Encountering a Blank Gift Card issue on your Shopify store can be confusing. If your customers are reporting that their gift cards appear blank after purchase, you’re likely on the right track in suspecting a customization issue. The gift card process in Shopify involves a couple of key areas: the initial email notification and the gift card display page itself.
The email your customer receives, which contains the gift card details, originates from the HTML templates located in Settings > Notifications within your Shopify Admin. These notification emails are generally standardized across Shopify, but they do offer customization options. When a customer clicks the “View gift card” button in this email, they are directed to the actual gift card page. This page’s appearance is dictated by the gift_card.liquid template file, which is part of your Shopify theme. Therefore, any problems you observe on the gift card page are very likely connected to your current theme or its customizations.
To pinpoint whether the issue stems from your theme, a helpful step is to preview the gift card URL using a default, un-customized Shopify theme. First, install a fresh copy of your current theme to your store – this ensures you have a clean, unmodified version. Next, in a separate browser tab, open a gift card URL that is exhibiting the blank display issue. In another tab, preview the newly installed, fresh theme. Now, copy the specific gift card identifier from the end of your problematic gift card URL (the /gift_cards/numbers/alphanumeric part) and append it to your store’s URL while you are in the fresh theme preview.
For instance, if your store URL is yourstore.myshopify.com, and the gift card URL with issues ends in /gift_cards/123456789/abcdefg1234567, you would construct a URL like this within the fresh theme preview: yourstore.myshopify.com/gift_cards/123456789/abcdefg1234567. It’s crucial to remember that you are doing this within the preview of the unedited theme.
Observe if the blank gift card issue persists within this fresh theme preview. If the error is still present even in the unmodified theme, the problem likely lies within the theme’s base code itself. In this case, the most effective next step is to directly contact the theme developer for assistance, as it indicates an issue inherent to the theme’s structure.
However, if the gift card displays correctly in the fresh theme preview, this suggests that the issue is due to customizations made to your live theme. The next troubleshooting step here would be to revert any recent code modifications you’ve made to your giftcard.liquid file. Before reverting any code, it’s essential to duplicate your current live theme as a backup. This ensures you can easily restore your current setup if needed. If reverting code changes resolves the blank gift card issue, you can then carefully re-apply your customizations, testing the gift card display after each change to identify the specific modification causing the problem.
If you find yourself struggling with these troubleshooting steps, don’t hesitate to seek further assistance. You can explore resources at the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog for more in-depth guidance and support.
