Documentation
Set up Census, end to end.
Everything you need to go from install to automated workflows: the post-purchase, on-site and POS surfaces, questions and rules, styling, customer tagging, Shopify Flow, Slack alerts, integrations and AI analysis. Most stores are live in a few minutes.
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Overview
Census asks the right question at the right moment, then turns every answer into attribution you can trust and zero-party data you can act on.
Census is a native Shopify app built by Vervaunt Labs. It runs surveys at the moments Shopify already owns, reads the answers with AI, and writes the results back into Shopify so the rest of your stack can use them. The whole product follows one loop:
- Ask on the thank-you page, on-site, at the till, or as a quick poll anywhere on your storefront, with a single question tuned to each shopper.
- Understand automatically: Census scores satisfaction, splits sentiment and labels every response.
- Act everywhere: answers become Shopify customer tags and properties, trigger Shopify Flow, alert Slack and export to your CRM, CDP or BI tool.
You can run the core survey on the free plan with unlimited responses. Custom questions, dynamic rules, styling and AI analysis are on Premium, and the on-site and in-store surfaces are on Platinum. Each plan is called out next to the relevant step below.
Steps assume you have a Shopify store with admin access. Where a feature needs a paid plan, you will see a Premium or Platinum pill. Everything else works on Free.
Install Census
Census installs from the Shopify App Store as a standard app. There is no theme code to edit and no developer required.
Open the App Store listing
Go to Census on the Shopify App Store and select Install. Approve the standard permissions so Census can read orders and write customer tags.
Census loads three starter questions
Your survey starts with three proven questions already active: an experience rating (1 to 10), a free-text "one thing we could have done better", and "Where did you first hear about us?". You can reorder, edit or switch these off at any time.
Turn on the post-purchase surface
Add the Census block to your thank-you page so shoppers start seeing the survey. This takes one click in the checkout editor and is covered in Post-purchase below.
Census is speed-tested by Shopify with officially no performance impact on your store, and responses are unlimited on every plan including Free.
The app at a glance
The Census admin has four areas. You will spend most of your time in the first two.
- Post Purchase Surveys holds the Dashboard (satisfaction score, sentiment, submission rate, views and the responses table) and Questions & Responses, where you build and order your survey.
- Data Flows is where answers leave Census: Shopify customer tagging and, on paid plans, the connections that feed your other tools.
- Settings covers Checkout Extensibility, widget styling, translations for Markets and the Shopify Flow toggle.
- Plans shows what is active and lets you start a Premium or Platinum trial.
Quickstart: your first survey
The fastest path from install to live data.
Add the thank-you page block
Enable the post-purchase surface so the survey renders after checkout. See Post-purchase.
Choose your questions
Keep the three starters or add more from the question bank. Aim for one or two questions so completion stays high.
Place a test order
Complete a real or test checkout and answer the survey. The response appears in the dashboard within moments, tagged with the order and market.
Send answers to work
Turn on customer tagging and, if you want alerts, wire up Shopify Flow and Slack.
Where Census asks
Post-purchase (thank-you page)
The thank-you page, also called the order status page, is the highest-intent moment you own. The shopper has just converted, so response rates are strong and the answer is attached to a real order. Census uses Shopify Checkout Extensibility to place a native app block here, with no theme edits.
Open the checkout editor
In Shopify admin go to Settings, then Checkout, then Customize. Open the Thank you page from the page selector at the top of the editor.
Add the Census app block
Select Add app block and choose census post-purchase survey. Position it where you want the survey to appear, usually below the order summary.
Save and publish
Save the editor. The survey is now live on the thank-you page for new orders. You can repeat this on the Order status page so returning shoppers who reopen their order also see it.
Shopify admin, Settings, Checkout, Customize, Thank you page. The block is named census post-purchase survey.
The real Census survey on the Timex order status page, submitted in a single tap.
On-site & exit-intent Platinum
On-site surveys reach live browsers and prospects who have not bought yet, including shoppers about to leave. This is where you learn why carts get abandoned, in the shopper's own words, before the sale is lost.
A typical exit-intent survey asks a single reason, then a short free-text follow-up. For example, "What was the main reason you are leaving without purchasing today?" with options such as Pricing, Website usability, Lack of information, Delivery or shipping, Availability or stock, Product, and Other, followed by an optional "anything else?" field. Free text is where the value is: a verbatim like "found the items cheaper on ASOS" tells you exactly where you are losing.
Enable on-site surveys
On the Platinum plan, turn on on-site surveys in Census. The same question engine and dashboard apply, so anything in your survey can run on-site.
Target the right pages
Use page and URL rules to decide where the survey shows, for example product pages, the cart, or a specific collection. See Page & URL targeting.
Pick the trigger
Show the survey on exit-intent or after a browsing threshold so it lands at a natural moment rather than interrupting the shop.
