Shopify Sidekick: Early Access to Your AI eCommerce Assistant

Running a successful online store takes more than just having great products. It requires efficient management, strategic decisions, and constant optimization, and we know that it isn't easy. Shopify understands this and is continuously trying to innovate to support merchants like you. The newest introduction to this forte is Shopify Sidekick.

Like the name "sidekick" suggests, this new AI-powered solution is a commerce assistant focused on simplifying operations and management.

We will explore what Shopify Sidekick is, how it works, what its benefits are, and how you can start using it to elevate your business. If you’re ready to make your store management smarter and more efficient, read on to discover Shopify Sidekick.

What is Shopify Sidekick?

Source: Shopify

Shopify Sidekick is an AI-powered commerce assistant designed to help merchants manage, optimize, and grow their online stores better.

It is powered by Shopify Magic, the suite of free AI-enabled features and tools available across the platform.

Shopify Sidekick is equipped with a deep understanding of the Shopify platform. This enables it to provide highly personalized and relevant support for a wide range of tasks.

The best part of this tool is that merchants like you can use everyday language to interact with the AI. This makes it easy to get help, generate content, and receive expert advice tailored to their specific needs.

Core Functionalities of Shopify Sidekick:

Here are the three key functionalities of Sidekick:

Instant Support and Guidance

• Provides step-by-step directions for everything in Shopify. This covers tasks such as setting up your Shopify store, shipping rates and managing inventory.
• Offers clear, actionable guidance on how to navigate the Shopify admin.

Tailored, Expert Advice

• Generates instant reports to help merchants make data-driven decisions.
• Delivers personalized recommendations to enhance business operations.

Creative Content Generation

• Suggests and creates content that aligns with your brand and engages your audience, including marketing emails, store content, and blog posts.
• It can fill fields or forms in the admin, explain why each option is suitable, and generate additional suggestions. Sidekick also creates or edits products, variants, discounts, and collections based on your instructions.

Some new Sidekick updates were introduced in Shopify's Summer Edition 2024. It includes:

• Thousands of stores can now use Sidekick to handle time-consuming tasks. Merchants need to simply request access and, once approved, can jumpstart their creativity with Sidekick.
• Some eligible stores will soon have AI-generated replies in Shopify Inbox. This allows for quick responses to customer questions with an understanding of your business.

How Does Sidekick Shopify Work?

Source: Shopify

Shopify Sidekick uses advanced AI technology, specifically natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, to interact with you conversationally. This means you can type commands or ask questions in everyday language, and Sidekick will understand and respond accordingly.

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): This technology allows Sidekick to understand your queries. It adapts to the unique context and data of each merchant’s shop, ensuring relevant and actionable guidance.
• Machine Learning: Sidekick gets smarter over time. As you use it and provide feedback, it learns more about your specific needs and preferences. This also ensures that the guidance and content provided are always up-to-date and pertinent to the current state of the store.

Shopify Magic is the backbone of Sidekick. These tools are available for free across all of Shopify's subscription plans.

While some features may vary in access, they generally support both desktop and mobile devices and offer multiple language supports.

Three other capabilities offered by Shopify Magic include:

Text Generation

• Shopify Magic uses large language models (LLMs) to generate content such as product descriptions, email subject lines, and blog posts.
• This feature helps speed up the writing process by providing intelligent suggestions based on the information provided by the user.

Media Generation

• Integrated with Shopify’s media editor, Shopify Magic allows for professional image adjustments, such as background removal or replacement with AI-generated scenes.

 App Review Summaries

• Shopify Magic powers app review summaries to help merchants evaluate and choose apps more efficiently in the Shopify app store.

While Shopify Magic provides the AI foundation, Sidekick acts as an interactive advisor. It engages in meaningful conversations and offers intelligent, tailored advice. Sidekick also operates only within the specific context of each merchant's shop. This means the Shopify AI assistant provides support and recommendations that are directly relevant to your unique business needs.

Further reading: Shopify Magic: Ecommerce AI To Create Compelling Product Descriptions & More

Limitations and Capabilities of Shopify AI Sidekick

It is important to know the capabilities and limitations of Shopify AI Sidekick to achieve the best possible experience with it.

Capabilities

Shopify Sidekick offers a range of capabilities designed to assist merchants in managing and growing their Shopify stores.

Here’s a detailed look at what it can do:

Help and Guidance

• Step-by-Step Instructions: Sidekick can guide you through various tasks within Shopify, providing clear, step-by-step instructions. The query could be anything, and sidekick will provide you with a list of options. For example, if you need to set up shipping rates for an international destination, Sidekick can walk you through the process.
• Instruction Cards: When Sidekick cannot perform a specific action, it provides help or instruction cards to guide you on how to accomplish the task yourself. It can also help you navigate to any page in the admin based on your instructions.

Content Generation

• Ready-to-Use Copy: You can prompt Sidekick to generate content for various applications, such as crafting emails, editing store content, or generating blog posts. For instance, you can ask Sidekick to help create a new email campaign for an upcoming sale.
• Form Filling: Sidekick can fill in fields or forms on any admin page based on your direct instructions. It can also highlight the generated content in purple for easy review and explain why each option might be appropriate.
• Product Management: Sidekick can create or edit products, variants, discounts, and collections based on your direct instructions, making it a versatile tool for content and inventory management.

Customer Segmentation

• Custom Segments: Sidekick allows you to create custom customer segments using natural language prompts. For example, you can ask it to create a segment for customers who have purchased in the last 30 days.

