We all know artificial intelligence has revolutionized content writing, image editing, and digital marketing industries. But what about eCommerce? Surely, an eCommerce giant such as Shopify wouldn’t be left behind.
Yes, Shopify has also integrated AI in their services and many users are using it in their stores to see amazing results.
Being fascinated by AI, I want to share some of the most inspiring quotes I saved over the last months, to give you a different perspective on how AI can be used to grow your online store.
Matt Rollens, CEO of Dragon Glassware, uses Shopify and is happy with AI as it helps him save money.
“It's one of those things where it's easy to go in and have a whole new listing generated pretty quickly and not have to get someone else to do it and go through the whole process again,” he said. “You can change things quickly on the fly if you need to.”
And there are several others. Let’s learn what Shopify offers in terms of AI and how we can realistically use these features in our stores.
Table of contents:
How to Use AI to Grow Your Shopify Store
Shopify has added some amazing AI features to its platform, but that’s not all. There are also many AI-powered apps in the Shopify app store.
We’ll begin discussing the Shopify features first.
Shopify Magic Begins Here
Shopify Magic is your AI writing assistant. It will write and publish product descriptions for you. It will also help you in writing other content on the website.
Magic uses Large Language Models (LLMs) that process and learn from a vast amount of texts from web pages, books, and articles. With such vast resources, Magic is highly well-read and extremely suitable for this content creation job.
According to Mikey Moran, CEO of Private Label, “[Within] Shopify Magic, there’s expert, daring, playful, sophisticated, persuasive, supportive—there are all these different tones that you can [select] in a dropdown menu.”
Shopify Magic can create product copy, emails, and theme content for your website. And as revealed by Mikey, it even offers you tones to use for your content. It will analyze data from similar products being sold on other platforms and create a description for it, saving you a lot of time.
Here are the tones Shopify offers you with Magic:
- Expert: Write the copy as an industry expert. It’s a professional tone that states facts.
- Supportive: It’s written as a person who wants to support the customer and help them make the right decision.
- Persuasive: This is a tone that praises the product and tries to persuade the customer to buy it.
- Daring: This tone presents a challenge to the customer and encourages them to be adventurous.
- Playful: It uses a lively tone and doesn’t come off as too formal or serious.
- Sophisticated: This tone makes the products sound more glamorous.
- Custom: You can set your own tone in this section.
But of course, since it is AI, the result might not always be very different for all the tones. Artificial intelligence is amazing but it does have its limitations.
To test the different tones, I created a test product: A white t-shirt, and tested three different tones with it.
Here is the result for the Expert tone:
And here is the result for the Persuasive tone:
Here it is for the Supportive tone:
It looks like it’s the same tone but the text is being regenerated differently each time. However, it’s still pretty good and definitely usable.
Another limitation of using Magic for product copy is that it generates only a few words for each product.
I tried asking it to generate at least 300 words for copy, but it couldn’t.
The special instructions box is mainly about using emojis or regional slang in text. For example, if you want Magic to insert 5 emojis in the copy, you can enter that in the special instructions box.
While the copy might be a bit short, it’s certainly a good option for small product descriptions. Magic has just started. I’m pretty sure there will be many improvements as it learns and grows.
Even with these limitations, AI has a lot to offer when it comes to online retail stores.
According to Guita Blake, senior vice president of Mindtree, “Today’s smart retailer is engaging in a new era of shopping experience, combining the human touch and technology to deliver a more tailored consumer experience.”
Apart from writing product copies with Magic, Shopify is soon going to offer a helpful virtual friend, Sidekick.
Get a Sidekick for Quick Tasks
Shopify Sidekick will be a virtual assistant that will help you set up and grow your store. As a merchant, you can ask Sidekick some questions related to the problems you’re facing and it will help you out.
According to Miqdad Jaffer, Shopify Magic’s director of product, “This is going to allow you to be able to scale yourself and do some of the things that you've always wanted to do, [allowing you to] spend more time in building your expertise instead of filling your time with redundant tasks.”
