Age verification is often an important part of selling online. If you sell any products where there is a legal, or even moral, obligation to ensure that the product is going to someone over a certain age, you need to check the buyer meets that criteria.

It can be more challenging online to check this information. After all, you can’t just physically see the buyer and make a judgment. And anyone can use someone else’s credit/debit card as long as they have the information.

The challenge is even more important, as it’s the seller’s responsibility to make sure that the person buying the age-restricted goods are appropriately aged. So, how can you do this online? Here are some steps for you to add an age verification to your store.

Key Takeaways
1
The seller is responsible for ensuring the buyer meets the age requirement for age-restricted goods.
2
To add age verification, log in to Shopify, edit code snippets on ‘Themes’ and update your Shopify theme layout.
3
Customization and testing of the age verification system are essential for creating a reliable user interface.

Step 1 - Login

Login to your Shopify store using your user credentials.

Step 2 - Themes

From the admin page, you need to go to the ‘Online Store’ and then the ‘Themes’ section of your dashboard. Find the theme that you’re using, or want to use, and then click on the ‘Actions’ and then ‘Edit Code’ option.

Step 3 - Snippets

Now you need to click on the ‘Snippets’ folder to expand the folder and view the contents. Within the folder you need to click on the option ‘Add A New Snippet’.

Step 4 - Age Verification

Now you need to name the new snippet ‘age-check’ and then click on the option ‘Create Snippet’. This will create the snippet and open up the online code editor.

Step 5 - Copy Code

In a new browser tab on your computer, open up the following webpage. Copy the code from this webpage and then paste it into the code editor for the snippet.

You can make changes to the code in several ways, for instance, you can change the age by simply changing the references from 18 to the respective ages. And you can add in new years as you wish or remove others.

Step 6 - Save

When you’ve completed all the changes that you want to make to the snippet, you can click on the ‘Save’ option.

Step 7 - Layouts

Go to your ‘Layouts’ folder and then find and click on the ‘theme.liquid file. This will open the online code editor again, but for this file instead.

Step 8 - Body Tag

Search the code for the opening tag. After you’ve found the tag insert the following code. 

{% render 'age-check' %}

This will include the age-check.liquid snippet at the very beginning of the content within the body of your theme file. Therefore, when someone enters your website, you can check their age.

Step 9 - Save

When complete, you can click on ‘Save’.