Before you start

You can install the app and start building. But there are four things that, decided up front, stop you having to redo forms and products halfway through.

None of this happens inside Optical Form: it’s preparation in your own store.

1. Which frames sell with a form

Usually not all of them.

Sold with a form	Sold normally
Prescription frames	Non-prescription sunglasses
Made-to-order readers	Cases, cleaning fluid, cloths
Replacement lenses	Accessories and gifts

This list decides two later things: which products you assign the form to, and which product template they use. Write it down before you start.

The mixed case

Same frame sold with and without prescription? Create it twice, as two products. Trying to make one product do both complicates the form and confuses the customer.

2. The products behind your extras

This is the bulk of the prep work, and what most people skip.

Anything you want to charge separately — the lens type, a treatment, fitting — has to exist as a Shopify product. They aren’t labels inside the app: they’re real products, because it’s Shopify that bills them, puts them on the order and sends them to your lab.

Prepare a list like this one:

Single vision standard 1.50 ......  0.00   (included in the frame price)
Single vision thin 1.60 .........  15.00
Single vision ultra-thin 1.74 ...  50.00
Premium anti-reflective .........  30.00
Blue light filter ...............  17.00
Photochromic ....................  40.00
Fitting .........................  12.00

Two things you’ll decide with that list in hand, explained in Pricing and charging:

• The price is the surcharge, not the total. The frame already has its own.
• Anything included still gets created, at 0. That way the customer sees “Included” instead of a blank.

Hide them from your catalog

These products aren’t for browsing: nobody should stumble on “Premium anti-reflective” in your glasses collection. Create them unpublished from the online store, or in a separate collection you never link to. They still work as add-ons.

3. How you’ll assign the form

Two ways, and it’s worth choosing up front:

	When to use it
By product	Few frames, or each with its own form
By collection	Large catalog sharing one form

Collections have an advantage that usually decides it: they’re live. Add a new frame to the collection and it shows the form immediately, without going back into the app. If your catalog is going to grow, start there.

Create that collection now if it doesn’t exist — for example Prescription glasses.

4. Your theme, ready to sell form-only

The decision that costs the most to skip: your theme keeps its own buy buttons, and with those a customer can walk off with the frame and no lenses.

Read it in full before you open to the public: Stop unconfigured orders.

If you’re still choosing a theme, bear in mind you’ll need to be able to remove the buy buttons block and turn off the sticky bar on a dedicated product template. Nearly every modern theme allows it.

Checklist

Before building your first form:

• I know which products sell with a form and which don’t
• My extras exist as products, priced as a surcharge
• Anything included exists at 0
• They’re hidden from the catalog
• The prescription frames collection exists (if I’m going by collection)
• I’ve read how to block unconfigured purchases

With that done, building the form takes half an hour. Without it, it takes half an hour and three trips back.

Next step

Install Optical Form and then Build a form.