The default password reset email is functional but generic. Want to brand it and rewrite the copy to match my voice. Where do I edit, and is there a risk of breaking the actual reset link?
Settings → Email templates → Password reset → Edit.
The editor shows:
- Subject line: customisable.
- Body: full markdown editor. Use any branding language, images, links.
- Required variables:
{{reset_link}}— must appear somewhere in the email. This is the actual link that does the work; it’s tokenised and one-time-use. Remove it and your customers can’t reset. - Optional variables:
{{customer.first_name}},{{customer.email}},{{shop.name}},{{expiry_hours}}(link valid for N hours, default 1).
Template that works:
Subject: Reset your {{shop.name}} password
Hi {{customer.first_name}},
Looks like you've asked to reset your password — that's fine. Click below:
[Reset your password]({{reset_link}})
The link works for the next {{expiry_hours}} hour. If you didn't request this, you can safely ignore this email — your password won't change.
Cheers,
The {{shop.name}} team
P.S. We never ask for your password by email. If anyone does (even claiming to be us), it's not us.
Won’t break the link as long as you keep {{reset_link}} in the body. The template editor’s preview will warn you if a required variable is missing.
Other templates worth customising:
- Welcome email (account creation).
- Order confirmation.
- Order shipped.
- Order delivered.
- Abandoned cart series.
- Refund processed.
Each lives in Settings → Email templates → click into it to edit. Same pattern: required variables marked, optional variables documented, preview before saving.
Best practices for transactional email copy:
- Front-load the action. The customer needs to do something; tell them in the first line.
- Skip the marketing fluff in transactional emails. “Reset your password” is not a chance to upsell.
- Mention security context for sensitive emails. “We never ask for your password by email” is a phishing-protection reminder that has zero cost and real value.
- Use a real-person voice. “Hi [name], looks like…” beats “Dear Valued Customer, We have received your request…”
Preview and test:
- Template editor → “Send test email” → enter your own email → receive a sample with placeholder variables filled.
- Inspect rendering in actual inbox (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) — some templates look great in the preview but render oddly in specific clients. Worth testing across Gmail web, Gmail mobile, Outlook, Apple Mail.
Followup question for @axnify: the answer mentions a roadmap item. Is there a public roadmap or changelog where merchants can track in-flight features? I’ve poked around the admin a bit and seen the “What’s new” panel but it seems to be retrospective only — things that already shipped. Would be useful to see what’s coming in the next quarter so I can plan around it (or hold off on workarounds I’m about to build).
Wrapping up my end of this — we’ve been running with the suggested setup for password reset email for three weeks now and the results have been measurable. Specifically: 12% increase in the metric we were optimising, 0 customer complaints (where previously we’d get 1-2/week), no operational overhead added to my team’s daily routine.
I’d recommend this setup to anyone in a similar position. The only caveat I’d add is: do the initial test against a single product or a single customer segment before rolling out broadly. We had one rough day where a misconfigured variant produced a weird checkout experience for a handful of customers, and limiting the blast radius of the test would have caught it before it shipped widely.