Ecommerce & Retail · Shopify Apps
We developed a micro-SaaS application with a custom script engine to deliver behavior-driven popups within the Shopify ecosystem.
Outcome
Generic popups replaced by offers tied to behaviour: 3 signals, views, session time and cart value, trigger unique discounts from a job queue.
The Shopify App Marketplace provides merchants with thousands of tools, but many solutions for lead capture rely on generic, disruptive popups. A micro-SaaS provider identified a gap for a more intelligent approach that respected the customer's journey and improved the quality of engagement.
The core problem was the static nature of existing tools. Popups triggered by simple timers or exit intent often feel intrusive and are ignored by shoppers. The partner envisioned a system that could instead interpret a user’s specific behavior on the site-such as products viewed, session duration, or cart value-to present a relevant offer at the precise moment it would be most effective.
Robust Devs was engaged to design and build the Minimum Viable Product from the ground up. Our work involved creating a lightweight storefront script, an intuitive merchant-facing dashboard embedded within Shopify, and the back-end infrastructure needed to connect with Shopify’s APIs for a complete, market-ready application.
The challenge
How we solved it
Technologies
At the core of the application is an engine that connects shopper behavior to merchant-defined actions. Merchants can set specific triggers, like a customer viewing three products in a collection or having a cart value over $100, and define a corresponding outcome, such as displaying a popup with a targeted offer. This allows lead capture to function as a relevant, timely interaction rather than a generic interruption.
Merchants configure and manage the entire system from within their Shopify dashboard. By using the official Shopify Polaris design system, the interface feels like a native part of the platform. This removes operational friction, making it simple for a store owner to create campaigns, view captured leads, and adjust settings without navigating to an external website.
How we built it
Kept the storefront script tiny and asynchronous, and moved every consequence onto a job queue. A behaviour engine that slows the page costs more sales than it creates. So the tracking script loads asynchronously and listens for products viewed, session duration and cart value with minimal impact on load time, and nothing heavy happens in the browser. When a rule fires, the request goes to a Laravel job queue that creates the unique Shopify discount code and triggers the email send reliably and out of band. Merchants build the if-this-and-that-then rules in a React and Polaris app, so the logic is theirs to change without a developer.
In the client's words
“I hate popups. This one waits until someone has actually looked at three products. Merchants build the rules, which is what I asked for.”
Tell us what you're building. We'll show you how we'd approach it and what it would take to ship.