In-store (Shopify POS) Platinum
Census captures in-store and offline orders through Shopify POS, so the feedback you collect online extends to the till. This closes the gap for brands with physical retail, giving one view of the customer across every channel.
Add Census in Shopify POS
With Platinum active, enable POS surveys in Census. The app surfaces the survey against in-store orders so staff or shoppers can respond at checkout.
Ask a short question
Keep it to a single question at the till, such as an experience rating or "where did you first hear about us?", so it fits the pace of an in-person sale.
POS responses flow into the same dashboard and data flows as online responses, and carry the market and channel so you can compare in-store against online.
Quick polls Platinum
Polls are a fast way to gather immediate feedback, deployed anywhere on your storefront and kept separate from your post-purchase and on-site surveys. Use them for restock demand, style or product votes, or a quick pulse on a launch, then read the results in their own dashboard.
Create a poll
In the Polls area, build a short poll using the same formats as surveys: rating, text, single select or multi select.
Choose where it appears
Deploy the poll anywhere on your site, everywhere or limited to specific pages, in your chosen style, and set it live in one click.
Read the results
Polls get their own dashboard and responses table, with the same market, device and export options as your other surveys.
Restock and waitlist demand, new-style votes, pricing or bundle preferences, and quick reactions to a campaign or drop.
Questions
The question bank
You never start from a blank page. Census ships with 42 proven questions across six categories, shaped by Vervaunt on real client stores. Open the Question Bank from Questions & Responses and select Add to Survey on any question.
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Core questions | Experience rating, "one thing we could have done better", and "where did you first hear about us?". Active by default. |
| Attribution & CRM | Recommend and repurchase likelihood, who the shopper was buying for, channels and ad recall, and age or age range. |
| Customer experience | Ease of purchase and navigation, sizing and product information, payment and delivery preferences, and checkout friction. |
| Brand sentiment | Expectations met, alignment with brand image and values, and what sets you apart. |
| NPS & advocacy | Likelihood to share your brand by social or word of mouth. |
| Bug finding | Surface issues after a launch or replatform and feed a prioritised backlog. |
Ask one or two questions at a time. A short survey keeps submission rates high, and rules let you rotate the single most useful question per shopper rather than asking everything at once.
Question types
Every question uses one of four formats, so you can match the answer to how you plan to use it.
- Rating: a 1 to 10 scale for NPS and CSAT style questions. Feeds the satisfaction score and the sentiment split.
- Text: an open free-text field. This is where verbatims and the richest insight come from, and what the AI analysis summarises.
- Single select: one choice from a fixed list, ideal for attribution and clean segmentation.
- Multi select: several choices from a list, for example which social networks a shopper uses.
Custom questions Premium
On Premium you can write your own questions in any of the four formats, in addition to the bank. Select Create Question in Questions & Responses, choose the type, write the prompt, and add options for select questions.
Custom questions can also be rule-based, so a question you write only appears for the shoppers it is meant for. See Rule-based questions.
Bank questions keep their built-in settings, including how their answer is stored as a tag, so results stay consistent across stores. Your own custom questions give you full control over wording, options and tagging.
Order & languages
In Questions & Responses, drag the handle on any row to reorder your survey, and use the status toggle to switch a question on or off without deleting it. The order you set is the order shoppers see.
Census supports English, French, Spanish, German and Polish out of the box, selectable per question. For market-specific wording and translated custom questions, use the Translate & Adapt workflow in Localisation.
Targeting
Rule-based questions Premium
Rules are the heart of Census. You would never ask a loyal customer where they first heard of you, or ask a gift buyer about their own sizing. Rules make sure every shopper gets the single question worth asking them.
Each question can carry conditions. When a shopper qualifies, that question is the one they see. For example: first-time customers get the attribution question, returning customers get a repurchase or NPS question, and shoppers who used a discount get a question about what drove the purchase.
Open a question's rules
Edit a question and add one or more conditions from the reference below.
Combine conditions
Stack conditions to be specific, for example first-time customer and ships abroad, to ask about duties only where it matters.
Order your rules
Question order decides which rule wins when a shopper matches more than one, so put your most specific questions first.
Conditions reference
Rules can target on the variables Shopify already knows at the moment of the survey.
| Condition | Examples |
|---|---|
| Customer history | First-time versus returning, and high-value or loyal customers. |
| Device | Mobile or desktop, so you can adapt to how the shopper bought. |
| Shipping address | Country or region, for example ships abroad to ask about duties and delivery. |
| Cart items | Specific products or collections in the order. |
| Product type | Category such as apparel or beauty, to ask sizing or shade questions. |
| Order context | Gift wrap, discount used, or order value, to reflect how the purchase was made. |
These can be combined for sophisticated logic, which is what separates Census from generic survey tools.
