Locksmith
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  • Quick Start
  • 💡Basics
    • A Locksmith Overview
    • Creating locks
    • Creating keys
    • Compatibility with other apps and Shopify features
    • Removing Locksmith
  • 🔆Tutorials
    • Approving customer registrations
    • Creating restricted wholesale products
    • Hiding product prices and/or the add to cart button
    • Selling digital content on Shopify
    • More tutorials...
      • Setting up multiple price tiers
      • Customizing messages
      • Customizing the customer login page
      • Customizing the registration form
      • Customizing the passcode form
      • Customizing Locksmith’s "Access denied content" messages, and redirecting customers
      • Customizing the email list signup form
      • Showing multiple prompts on the same page
      • Showing content only to specific Markets
      • Input lists
      • Protecting against bots
      • Earn recurring revenue on your exclusive content using ReCharge
      • Use Locksmith and PayWhirl together to grant access based on subscriptions
      • Liquid locking basics
      • Restricting checkout from the cart
      • Confirmation key condition
      • Restricting customers to a specific collection
      • Passcode-specific redirects
      • Grow your subscriber lists with Klaviyo
      • Use Klaviyo as an access control list
      • Use Mailchimp to collect customer emails
      • Hiding out-of-stock products
      • How to use a private browsing session
      • Granting access to variants by visitor input
      • Offering different variants by postal code
      • Locking products by tag
      • Locking multiple pages at once
      • Making a product accessible exclusively from the direct product link
      • Creating private team areas
      • Importing customers in bulk
      • Disabling Locksmith for certain theme files
      • Adding translations to your Locksmith messages
      • Redirecting using Locksmith
      • Locking variants
        • Limiting the scope of variant locks using the product tag key condition
        • Handling JavaScript DOM errors caused by variant locks
      • Locking the customer registration form
      • Locking the search results page in your store
      • How to clear cache for a single website
      • Disabling Locksmith for certain theme files
      • 🛠️Manual mode
      • Grant access for a limited time when using passcodes or secret links
      • Testing Locksmith on unpublished themes
      • Locking blog posts
      • How to access your browser's dev tools
      • Restricting the cart for mixed products and combinations of products
      • Locking products by vendor
      • How do I hide my Shopify store's header and footer
      • Hiding navigation links for locked resources
      • Hiding products from product-grids
      • Restricting a product so that it can only be purchased by new customers
      • Automatically managing the seo.hidden metafield using Locksmith
      • Locking the home page
      • Setting up checkout validation with Locksmith
      • How to hide theme sections, blocks, and snippets
  • 🔑Keys: Access methods in Locksmith
    • About key conditions
    • Customer account keys
    • Passcode keys
    • Secret link keys
    • Visitor location keys
    • More about keys...
      • Inverting conditions in Locksmith
      • Combining key conditions
      • "Has purchased..." key
      • Using the "Force open other locks" setting
      • Liquid key basics
      • Manual mode
      • Excluding content from locks
      • IP address keys
      • Newsletter keys
      • Limiting the scope of variant locks using the product tag key condition
  • 🌻FAQs
    • Why aren't my locks working?
    • FAQ: I see blank spaces in my collections and/or searches when locking
    • Can Locksmith hide content from my in-store search?
    • Locksmith is not working with my page builder app
    • What should I do if my site is loading slowly?
    • I'm the administrator of my site and I cannot access pages because of Locksmith locks.
    • More FAQs...
      • I'm having trouble using Locksmith with a site speed optimization app.
      • The app isn't loading. What do I do?
      • Can Locksmith protect shipping methods, billing methods, or coupon codes?
      • I switched themes, and Locksmith isn't working
      • Why isn't my passcode, secret link, newsletter, or location key working?
      • Can Locksmith lock Shopify's public JSON API for my online store?
      • Why are my customers seeing a reCAPTCHA when logging in?
      • My passcode or newsletter prompt is not updating on my store when I change it.
      • My featured collections on my home page only show one product.
      • My infinite scrolling doesn't show all of my products.
      • My customers have to enter their e-mail address into the Mailchimp key every time they visit.
      • How do I know which customers have used a certain key?
      • Why is Locksmith adding information to my orders?
      • Locksmith isn't installing correctly!
      • Locksmith is not uninstalling correctly!
      • How does Locksmith affect search engines and SEO?
      • How do I change where customers are redirected to after registration on Shopify
      • The thing I want to lock isn't showing up in the Locksmith search
      • I am getting an "already taken" error when trying to create a metafield definition for seo.hidden
      • How do I add a hero banner image to Locksmith's access messages
  • 📒Policies
    • Usage agreement
    • Locksmith's pricing policy: Pay what feels good
    • Privacy policy
    • Data policy
    • Contact us
  • 🔦Developer Tools
    • Locksmith Admin API
    • Locksmith Storefront API
    • Locksmith variables
    • Unsupported functionality
    • Requests from Locksmith
  • More developer docs...
    • Using the Admin API with Locks
  • App Integrations
    • Easy Appointment Booking
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On this page
  • The solution: discount codes
  • How Locksmith can help

