Believe it or not, the deployment of chatbots on Shopify is inevitable. And the statistics prove it: chatbots represent the channel with the highest growth in terms of interactions between 2021 and 2022.

With over 26M e-commerce sites created, the development of chatbots for Shopify stores goes hand in hand.

Shopify has conquered more than 20% of the market share in the world: the implementation of a chatbot on an online store becomes unavoidable, especially since these tools bring a lot.

Chatbots are essential allies in e-commerce. Especially on Shopify, which serves mostly small and medium-sized online sales stores.

Chatbots allow to create a continuity of service in the customer experience, from pre-sales to post-sales. By taking over routines, repetitives and low-value-added conversations, they enable productivity gains (bots don't rule the world yet, but ChatGPT is already a great example of what we can expect).

In this article, we will discuss:

A definition of chatbots and the different types of chatbots you can create on Shopify 🧐
Reasons why you should use a chatbot on your Shopify site 🤓
Tips for optimizing bot performance on Shopify 📈
A guide to creating a multi-channel experience with a chatbot for Shopify 👩‍🏫
The details of the best Shopify apps to create a chatbot 🙏🏼

What is a chatbot for Shopify?

Before focusing on Shopify, which allows you to create an online stores, it is interesting to understand what a chatbot is.

A chatbot is a robotic conversational agent allowing to take care of conversations initiated by an Internet user. A chatbot can be present on a website or be connected to social networks such as WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger.

Types of chatbots

There are two types of chatbots:

Scripted chatbots: which respond to scenarios and intelligent chatbots, using artificial intelligence (AI) to enrich each interaction with a customer or prospect. The scripted chatbot allows any company to create a chatbot scenario thanks to a builder that often requires no technical skills.
Chatbot using AI must go through language analysis services, which requires computer development skills.

What is a chatbot for Shopify?

A bot for Shopify is a conversational agent whose behavior is adapted to e-commerce. The chatbot dedicated to e-commerce will thus be able to extract data from your Shopify store to automate certain tasks.

By syncing with Shopify, the chatbot can handle answers to questions like "Where is my order?" 24/7.

Often represented as a chat window installed on the online store, the robot intervenes at times when the teams are not available or to manage repetitive questions.

A bot for Shopify is capable can be triggered on all the company's sales channels: Instagram, WhatsApp or even Messenger for example.

Example of a chatbot on a site powered by Shopify:

Why install a chatbot for your Shopify site?

A chatbot is a conversational robot that can automate low-value tasks, it is essential for many online stores. Here's why you should install a chatbot on your Shopify site.

In fact, there are many apps to install a chatbot on your online store that can help to improve sales and customer experience. Go to the bottom of this article to discover a listing of applications. ⬇️

In the meantime, we've listed reasons why you should consider adding a chatbot on your Shopify website.

Make your customers autonomous

By installing a chatbot on your Shopify store, you ensure that your teams can automate the response to repetitive questions. Through answers or by putting forward a frequently asked questions (FAQ).

A FAQ (aka help center or knowledge base) is a very simple way to empower your customers while avoiding long waiting times. Be careful, the articles must be detailed enough not to generate more questions than they solve.

Bring continuity to the shopping experience

When it's 11pm on a weekday, or Saturday and Sunday, there's still a slim chance that your Shopify store teams will be available to answer questions from potential customers.

And that's normal! That's why a chatbot is important. It allows each online merchants to bring a beginning of an answer without the customers being hooked to his phone.

Guide the user through the purchasing process

Continuity in the shopping experience is also achieved through relevant recommendations. By using a chatbot, you can get to know the buyer and can recommend products from your online sales catalog. Carousels are a very common and appealing practice, reducing the intangibility of products related to the online experience.

Create a consistent multi-channel experience

Social networks have become an increasingly essential channels for brands that develop online. These channels are becoming essential contact points for consumers. Unfortunately, with the multiplication of channels, there are as many different tools to manage as there are channels.

With the implementation of a chatbot on your online store, you will also be able to connect the different communication channels to a single chatbot.

The advantage? Centralized messaging coupled with automated responses, across all channels related to your Shopify store.

Provide a multilingual experience

The advantage of a chatbot is that it can easily be configured in a multilingual environment. When doing e-commerce, it is common to sell internationally and to have support requests in several languages.

Installing a chatbot that supports multiple languages for your Shopify store ensures that you create a customer experience that adapts to each customer.

Other ideas on why companies should add a bot to their online store? Hit that chat!

