit.

If you can record something similar to the screencast you shared in your original submission, covering the homepage, the onboarding flow, any forms with save actions, and the path to managed pricing from within the app, that would be super helpful. Happy to move this to DMs if you’d prefer to share it that way too, just let me know.

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Hi @Alan_G

Yes can you DM me please and i’ll send through a Loom.

Thanks

Min

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Hi @Min_Liu - DMing you now!

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Having this exact same problem with another app, this requirement magically appeared after the 3rd review, together with “helpful onboarding” when the app is pretty simple.

I think the team assigned to review just try to tick the checkboxes without much thinking.

The worst part is that there’s no way to show metrics without asking aggressive permissions such as read reports, which incentivizes apps to have access to customer data when it’s not needed.