Beyond Shopify Magic: 4 Ways to Utilize AI for your E-Commerce Store
In 2024, the biggest trend is supporting small businesses over big-box companies. With that, however, comes the new trend of small business owners struggling to keep up with the demands of their business. Product descriptions, chat spaces, website design, and content are all activities for which larger companies have entire departments, whereas small businesses often manage these themselves. That’s where Shopify and AI come together to work their magic. Between Shopify’s new native AI tools and the dozens of tools that are already out there for small businesses, managing the litany of responsibilities that online stores present is as easy as clicking a button.
Shopify is rolling out ‘Shopify Magic,’ a suite of native AI tools for the Shopify platform. These tools are both back-end and front-end developments that are designed to convert more checkouts and improve the user experience.
Before anyone says that these tools aren’t new and that AI has been around for ages, both existing technology such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and proprietary technology powers Shopify Magic. This ensures that the Shopify Magic tools are secure and no data is being shared with third parties.
How does it work?
Because Shopify Magic is native and proprietary to the Shopify platform, using any of the Shopify Magic tools is as easy as logging in to the platform!
Wherever Magic is able to be used, the Magic icon will appear. If you’re able to use regular Shopify, Shopify Magic will be a breeze!
Personal Shopper? Yes, please!
The worst part about shopping online is the lack of assistance from the store associates or even just the lack of being able to physically browse options. The Shopify Magic tools combined with AI chatbots can turn an online storefront into the personal shopping appointment of a customer’s dreams.
Take suit buying as an example: Many popular large companies offer a lightly guided shopping experience, asking questions and displaying a result based on the responses.
These systems work through a complicated product tagging system that usually takes a seasoned e-commerce expert to properly execute. The use of AI through Shopify Magic allows small business owners to not only quickly generate detailed and accurate product tagging for their existing inventory, but automatically add and update tags as new inventory is added.
Once the tags are complete, it simply becomes a matter of implementing a custom chatbot for the storefront to create a personalized shopping experience or using a couple of navigation menus to facilitate a guided shopping experience like the one shown above.
These innovations allow customers to find the right product faster, with less clicks and less stress. This in turn converts more customers from browsers to shoppers and generates more checkouts.
Busy Business, Better Workflows
One of the best ways that Shopify has integrated AI into its native platform is to introduce Sidekick, a virtual assistant that can smooth out workflows and make things like sales analysis and discount creation a breeze.
Work smarter, not harder, or even better, let the computer do the work for you. Sidekick is currently being released for early access ahead of a full roll out, so sign up here to be one of the first of your e-commerce friends to experience the next big thing in small business administration.
A Way with Words
According to Guidant, these are some of the Top Plans that small businesses had for themselves in 2023. With Shopify Magic, business owners eliminate the need to increase staff in order to write product descriptions or handle email newsletters. A single small business owner can turn into a one-man e-commerce army with Shopify Magic and other AI tools.
In a matter of seconds, any generative AI is able to develop all of the above business tools and more. With Shopify Magic, ChatGPT, or other dedicated AI, small business owners can train the AI to learn their specific branding and tone, leading to less time spent re-prompting and editing. It can also develop customer personas, identify pain points, and implement other digital and traditional marketing techniques, which would otherwise have to be outsourced to expensive consultants.
Product Images That Work
Not every small business has access to expensive photographers or difficult-to-learn photo editing software. That’s where AI comes in! Using a generative photo-editing AI, your product photos can go from bland to exceptional in moments, with no need to spend money on expensive backdrops or studio time!
One more thing before you go…
As a final note, most of the tips and tricks in the above article focus on the native AI tools that Shopify offers through Shopify Magic. These tools are free for all existing Shopify merchants, although Sidekick is currently only available for public preview. This was the focus so that this article could focus on the amazing abilities that AI has, rather than the cost associated. The following tools mentioned above are not native to the Shopify platform. These may incur additional costs: MESA Workflows for product tagging, Canva Magic for Photo Editing, and ChatGPT 4. While these tools are useful, they are in no way the end-all-be-all of optimizations for your business. Here are a couple more useful AI-powered tools available to Shopify users on the Shopify App Store:
AI Background Remove&Generate by Bria.ai
This tool does product image background removal and editing in a single step. The free plan includes unlimited Background Removal and Background Blur, but limits the AI Background generation as shown above. The Pro and Premium plans are price at $4.99 and $19.99 a month, respectively.
Live Chat & AI Chatbots by Tidio
This tool offers both a live chat and AI chatbot option. This is perfect for those small business that aim to maintain a level of human touch. The tool also comes with several advanced helpdesk features beyond just a chat option, making it a wonderful multipurpose integration. Paid plans range from $29 a month up to you $39 a month, depending on features. The free plan is quite generous with features and includes a 7-day trial for all features.
Personalizer by LimeSpot
There’s little question as to how Personalizer maintains a 4.8 rating with over 1,000 reviews. The tool offers up to five times customer conversion through AI Product recommendations, automated merchandising, and more. The Essentials package is $18 a month and the Pay As You Grow package is $19 a month. Personalizer also offers a premium package that is free to install and has a monthly price based on store revenue.
This list is in no way exhaustive. A search on the Shopify App Store for “AI app” yields over 1,000 results. It just depends on what you want out of AI and what parts of your business need optimizing.
If these options seem overwhelming, expensive, or just plain confusing, you’re not alone. It’s a struggle keeping track of all of the new tools for small business owners coming out in 2024. When AI is added, things complicate even further. That’s why Online Optimism stays on top of the trends. Keep ahead of the curve with us by signing up for our newsletter, reading our blog, or reaching out to us for personalized help. We can help make things simple, keep things human, and above all, we are always Optimistic.