Page & URL targeting Platinum
For on-site surveys, page and URL rules decide where a survey appears. Target broad areas like all product pages, or narrow to a single collection, campaign landing page or the cart. Combine URL rules with the conditions above so, for example, an exit-intent survey only shows to shoppers on product pages who have not purchased.
Customisation
Styling the widget Premium
Census is drawn to match your store, not to look like a third-party popup. In Settings, open Widget Customization to control the survey per element.
- Title: font and colour for the question heading.
- Body: font and colour for supporting text and options.
- Button: font and background colour for the submit action.
Set these to your brand fonts and palette so the survey reads as part of the page.
Branding & custom CSS Premium
On Premium you can remove the Vervaunt Labs logo from the widget so it is unmistakably your brand. For anything the standard controls do not cover, a custom CSS escape hatch lets you style the survey precisely, down to spacing, borders and states.
Settings, Widget Customization. Toggle Remove Vervaunt Labs logo, set fonts and colours, and add custom CSS at the foot of the form.
Localisation
Census works with Shopify Markets through the Translate & Adapt app, so your survey speaks the right language in every market.
Allow translations
In Settings, enable "Allow translations via Translate & Adapt". Your active Census questions then appear inside Translate & Adapt.
Override per market
Edit the base translation for any question per market, and translate your custom questions in the same place.
Keep the structure valid
When editing translated content, keep the JSON structure intact so the survey renders correctly.
Data & automation
Where your data lives
Every response lands in the Census dashboard in near real time. From Post Purchase Surveys, Dashboard you get:
- Satisfaction score on a 0 to 10 scale with the change versus the previous period.
- Sentiment split across positive, neutral and negative, with counts and percentages.
- Submission rate, views and responses over your chosen date range.
- Responses table with order id, customer id, market, channel, the answer and submitted time, filterable by question.
You can view every response without limits on any plan, and export the full dataset on Premium and above. Answers also leave the dashboard automatically through the data flows below.
Tag customers Premium
Shopify customer tagging turns an answer into a tag on the customer record, so you can segment in Shopify, target with Flow and sync to email without any extra tooling. Set it up in Data Flows.
Open Shopify Customer Tagging
In Data Flows, choose the question whose answer you want to store.
Store the answer as a tag
Turn on "Store answer as tag?" and set the tag template. The template can include the answer, for example a rating question can write census-nps-[ANSWER].
The tag lands on the customer
When a shopper answers, Census adds the tag to their Shopify customer record. A rating of 9 becomes census-nps-9; an attribution answer becomes a channel tag you can segment on.
Bank questions come with fixed tag settings so results stay consistent, shown as "this question comes from our question bank, so the tag settings cannot be altered". Your own custom questions let you define the template.
Customer properties
Beyond tags, Census can attach answers as order and customer properties, giving your back-office, CRM, CDP or BI tools structured fields to read rather than parsing tags. Use properties when you need the raw value for reporting or a downstream sync, and tags when you want fast segmentation inside Shopify.
Shopify Flow
Shopify Flow lets you build automations off Census responses in real time: alert a channel, tag a customer, hold and re-engage, or route to another app. First enable the connection, then build a workflow.
Enable Flow in Census
In Census Settings, turn on the Shopify Flow toggle so survey responses are sent to Flow in real time.
Start from a trigger
In Shopify Flow, create a workflow with a Census trigger such as Census Post Purchase Survey Response or Census Onsite Survey Response.
Add conditions
Branch on the answer, for example only continue when the rating is 6 or below, or when the response is negative.
Choose an action
Send a Slack message, add a customer or order tag, or hand off to another connected app. Turn the workflow on to go live.
Census ships Flow templates you can enable in a couple of clicks: New Post Purchase Survey Submission, New Negative Post Purchase Survey Submission and New Onsite Survey Submission, each set up to notify Slack.
Slack alerts
Slack alerts run through Shopify Flow, so the whole team hears about responses without logging into Census. The most common setup pings a channel the moment a negative response comes in.
Use a Slack template
Enable a Census Flow template such as New Negative Post Purchase Survey Submission. The trigger is the Census response and the action is Send Slack message.
Connect Slack
Authorise the Slack app in Flow if you have not already, and pick the channel, for example a customer experience channel.
Turn it on
Enable the workflow. New responses now post to Slack in real time, so a "checkout kept rejecting my card, rated 3 out of 10" lands with the team while it still matters.
CRM, CDP & export Premium
Census is built to push clean data outward. Because answers become Shopify tags and properties, anything that reads your Shopify customer record can use them, and Flow can route responses to connected apps.
- Email and CRM: segment in Klaviyo, Ometria and similar tools on the tags and properties Census writes.
- Helpdesk: surface response context in Gorgias so support sees the customer's feedback.
