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Shopify Bots: The Key to Growing Your Ecommerce Store

10 min read
Jun 5, 2024
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Shopify is one of the world’s most popular ecommerce platforms. With over two million global users, brands and businesses of every size rely on Shopify to build and run their online stores. 

A Shopify store is easily accessible for customers, allowing them to shop online conveniently. Since convenience is among the main reasons customers choose ecommerce stores, you need to do all you can to make their experience even smoother. How do you grow sales and improve the performance of your Shopify store? It’s quite simple—you use Shopify bots.

Learn all about Shopify bots and how they can help your ecommerce business.

What are Shopify bots?

Ecommerce stores must keep up with technological advancements to provide customers with the best possible experience. Failure to do so could cause your store to be left behind by the competition. 

Third-party companies have built several specialized apps for Shopify to help store owners manage customer support, marketing, sales, and other vital processes. There are over 13,000 third-party apps available on Shopify’s app store, and Shopify bot apps are among the most commonly downloaded ones. 

In short, Shopify bots are software that use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automatically perform tasks that would have required a human customer support agent. 

How do Shopify bots benefit your online store?

The Shopify bots we will discuss in this article are chatbots that assist with marketing, sales, and customer support. The best part? They are active 24/7. A Shopify bot can handle customer queries, generate support tickets, or provide self-service solutions even if no human customer service agents can be online. 

These bots boost sales by providing personalized recommendations to customers who are more likely to make a purchase. Shopify bots also directly contribute to a much better overall customer experience by enabling faster issue resolution.

source: Shopify

Apart from a superior customer experience, Shopify bots assist store owners with essential functions like inventory management by sending alerts regarding low stock levels. Business owners can also use Shopify bots for lead generation by running automated email marketing campaigns. 

source: Shopify

The sooner you implement a Shopify bot for your online store, the more benefits you will experience. The four key benefits are:

Different types of Shopify bots

Shopify bots are versatile tools that can benefit your online store in many different ways. But there isn’t a universal solution that all store owners should use. 

Depending on the features you would like to implement, there are different types of Shopify bots to choose from. A diverse array of them are on the platform, serving their own functions. 

There are five main types of Shopify bots available for ecommerce stores:

Sales AI chatbots

These AI-powered chatbots are instrumental in boosting your Shopify store’s performance. AI chatbots can increase customer engagement and revenue. Throughout an organic conversation, they provide personalized product recommendations to customers, which is likely to result in a sale. 

They can track the customer journey, cross-sell and upsell at checkout, and use the abandoned cart feature to prompt customers to complete a purchase when they return to the store. 

These sales-centric Shopify bots are perfect for online stores that maintain a lot of stock-keeping units (SKUs) in their inventory. 

Flowbots

A simpler version of the AI-powered sales chatbot is the flowbot. This Shopify bot has little to no AI functionality; instead, it relies on a pre-programmed decision tree with scripted questions to help shoppers decide what to purchase. These flowbots use simple “yes or no” questions to deliver customer recommendations. 

While flowbots cannot provide personalized recommendations like AI-powered chatbots, they can still be effective for smaller online stores working with a tighter budget and more limited inventory. 

Customer support chatbots

Do you want to increase the efficiency of your customer service team? Then, customer support Shopify bots are what you need. These chatbots are built to respond to customer queries and help with simple issues. 

Customers can simply ask these chatbots a question and the bot will give an accurate answer from within your organization’s knowledge base. 

These bots can also track customer conversations and escalate them to a human agent where necessary. This saves time for the customer service team to focus on high-priority complex tasks, while the Shopify bot handles more routine interactions with simple answers.

Real-time live chatbots

Shopify doesn’t have any bots of its own, so if you want to implement live chat features on your platform, you will need a third-party Shopify bot. They connect customers to a company representative at the click of a button.

Live chat solutions provide a personalized experience with a human touch. Of course, you will still need a team of chat agents to handle all the customer support requests or sales queries. With the right live chat Shopify bot, your team will be empowered to increase their output with features like AI assistance and canned responses.

Lead generation chatbots

If you need help generating new leads or setting up customer consultation or service appointments, you can use a lead generation Shopify chatbot. Like flowbots, these are simplistic software that don’t necessarily use AI. 

The sole focus of lead generation bots is capturing information about potential customers, which a customer service agent can later use to resolve their issue. They do this by asking store visitors a set of scripted questions from a template and then compiling the responses to share with the customer service team.

With that, we’ve covered the five main types of Shopify bots that can be used to grow your online store. However, they aren’t the only bots that operate on this popular ecommerce platform. There is another, completely separate category of Shopify bots known as sneaker bots, and they are worth mentioning.

