Activation Problems & Solutions

How to confirm if Orbe is working?

Often, some brands contact our support team to ask if Orbe is working. In this tutorial, we explain the three main reasons and how you can check them:

  1. Orbe is working, but you cannot see the popup

  2. Orbe works, but the popup keeps reappearing repeatedly

  3. Orbe works, but Shopify's Automatic Redirection is on

  4. The test mode doesn't work

  5. Orbe doesn't change the currency per country

Orbe works, but you cannot see the popup

Orbe syncs with the Shopify settings to know in which countries you are selling. It creates a custom-designed popup to make recommendations to customers depending on their geographic location and preferred browser language. When an international user visits your store, Orbe will recommend moving them to their localised experience. In subsequent visits, it will automatically redirect them to that experience. Some examples of use:

  • When a US user visits the US experience: as the user is in the correct localised experience, Orbe will not bother them.

  • When a French user visits the US experience: the Orbe popup will show up and recommend the French experience. If, in the future, this French user goes again to the US experience, it will automatically be redirected to the French experience.

Because of this first example, when some brands install Orbe, the country coincides between their primary market and the IP address where they are testing it. That's why Orbe doesn't bother them.

If you want to test Orbe in this situation, add your domain followed by ?showOrbe. For example, https://mushdesk.com/?showOrbe

Orbe works, but the popup keeps reappearing repeatedly

When you activate Orbe and test it on your platform domain (myshopify.com), the popup will consistently appear, even when you've selected the correct shopping experience. It's essential to clarify that Orbe is functioning correctly in this scenario. However, the continuous appearance of the popup is due to a limitation imposed by Shopify for internal security reasons – they don't permit cookie storage on platform domains (myshopify.com). Rest assured, once you add your regular domain, this issue will be resolved, and Orbe will work seamlessly.

Orbe works, but Shopify's Automatic Redirection is on

Merchants often find themselves with the Automatic Redirection feature enabled by default on their Shopify stores. However, it's essential to note that Shopify itself acknowledges in its documentation that this option can be detrimental to your SEO efforts. It hinders web crawlers from effectively indexing your localized shopping experiences and ranking them on Google and other search engines.

Additionally, it's worth mentioning that implementing automatic redirects without obtaining user consent may lead to non-compliance with data protection laws worldwide.

In contrast, Orbe offers automatic redirects, but with a crucial distinction – only after obtaining the user's consent. This approach ensures that we are both SEO-friendly and fully compliant with global data protection regulations.

Likewise, in cases of a subfolder domain strategy (e.g., https://orbe.app/es-es and https://orbe.app/fr-fr) or a multi-language website within a single domain (e.g., https://orbe.app/es and https://orbe.app/fr), automatic redirection only works on the user's first visit. Without a geolocation solution like Orbe, returning users may experience incorrect shopping pages.

To disable the automatic redirect feature provided by Shopify, simply follow these steps:"

The test mode doesn't work.

A few times, in the editor, some brands have activated the app embed and activated the test mode. However, the popup doesn't show up.

In these cases, these brands have contacted our support team, and we have always identified the same problem: there is an error in the Shopify app blocks for any of the following reasons which affect Orbe but also your store performance:

  1. You have a label in the theme.liquid without closing. For example, </head>.

  2. The object {{ content_for_header }} o {{ content_for_layout }} is missing.

If you don't find the problem, don't hesitate to ask our team. We will be glad to help.

Orbe doesn't change the currency per country

Please note that Orbe is not a currency conversion app. Instead, Orbe is a geolocation app that guides users to the shopping experience that corresponds to their location and preferences. Therefore, we do not perform currency conversions.

The setup for local currency sales is handled directly through Shopify Markets and is only available in countries where Shopify Payments is enabled. This means that brands located in countries where Shopify Payments is not available will need to seek an independent alternative to Orbe for currency conversions.

If you want to check the list of countries where Shopify Payments is available, we recommend visiting the Shopify Help Center.

If Shopify Payments is available in your country, you can activate local currency sales as demonstrated below:

Currency Display Issues for Local Currencies

Orbe serves as a geolocation application that redirects users to the appropriate shopping experience based on their location and preferences. Brands craft their diverse shopping experiences within Shopify Markets, where they customize products, prices, currencies, languages, and content.

If Orbe redirects you to a country where products are sold in the store's primary currency instead of the local currency, the initial step is to verify whether Local Currencies have been activated in the relevant market. For example, if you sell in Mexico and it's included in the "International" market, you need to navigate to the "International" market settings and ensure that the "Local currencies" option is enabled.

If enabling this option doesn't resolve the issue, it's crucial to check if the country in question has a volatile currency, according to Shopify. To check volatile currencies, it's recommended to refer to the tutorial in the Shopify Help Center.

In the case of the Mexican peso being a volatile currency, its fluctuation can significantly impact your business. Under such circumstances, if you still wish to enable payments in Mexican pesos, you'll need to create a dedicated market specifically for Mexico, where you manually indicate that you want to sell in Mexican pesos.

Orbe is not working properly on Instagram browser

If you are a staff user or store owner on your Shopify store and you want to access your store on Instagram or any other social media platform from different locations, you can do so.

However, you must note that your users should not change their location using a VPN or test from different locations.

If you want to replicate the experience of a particular user in a specific country, you must follow these steps on Instagram:

  1. Access to the Instagram Browser > Click on settings (3 dots at the right top) > Browser settings > Clear cookies and cache

  2. Go to your VPN and change your location

  3. Access again

See exactly how in this quick video testing it on an actual Orbe merchant store:

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