It’s still developing but you can request early access for it. Visit the Shopify Magic page and place your request.
Can’t access Sidekick? Don’t worry, it will soon be rolled out for all stores.
Sidekick will use AI to understand your question and come up with the right answer from Shopify’s knowledge base. But unlike other virtual assistants, it will also perform actions instead of just coming up with answers. You can use it for store setup and running tasks such as:
Understanding customer behavior
Sidekick will be able to generate reports from the data collected from your Shopify store. For example, it can tell you which of your products are the most popular among customers.
Complete small tasks
Let’s say you want to add a discount of 5% on all your items. You can visit the dashboard and make the changes in the shop. Or you can ask Sidekick to do it for you. When Sidekick does your chores, you can save a lot of time.
Guidance related to Shopify
When you work on your online store, you may have many questions. You can just ask your Sidekick for answers and it will guide you towards a solution.
Jaffer says, “This [Sidekick] is going to allow you to be able to scale yourself and do some of the things that you've always wanted to do.”
What Merchants Think About Shopify AI
According to Reuters, analysts predict that the sales of Shopify merchant products will go up by 21% with the help of AI.
Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister believes that AI tools will prove to be a superpower and help sellers expand their business.
Angelo Zino, a market analyst at CFRA Research, says, “As long as [Shopify] can prove that there are productivity enhancements associated with AI, there's going to be a way for them to monetize it, but maybe not as much initially.”
Applications of AI to Grow Your Shopify Store
Michelle Evans, global head of digital consumer research at Euromonitor International, asserts, “Retailers are going on the offence, using technology to entice customers to shop both online and in store. Technology will be key to assisting retailers with creating new, meaningful ways for consumers to interact with their brand.”
Let’s see how you can use artificial intelligence in your Shopify store.
1. Chatbots
We already know about virtual assistants but AI-powered chatbots are different. While they do interact with customers, they can also collect lead data and understand their inquiries so you can convert them to customers.
You can also integrate a chatbot into the checkout page so customers can get information about shipping and delivery without leaving the cart.
Apart from providing shipping-related information, a chatbot can also give prompt responses around the clock. No matter which time zone you are in, your chatbot will keep the customers engaged.
2. Content creation
ChatGPT-like tools can help you come up with a copy for your products in no time. You can just enter the keywords that describe your product and a copy will be automatically generated for you.
Apart from product copy, AI can also help you write emails for email marketing. It can also create blog posts so your website stays fresh with new updates every day.
Shopify Magic does all this for you. However, some other tools in the Shopify app market can generate more versatile content. I have already discussed the limitations of Shopify Magic. To overcome them, you can use a third-party app from the Shopify app store.
3. Personalized recommendations
Ever clicked on a product on an eCommerce store and seen some recommendations below it? Artificial intelligence can do that on your Shopify store by analyzing customer behavior and recommending the products accordingly.
There are suggestions such as “Customers also purchased” or “People also viewed” to recommend products based on previous customer data. AI also analyzes the color, shape, brand, and usability of the product to make recommendations.
With personalized recommendations, customers stay longer on your Shopify store and might make additional purchases.
4. Image editing/creation
Image touchups can make your product more enticing. The basic touch-up that almost all stores need is background removal. AI-based photo editing apps will not just remove the background from your images but can also add a more desirable one.
Such apps have background image suggestions you can use. Or you can upload another image and use it as a background. Some tools also add sharpness to the image so it looks clearer.
Image generation can be useful for the website or blog pages. Clear and attractive images can bring more customers to your website.
5. Marketing campaigns
Integrate your AI tools with your social media channels and bring in more customers. You can also set up AI to send weekly or bi-weekly emails to your Shopify customers with coupon codes, discount offers, or loyalty rewards.
AI tools can also generate Google ads to bring in customers from search engines. It can also automate the cart abandonment emails to reduce abandoned carts.
6. Detection and prevention of fraud
Artificial intelligence can be your guard dog, checking for anomalies in the Shopify traffic. A new customer made an unusually high-value purchase or there were multiple transactions from the same IP within a short period? You can set up AI alerts.
