How do I set up Simple Affiliate on a headless Hydrogen storefront?

Simple Affiliate has a dedicated setup flow for headless Hydrogen storefronts, so you can configure and verify your storefront without installing a Shopify theme app embed.

Use this flow when your customer-facing storefront runs on Hydrogen. Stores using a standard Shopify Online Store theme should continue to enable the Simple Affiliate tracker in the theme's App embeds.

Configure the storefront

1. Open Simple Affiliate in Shopify Admin.
2. Open the Headless setup page.
3. Configure the settings for your live Hydrogen storefront.
4. Preview the configured storefront.
5. Check that the preview points to the intended storefront.
6. Confirm the settings.
7. Run the headless install check.
8. Open an affiliate referral link on the published storefront.
9. Complete a test order.
10. Verify the affiliate and commission in Simple Affiliate.

The headless install check evaluates the confirmed storefront setup instead of looking for the Simple Affiliate Tracker theme app embed. Simple Affiliate's reference Hydrogen storefront recipe is optional, so the check won't fail only because you used your own implementation. Your implementation still needs to carry the affiliate code through checkout if you want link-based orders to attribute.

Affiliate signup and dashboard access

For the headless flow, affiliate dashboard links send affiliates to Shopify's new customer-account area. Affiliate registration uses a hosted signup page, so Simple Affiliate doesn't need to write a signup page or dashboard block into your Hydrogen theme.

Affiliates use their Shopify customer accounts to sign in. When an affiliate opens the affiliate-facing experience, merchant signup options are hidden.

Remove a headless configuration

Use the clear option on the Headless setup page when Simple Affiliate should stop using the current storefront settings. Configure and confirm the replacement settings before testing referrals against another storefront.