What are sneaker bots?

Unlike every other type of Shopify bot covered so far, sneaker bots are used by shoppers, not store owners. With limited-edition sneakers becoming highly prized items in ecommerce retail, sneaker bots emerged as a solution for enthusiastic collectors. 

These sneaker bots are designed to automatically discover and purchase specific sneakers from online stores. When their chosen sneaker edition is listed on an online store, a sneaker bot will automatically add it to the customer’s shopping cart and complete the checkout process. This allows collectors to get their hands on sneakers much faster than they normally would and will purchase their desired item even if they are offline. Sneaker bots can also be programmed to buy any other coveted product.

Are sneaker bots legal?

At the moment, auto-checkout bots like sneaker bots are still legal. However, they can pose difficulties for ecommerce store owners. When an auto-checkout bot buys out all the stock of a particular item, it can cause frustration to other customers. 

If you use Shopify Plus, you can take advantage of their built-in bot protection tool. You can also look for alternative solutions to protect your website from losing stock because of auto-checkout sneaker bots.

Popular Shopify bots for your ecommerce store

With the number of Shopify bots available on the platform, choosing the best one for your business can get confusing. But don’t worry, we’ve compiled a short list of the most widely used Shopify bots in 2024 and their defining features. 

Here are the four best Shopify bots for your online store:

One of the most versatile Shopify bots on the market is Tidio. It lets you implement chatbot and live agent support in your store. 

Tidio is a highly customizable Shopify bot with dozens of preset themes and the ability to create unique chatbot templates. It also provides access to detailed analytics. 

Tidio is available for three differently priced plans, ranging from $29 to $499 a month. 

Gobot is the ideal Shopify bot for store owners looking to reduce the burden on their customer support team. It automates support ticket generation and other repetitive tasks. 

Gobot’s most distinctive feature is its AI-powered shopping quizzes, which collect valuable information from store visitors. It uses this data to build detailed customer profiles and deliver personalized recommendations. 

Gobot’s subscription plans start from as low as $10 a month and go up to $9,000 a year. 

If you want to improve the efficiency of your sales operations, Reporty is the right Shopify app for your store. It benefits sellers by delivering sales reports and notifications through Slack. It automatically compiles order summaries for your store at timed intervals. 

Reporty has a free and premium version, so you can try it before deciding if it's worth the investment.

LiveChat is one of the best Shopify bots you can install for real-time conversations with your customers. You can take control of all customer interactions, improve the quality of engagements, and grow your store with every chat. 

LiveChat enables you to connect with customers meaningfully, driving up satisfaction levels and sales figures in concert.

The key features of LiveChat’s Shopify bot include:

LiveChat is the ideal solution for customer conversations on Shopify, and new users can enjoy a free 14-day trial before signing up with the service.

Case study: How LiveChat drives sales and conversions

Auto Accessories Garage is a US-based retailer of car parts. Because it sells specialized mechanical equipment, customers frequently need guidance and direction before purchasing, especially when shopping online. 

The company’s legacy system of phone communication was leading to too much customer churn, so Auto Accessories Garage needed a fast-acting solution. 

The company’s search finally led it to implementing LiveChat on its website. With a team of 24 agents, it provided customers with live chat support seven days a week. Using LiveChat saw the customer interaction rate increase by 30%, and leads who interacted with the LiveChat channel were five times more likely to convert by purchasing. 

How to add Shopify bots to your online store

Now, you’re well prepared to supercharge your Shopify store’s performance with Shopify bots. All you need to do is get your chosen solution up and running. 

It’s a simple four-step process, and you can get started right away.

1.Choose the right Shopify bots

Research what you need to accomplish by adding Shopify bots to your store. Once you’ve found the right solutions that match your use case and are within your budget, look them up on the Shopify app store.

2. Install Shopify bots

Once you’ve found the bots you need on the Shopify app store, click the “Add app” button. Follow all the prompts to complete the installation process.

3. Customize the widget

Your Shopify chatbot will appear as a widget in your online store. Before going live, you can customize its appearance, settings, and placement on your website.

4. Test and launch

Conduct a few rounds of testing to ensure the Shopify bot is performing as expected. Once you are satisfied with the results, turn the widget on from your Shopify dashboard. 

That’s all there is to it!

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Conclusion

You can use a wide array of third-party Shopify bots to boost your ecommerce store’s performance. These bots improve customer service, streamline lead generation, and increase sales when added to your store. Shopify bots are central to the future of ecommerce customer interactions, and your store needs to adopt these tools as soon as possible. 

Try a free 14-day trial of LiveChat to see how beneficial Shopify bots can be for your ecommerce business.