Balloon Bouquet Maker: setup guide

Let your customers build their own balloon bouquet on your store. Setup takes about ten minutes.

1. Install and open the app

After you install, open Balloon Bouquet Maker from your Shopify admin Apps list. The Home page shows a short checklist.

On first open the app adds one sample product, a Large Sand Weight, to your store so everything works right away. You can edit its price and photo, or delete it, at any time.

2. Choose your balloons

1. Open Settings.
2. Under Balloon products, click Choose products or Choose collections. Pick the balloons customers can build with.
3. Every variant of a product (for example each color) appears as its own balloon.

Customers can only use as many of a balloon as you have in stock.

3. Choose your anchor weights

Under Anchor weights, pick the products customers can use to weigh their bouquet down.

Under Large sand anchor weights, pick your heavy weights. The builder uses one of these automatically when a bouquet is too big for a small weight, and greys out the small ones.

4. Match your brand

In Settings → Appearance, choose a font, colors and the button text. A live preview shows your changes. Click Save when you are happy.

You can also turn the small "Powered by" logo on or off.

5. Add the builder to a page

1. In your admin, go to Online Store → Themes → Customize.
2. Open or create the page you want (for example a page named "Build a bouquet").
3. Click Add section (or Add block), choose Apps, then Bouquet Maker.
4. Click Save.

If your theme has a header that stays at the top of the screen on phones, set Space for a sticky header on phones in the block's settings so the pinned bouquet sits just below it.

6. Make sizes and weights come out right

The builder draws each balloon at its true relative size, and works out how much lift a bouquet has so it can choose a heavy enough weight.

• Put the size in the product name, for example "Coral Orbz Balloon (15 Inch)" or "Heart Foil Balloon 30\"". The builder also reads sizes from the tags, SEO title, and description. Feet work too ("6 ft").
• Balloons with no size are drawn at a standard 12 inches.
• Optional product tags:
  • lift:2 oz or lift:40 g sets a balloon's lift exactly.
  • no-helium marks a balloon as air-filled.

7. Customers and the cart

When a customer finishes a bouquet and taps the button, each kind of balloon is added to the cart as a normal line, with the anchor weight. Each line shows the bouquet size and string color, so your team can see what to assemble.

The app can also attach a picture of the customer's bouquet so you can arrange it exactly as they designed it. Choose how in Settings → Order details:

• Free line item with the picture (default). Customers see a free "Bouquet design: arrange exactly like this picture" line in their cart. Your team sees it on the order with the note "Please arrange the balloons exactly like the picture." and a Design picture link. The line is one small free product (no shipping, no tax) that the app creates once and reuses for every order, kept out of your shop listings. Please don't delete it (the app would simply recreate it). Shopify counts any line as one item sold, even at $0. To leave these out of your reports, filter by product type "Bouquet design".
• Picture link on the order only. The picture is saved in the order details as a link (the "_bouquet_picture" detail on the first balloon line). Nothing extra is added to the cart or the order, so item counts, taxes and sales reports are not affected. Customers don't see the picture in their cart.

Show the picture in the cart (optional). By default the cart shows the picture as a plain link. To show it as a small thumbnail instead, go to Online Store → Themes → Customize, open App embeds (the icon in the left bar), and turn on Bouquet picture in cart. You can set the picture size there. It works on the cart page and in cart drawers, and customers can click it to see the full picture.

In both cases the picture is saved as a file in Content → Files (named like "bbm-design-ab12cd.jpg") and deleted automatically after 90 days, so picture links on orders older than that stop working. Save a copy of any picture you want to keep.

• Don't add a picture.

Inventory, taxes and discounts work as they do for any product.

Pricing

Balloon Bouquet Maker is $9 per month with a 5-day free trial. Plans are managed on Shopify's own page, linked from the app. If a plan is not active, the builder pauses on your storefront until you choose one.

Questions or ideas?

Use Send us feedback on the app's Home page, or email diyballoonstudio@gmail.com.