Such anomalies are flagged for investigation. AI can also flag certain users for possible fraudulent behavior. For example, if there are several orders from a strange location, it could raise a fraud alert.
7. Inventory Management
Customers trying to purchase a product but it’s already sold out? With AI-powered inventory management, you don’t have to worry about that. Artificial intelligence also alerts you about your problem stock that doesn’t sell out as quickly so you can replenish inventory accordingly.
AI can also help in inventory forecasting. It studies past data and purchase trends to forecast the buying behavior of customers. Previous trends and patterns help in determining how the future buying performance might be. This helps merchants to restock inventory that’s high in demand.
8. Analyzing Customer churn
Customer churn is the chunk of customers who stopped purchasing from you during a specific period. The churn rate can determine if your company has the potential to grow. With AI, you can identify and reduce churn.
AI will observe customer churn behavior to predict when a customer is going to leave your Shopify store. Several factors indicate customer churn. Some such predictors are abandoned carts and website bounce.
To reduce customer churn, you can offer loyalty points, discounts, and coupons. This will keep the customers happy so they’ll return to your website for more purchases.
9. Dynamic pricing
With dynamic pricing, you can increase or decrease the price based on factors such as supply and demand, competitor pricing, and user behavior. AI can keep an eye on the market and apply discounts on certain products so there are successful sales.
For example, if you sell your products on your website and also on Amazon, you can reduce the prices on Amazon where there are more customers. Or you can apply discounts on products on your website to encourage customers to buy directly from you.
With dynamic pricing, you can also see what your competitors are selling and for how much so you can always offer an attractive price to ensure the sale closes successfully.
AI-Powered Apps in the Shopify Store
“Amazon and Shopify sellers are using AI [apps] to save time, better understand their customers, and improve their profit margins”
~ Madeline Stone, Business Insider
I’ve discussed nine ways in which Shopify apps can help your store grow. Some of these are good for product image enhancement, while others will analyze customer behavior. And some others will help you in marketing. Let’s look at the top AI apps in the Shopify store according to their usage.
Photo retouching apps
Photos are extremely important in an eCommerce store. Use AI-powered apps to retouch your photos. Here are some top photo retouching apps.
PhotoRoom
I tried this app and was able to remove backgrounds from my photos in just a few seconds. It also gives you the option to add a background of your choice.
Pixelz
This app retouches your product photos so they look more professional. With AI, it gives highly accurate results
AI chatbot apps
AI chatbots can provide timely customer support and help them out when a human isn’t present. They can be trained to answer some frequently asked questions.
Tidio live chat & AI chatbots
Tidio interacts with your customers and converts them into leads without the need for human interaction. It live chats with your customers and helps them make a purchase.
Gobot – AI Chatbot + Quiz
Gobot uses AI to interact with your clients. It understands their needs and makes correct recommendations. You can train it for repetitive or frequently asked questions.
AI Marketing apps
You’ll need to market your store to reach new customers. With AI apps, you can streamline your marketing efforts.
AI: Upsell – SMS – Email Marketing
Upsell is like an AI virtual assistant that will create coupons and activate sales. It will also automate your email or SMS marketing campaigns.
tinyAlbert
It’s an AI-powered marketing manager that will import store data and generate real-time reports. It also checks for abandoned carts and sends mail accordingly.
I’ve mentioned just some of the AI-powered apps in the Shopify store. You can find a lot more.
Artificial intelligence can be an amazing addition to your Shopify store and you don’t have to limit yourself to Magic and Sidekick when there are so many third-party apps available on the Shopify app Store.
Final Thoughts
I’d like to finish by saying that AI is indispensable to your Shopify store and for multiple reasons. While Shopify has AI features like Magic and the upcoming Sidekick, you don’t have to limit yourself to just these two.
There are several AI apps in the Shopify app store and you can use them to upgrade your store. I have mentioned some third-party AI apps above but there are so many more.
Which ones are you using and how are they performing? Please leave a comment and let me know.
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