Surfaces
A surface is a place on your store where shoppers decide. Sledge places offers across nine of them, from the homepage and instant search through to the thank-you page — not the product page alone.
A surface is a place on your store where shoppers decide: the homepage, instant search, the search results, a collection, the product page, either cart, the 404 page, or the thank-you page.
Sledge places offers across all nine, each offer type on the surfaces where it sells. Your best offer stops living in one place.
Sledge works out which surface a shopper is on automatically, from the URL and the page. You never configure that. What you choose is which offers appear on which surfaces, and that lives in the Sledge dashboard.
The nine surfaces
| Surface | The moment |
|---|---|
| Homepage | They just arrived and have decided nothing. Lead with what's moving. |
| Instant search | They're telling you exactly what they want, as they type. |
| Search results | They searched and they're deciding. Boost the right products, recover a dead-end query. |
| Collection | They're browsing with intent. Lead with bestsellers, bury sold-out. |
| Product page | They're weighing one product. The bundle, the volume deal, the back-in-stock form. |
| Cart drawer | One tap from buying or leaving. Free-shipping bar, last-second upsell, the gift that auto-adds. |
| Cart page | The considered version of the same moment, for the shopper who opened the full page. |
| 404 page | A dead link is still a shopper. Show them something to buy. |
| Thank-you page | They already bought, card still warm. A post-purchase offer they add in a tap. |
Each offer carries its own per-surface switches, so you decide exactly where it appears — and you can preview it on any surface before publishing. See Placement.
For which offer types can go on which surface, see the full matrix on the Sledge site.
Why a widget might not appear
Surfaces are the most common reason something is configured but invisible. A bundle enabled only for the product page will not show on a collection page, no matter where you place the block.
When a widget is missing, check in this order:
- Is the offer enabled for this surface in the dashboard?
- Is there a block placed on this page, for widgets that need one?
Where on the page it lands
Knowing the surface decides whether Sledge renders. Where on the page comes from one of three things, in priority order:
- A selector you set on the widget in the dashboard.
- A block you placed in the theme editor.
- The default position from Sledge's configuration for your theme.
See Placement.
Surface identifiers
Writing custom code? Each surface has a short identifier you'll see in settings and events — pdp for the product page, plp for a collection. A few extra identifiers exist for widgets that run everywhere rather than on one surface. They're all listed in Reference → Surfaces.
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