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  1. Tutorials
  2. More tutorials...

Protecting against bots

A strategy to protect your products from bots and unapproved resellers purchasing from your Shopify Online Store

PreviousInput listsNextEarn recurring revenue on your exclusive content using ReCharge

Last updated 7 months ago

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This is a legacy guide. This technique may still be useful for some, but for those wishing to add a "Checkout rule" to their store via Locksmith, see our guide here:

Setting up checkout validation with Locksmith

Many merchants that sell collectors items, limited edition items, or other types of highly exclusive items are plagued by bots purchasing their products, and come to Locksmith for help.

Without using a checkout rule, Locksmith is NOT able to prevent bots and other unapproved resellers from purchasing from your store.

This is because direct-to-checkout links, which allow products to be purchased without even visiting the Online Store, exist within the Shopify platform, and it's not possible for apps to get involved with this layer.

Note: This also applies to merchants wanting to use Locksmith to give away free items to select customers. As soon as bots pick up on the presence of your free items, they may attempt to buy your entire stock, even if those items are protected by Locksmith.

While Locksmith itself cannot help here, there is a way you can prevent this from happening without the need for any apps.

The solution: discount codes

So the general strategy here is to set your products up so that the public price is something pretty high - a price high enough so that the bots will ignore it. Then, you'll use to create a discount to bring the price back down to the original price that you'd like to sell at.

Thankfully, Shopify allows you to create discounts that can only be used by specific "customer segments". .

So, for example, you could create a customer segment that's based on a specific customer tag:

And then give the customer segment a description name:

When setting up the discount code, use the "Customer eligibility" section to select the customer segment that can use this discount:

The result of this is that you now have an avenue to make sure that only the customers you designate have a pathway to purchase that is secured all the way to the completion of the sale.

You can absolutely use this strategy without further involvement with any apps, including Locksmith. The customers will simply use the product pages as normal, and enter the discount codes at checkout.

Again, the price they'll see here will be higher than what the customer is most likely expecting, so make sure you do everything you can to communicate with your customers about using the discount code. You can do this in the product description, in customer mailers, or when they contact you (more on that below).

That's it for the basic setup!

How Locksmith can help

Optionally, Locksmith can still help get your product pages to a place that helps direct your non-bot customers to the right place. Locksmith has features that will help hide the price and add-to-cart buttons so that the public facing price doesn't scare customers away that stumble onto your product pages. More information, and set up guide, on hiding the price and add to cart button here:

So basically, when set up correctly, your customers would see something like this when they land on your product pages:

Note: You have flexibility in what you want the link to say, and where it points your customers to.

Then, when signed in with an approved account, they will be able to add to cart and purchase.

Remember: Locksmith alone is not enough to prevent bots from purchasing the products out from under you - you'll need to combine this with the discount method outlined above.

For questions or help with setup, contact us via email at team@uselocksmith.com!

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Hiding product prices and/or the add to cart button
Shopify's Discount feature
More information on creating customer segments here