- Returns and exchange: works alongside Swap for post-purchase journeys.
- BI and warehouse: export the full response dataset to CSV for your own analysis.
For a specific CRM, CDP or BI connection, email labs@vervaunt.com and the team will help wire it to your stack.
Insight
AI analysis Premium
Census reads every answer so you do not have to. On Premium, AI scores and labels responses and writes you a monthly brief, turning thousands of comments into the few things worth acting on.
- Sentiment: each response is classified positive, neutral or negative, feeding the dashboard split.
- Topic labels: comments are sorted by theme so patterns surface without manual reading.
- AI Insights brief: three panels each month, What's gone well, Could be better and Where to improve, summarising the top positives and top improvements.
The brief updates on the first of each month and needs roughly 30 days of text feedback and a minimum number of useful responses to be accurate. For example, a month of verbatims might summarise to praise for a simple, fast checkout and payment choice, and improvements such as adding estimated delivery on pre-orders or reviewing duties at checkout.
Response labels Premium
Census auto-sorts free-text responses into topic labels with running counts, so you can see at a glance what customers are actually talking about. Typical labels include product sizing, delivery, discounts, product information, customer service and bugs and issues. Labels are built from the answers, so they stay current as new responses arrive, and the breakdown sits alongside your dashboard for the chosen date range.
Playbooks
Playbook: gift-buyer reminder
A gift buyer is a signal with a shelf life. Ask once, tag the moment they tell you, and bring them back a year later at exactly the right time.
Ask on the thank-you page
Add "who are you buying for today?" as a single-select question. Shoppers tap one option.
Tag the customer
Store the answer as a tag with the order date, for example gift-buyer and gifted:2026-12-18. See Tag customers.
Let Shopify Flow wait
Build a Flow that holds the customer until the gifting window opens again, roughly eleven months on.
Your CRM brings them back
Klaviyo or Ometria sends a timely, personal nudge when they are likely shopping for gifts again.
Playbook: LLM attribution
AI search is now a real discovery channel, and it is invisible to your analytics because LLM referrals rarely pass referrer data. A post-purchase survey is the reliable way to measure it.
Add the option
In your "where did you first hear about us?" question, add an option for ChatGPT or AI search.
Let Census count it
Every attribution answer is recorded, so ChatGPT shows up next to your other channels in the dashboard.
Track the trend
Watch the share month on month. Across brands running this question, references to LLMs have grown sharply, so it is worth tracking as a channel in its own right.
Playbook: exit-intent reasons Platinum
Turn abandonment into a ranked list of fixes. When a shopper moves to leave, ask the main reason, then a short free-text follow-up.
Run an on-site exit survey
Ask the single main reason for leaving, with options like pricing, delivery, stock and missing information. See On-site & exit-intent.
Capture the verbatim
The free-text follow-up is where the gold is, for example a note that a competitor is cheaper, telling you exactly where you are losing.
Rank and act
The dashboard groups reasons so you can fix the biggest blockers first, then measure the reason mix shift over time.
Reference
Plans & billing
Responses are unlimited on every plan, including Free. There are no response caps and no per-answer pricing.
| Plan | Price | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Free | £0 forever | Unlimited responses, the full question bank, every response viewable, and core dashboard metrics. |
| Premium | $25 / month | Everything in Free plus custom questions in all formats, dynamic rules, AI analysis and response labels, full styling with no Census branding, and data export. |
| Platinum | $50 / month | Everything in Premium plus on-site surveys, quick polls, Shopify POS surveys, page and URL targeting, and export of on-site data. |
Premium and Platinum start with a 28-day free trial. Billing is in USD and recurs every 30 days, and you can change or cancel your plan at any time. See the full comparison on the pricing page.
FAQ & troubleshooting
The survey is not showing on my thank-you page
Check that the census post-purchase survey block is added and saved in the checkout editor, that at least one question is active, and that any rules on your questions match the test order. A first-time versus returning rule, for example, will not fire if you test with an existing customer.
Will Census slow my store down?
No. Census is speed-tested by Shopify with officially no performance impact, because it loads as a native app block rather than injected theme code.
Which languages are supported?
English, French, Spanish, German and Polish out of the box, with per-market overrides and translated custom questions through Translate & Adapt.
Who owns the data?
You do. Responses are your zero-party data, stored against your Shopify orders and customers, and exportable at any time on Premium and above.
Do I need a developer?
No. Install, thank-you page setup, questions, rules and styling are all done in the Shopify admin with no code. Custom CSS is available if you want it, but it is optional.
Get help
Need a hand setting up, or want a specific integration wired to your stack? The Vervaunt Labs team is close to the product and happy to help.
Census · by Vervaunt Labs
Ready when you are.
Install free, add the thank-you page block, and your next order can arrive with an answer attached.