Tips and tricks to improve online sales with a Shopify chatbot

Using a chatbot is a simple way to improve the sales of your online store. Here are some tips and tricks that can help you to offer a unique experience that will have an impact on the conversion rate of your online store.

Offer online appointment scheduling

Qualifying a buyer's profile with a chatbot is very simple, and most importantly important. By making sure you have a buyer in front of you, you can very simply push appointment slots, in store or online. It is a powerful way to accompany Internet users in the act of buying, especially for expensive products with a longer sales cycle.

Many people say offering online appoint is a mistake but it really depends on the kind of product you sell online.

Here are two tools you can integrate in modern chatbot software:

Calendly
Cal

Example of a booking app integrated in a chatbot

Create contextualized chatbot triggers

Becoming proactive is an essential technique in generating new sales. All Shopify stores should have a chatbot that pushes messages based on the user's behaviour on the online sales website.

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Here are some chatbot templates to test for your own stores:

"Want to find out 3 examples of {Product Name X} {used/worn/applied} by our customers?"
"Answer 'promo' to be guided to the product you are looking for and receive a personalized offer for it."
"Discover 3 testimonials from {brand name} that make {brand name} a virtuous company"

Humanize the chatbot on your store

Offering a chatbot to your website visitor is a very good thing. But at some point, potential customers and buyers want to talk to humans.

It's essential to think about how to make simple transitions between bots and humans.

💡

"Many companies might be tempted to pass off their chatbots as real humans, which is a profound mistake: fundamental attention must be paid to customer experience tools that make the promise of replacing human. They should be inspected much more carefully than any other." Charles Digby-Smith - Associate Director @ Digital Native Group

This is essential because humans are capable of empathy, and have much greater business expertise than robots. No human resources available? Tools like Onepilot can help.

Initiate audio or video calls

It is often complicated to talk to a web user, install an additional plugin, a new software on the customer's computer ... All these complex tasks lengthen the buying process.

For a few years now, some chatbot software have been offering audio or video calls that do not require any additional plugins: a simple way to humanize your shopping experience!

Connecting other channels

As mentioned during this article, communication channels are multiplying: DM Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp ...

By connecting a bot to these channels, you ensure that customers remain connected and reachable at all times.

Examples of Shopify stores using chatbots

DIJO

Dijo is a brand selling probiotics for people suffering from intestinal discomfort. Here, no chatbots on the website but directly on social networks, with a community of 50,000 followers on Instagram, the company capitalizes on effective chatbots to gain productivity.

Gibus

Cycle Gibus Cycle sells 12, 14, 16 and 20 inch bikes for children. The brand capitalizes on a combination of live chat and chatbots to provide a differentiating customer experience in a highly competitive market.

AFS

Online merchant specialized foils and technical products around the world of foil, AFS markets 4 brands. As these products are expensive and technical, purchases are often long and thoughtful. To counter the intangibility of the brand, the company accompanies its customers by making appointments online.

The best Shopify apps for creating a chatbot

Crisp - The Challenger

The French customer service management platform for businesses using Shopify offers a complete solution integrating multi-channel issues at the heart of Shopify stores.

Crisp allows the creation of a chatbot for Shopify, with no technical skills required. Thanks to an automatic synchronization with Shopify, online merchants can access information directly from the customer service management tool. In addition, the platform offers a tool for creating and editing FAQ articles, integrations with essential e-commerce management tools and many other features.

Link to the website: crisp.chat/en/
Link to Shopify app store: Live chat & Chatbot

Tidio - The Leader

Tidio offers a leading multi-channel live chat and chatbot platform for Shopify stores. With over 1,500 reviews, Tidio is a powerful solution with several price points to fit any budget.

Link to website: https://www.tidio.com/fr/
Link to Shopify app store: Live chat & chatbot

Channel - The Contender

The Korean platform is an all-in-one CRM software that allows e-commerce stores to personalize every interaction with their customers. The company offers features dedicated to marketing and customer service. In addition to a CRM, channel.io users can set up chatbot scenarios and create popups to improve traffic engagement.

Link to website: https://www.tidio.com/fr/
Link to Shopify app store: Live chat & chatbot

Gorgias - The well-established

Gorgias is a specialized e-commerce helpdesk that offers an advanced level of integration with your Shopify store. Through an inbox that centralizes the different communication channels, the software allows teams to gain in productivity while improving the quality of internal exchanges. The result? A happier customer who buys and returns.

Link to the website: https://www.gorgias.com
Link to Shopify app store: Support & helpdesk