Theme Editing

• Theme Modifications:Sidekick helps modify theme settings and make recommendations to achieve a specific style for your store. It works with colors, typography, spacing, and other design elements to match your aesthetic preferences.
• Manual Saving: All changes applied by Sidekick to themes must be saved manually by you. This ensures control over your store’s appearance.
• Optimization for Dawn Theme: Sidekick is optimized for the Dawn theme version 11.0.0 or higher.

Limitations

Despite its powerful capabilities, this Shopify AI assistant has certain limitations:

Early Access

• Development Stage: Sidekick is still in development and available in early access. This means some features are limited in scope and capability, and Shopify relies on user feedback to improve Sidekick.

Functional Limitations

• Customer Support: Sidekick cannot handle customer support conversations or talk to customers on your behalf.
• Privacy Constraints: It cannot share private information or data from other Shopify merchants, ensuring the confidentiality of sensitive data.
• Approval Requirement: Sidekick is never allowed to make changes to your shop without your approval. It only presents options for you to review and approve, maintaining your control over the store’s operations.
• Image Editing: Sidekick cannot edit images within a store theme or product list, focusing instead on textual and functional guidance.
• Theme Compatibility: If you are trying to use Sidekick on themes other than Dawn theme version 11.0.0 or higher, you might experience some errors.
• Chat History: Sidekick does not save chat history. If you close the chat window, you will lose your chat history and any previously generated responses.

Benefits of Using Shopify Sidekick

Shopify AI Sidekick offers several advantages. Here are four of them:

Operational Efficiency

Sidekick helps you manage tasks more effectively by providing the following:

• Instant support
• Step-by-step guidance

Whether you're setting up shipping or tracking inventory, Sidekick makes these tasks quicker and easier.

Time-saving

With Sidekick’s help, you can complete tasks faster.

• It generates content
• Handles customer segmentation
• Suggests theme changes

All of the above saves you valuable time. It also allows you to focus on other important aspects of your business.

Increased Sales

Sidekick Shopify provides personalized advice and creative content suggestions, which makes your store more appealing. This boost in appeal can lead to better customer engagement. As your content becomes more compelling and your shopping experience improves, you may see an increase in sales.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Sidekick offers personalized support and smart recommendations. This keeps your store engaging and relevant. Moreover, it enhances the shopping experience for your customers, helping them find what they need and enjoy their time on your site.

How to Access & Use Shopify AI Sidekick In Your Store

Sidekick is currently available to a select group of merchants for early access. To be considered, you need to fill out the form on the Shopify Sidekick early access page.

Source: Shopify

If you qualify, you’ll receive further instructions on how to start using Sidekick.

Requirements to Access & Use Sidekick AI Assistant

To use Sidekick Shopify, you need to meet these requirements:

• Desktop Access: Sidekick is only available on desktop computers. It is not accessible via mobile devices.
• Language: Your Shopify account must be set to English.
• Confidentiality: Agree to the confidentiality terms for early access participants.
• Theme: For best performance, use the Dawn theme, version 11.0.0 or higher. Sidekick is optimized for this theme, and other themes may cause errors.

Steps to Access and Use Sidekick

Here are the five steps to access and use Sidekick for your Shopify store.

• Step 1: Start by logging into your Shopify admin on a desktop computer.
• Step 2: Click the Sidekick icon located on any page within the Shopify admin to open the chat interface.
• Step 3: In the "Ask anything..." field, type your command or question in plain language. Click the paper airplane icon to submit it.
• Step 4: Depending on the response, you may need to:

• Click ">" to navigate to the indicated page or resource.
• Click "Apply" to apply the suggested content to your store.
• Click "↻" if you want to regenerate a new response.

• Step 5: Use the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons to give feedback on the response quality.

Note: Sidekick does not save chat history. If you close the chat window, your history and responses will be lost.

The Future of Shopify Sidekick

The future of Shopify Sidekick looks promising as AI continues to evolve and integrate more deeply into eCommerce.

As the technology advances, you can expect Shopify to introduce and integrate more AI-based features into the platform. Sidekick will gain more unique and relevant capabilities, including:

• Expanded Functionalities: Future updates may introduce new features, such as advanced data analytics or enhanced integration with other Shopify tools, to offer even more comprehensive support.
• Improved Personalization: AI advancements could allow Sidekick to provide even more tailored advice and recommendations based on a deeper understanding of individual store dynamics.
• Broader Theme Support: Future versions may extend compatibility beyond the Dawn theme, allowing more merchants to benefit from Sidekick's capabilities.

Sidekick Shopify can significantly influence new and expanding businesses to improve their operations, especially new merchants. It will help them navigate the complexities of eCommerce with ease, with actionable insights and automating repetitive tasks.

To improve Sidekick Shopify, merchant feedback is crucial. You can rate Sidekick's responses directly in the chat interface using thumbs-up or down icons. For more comprehensive feedback, click "Add comment" after rating.

This detailed input helps Shopify understand critical concerns and areas for improvement, ensuring Sidekick evolves to meet your needs more effectively.

Final Thoughts

Shopify Sidekick is here to help you run an online store with ease. With personalized support and smart recommendations, this AI-enabled tool helps you manage your store effortlessly.

Sidekick is incredibly useful for new merchants who want to get acquainted with the platform quickly. Its user-friendly interface and step-by-step guidance make navigating Shopify a breeze, even for beginners.

Don't forget to look out for early access invitations and get ready to experience the future of eCommerce.

If you have started using Sidekick, share your feedback for the development of the tool. When Sidekick generates a response, you can rate its helpfulness by clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons. You can also add detailed comments to help improve its functionality.

So, your Sidekick is ready—are you?

Read more: Shopify Artificial Intelligence: AI Tools Used By Pros