How Shopify Sidekick will change eCommerce websites
Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2025 6:55 am
Everyone seems to be cautiously excited about AI, so what should we expect in the future? What does Shopify Sidekick bring to merchants and customers, and how will it change the ecommerce landscape?
Combining language models and merchant business data
Shopify Sidekick is built as a combination of large-scale language models like OpenAI’s skype data ChatGPT and Shopify’s proprietary data, which includes data from merchants. This shows us that e-commerce businesses should expect some kind of shared content system where their data is used for overall industry analysis. However, Shopify states that the conversations and data are never shared with third parties.
For example, Shopify Sidekick can:
Adapt your tone of voice to match your website content on your website.
Create relevant content for business milestones and holidays.
Translate content into multiple languages, especially for the countries you actually sell to.
Create relevant emails and marketing campaigns with a few quick words.
Human-driven review
We expect to see this type of oversight in the future, as it is quite nerve-wracking for business owners to entrust the voice of their business to a language teaching model (or as most people probably see it: a faceless robot).
Shopify Magic, and Shopify Sidekick, offer merchants the ability to preview everything that language learning models produce. If they do an email for you, it won't be sent until you complete the review and hit the Send button.
This type of review system is a response to how language learning models are known to be inaccurate at times, especially when it comes to current events and experience-based content. There are even concerns that ChatGPT is creating toxic or biased content. We are sure this will continue to be an issue in the future, so we tend to think that the human review features will remain.
There is no fully automated AI. People still have to click the Publish or Submit buttons. And it is recommended that you review the content before doing so.
Technical consulting and business analysis
Gone are the days when an ecommerce platform’s knowledge base was a place for a simple answer. If you can’t figure out how to generate a sales report, Sidekick will do it for you. If you’d like to add a discount coupon—and can’t find the right area to do so—a simple question on Sidekick will get you there. You can even ask Sidekick to make a coupon for you, using data from your store to produce something that’s appropriate.
We believe this type of assistance will continue to be available to the vast majority of e-commerce platforms in the future. Not only that, but you’ll be able to turn to AI systems to analyze sales trends and historical data for you. For example, Sidekick has the ability to perform basic product research, summarize sales documents, and create optimized marketing campaigns.
Web Design by AI
We shouldn't forget about web design itself either. Language learning models have delved deep into the web design realm, allowing developers to generate quick code and setup websites.
Tools like Shopify Sidekick have changed and will continue to change the web design landscape for ecommerce merchants.
All it takes is opening Shopify Sidekick and asking it to adjust your site's theme colors; or add a hero image to your homepage; or change the global typography to match something more whimsical and fun.
It's still wise to review each design proposal with Shopify Sidekick, but it's nice to know that these types of AI tools don't randomly pick colors and fonts and design placement. Instead, they leverage your past design behavior and leverage what's common in the industry to ensure that design decisions align with your brand.
Combining language models and merchant business data
Shopify Sidekick is built as a combination of large-scale language models like OpenAI’s skype data ChatGPT and Shopify’s proprietary data, which includes data from merchants. This shows us that e-commerce businesses should expect some kind of shared content system where their data is used for overall industry analysis. However, Shopify states that the conversations and data are never shared with third parties.
For example, Shopify Sidekick can:
Adapt your tone of voice to match your website content on your website.
Create relevant content for business milestones and holidays.
Translate content into multiple languages, especially for the countries you actually sell to.
Create relevant emails and marketing campaigns with a few quick words.
Human-driven review
We expect to see this type of oversight in the future, as it is quite nerve-wracking for business owners to entrust the voice of their business to a language teaching model (or as most people probably see it: a faceless robot).
Shopify Magic, and Shopify Sidekick, offer merchants the ability to preview everything that language learning models produce. If they do an email for you, it won't be sent until you complete the review and hit the Send button.
This type of review system is a response to how language learning models are known to be inaccurate at times, especially when it comes to current events and experience-based content. There are even concerns that ChatGPT is creating toxic or biased content. We are sure this will continue to be an issue in the future, so we tend to think that the human review features will remain.
There is no fully automated AI. People still have to click the Publish or Submit buttons. And it is recommended that you review the content before doing so.
Technical consulting and business analysis
Gone are the days when an ecommerce platform’s knowledge base was a place for a simple answer. If you can’t figure out how to generate a sales report, Sidekick will do it for you. If you’d like to add a discount coupon—and can’t find the right area to do so—a simple question on Sidekick will get you there. You can even ask Sidekick to make a coupon for you, using data from your store to produce something that’s appropriate.
We believe this type of assistance will continue to be available to the vast majority of e-commerce platforms in the future. Not only that, but you’ll be able to turn to AI systems to analyze sales trends and historical data for you. For example, Sidekick has the ability to perform basic product research, summarize sales documents, and create optimized marketing campaigns.
Web Design by AI
We shouldn't forget about web design itself either. Language learning models have delved deep into the web design realm, allowing developers to generate quick code and setup websites.
Tools like Shopify Sidekick have changed and will continue to change the web design landscape for ecommerce merchants.
All it takes is opening Shopify Sidekick and asking it to adjust your site's theme colors; or add a hero image to your homepage; or change the global typography to match something more whimsical and fun.
It's still wise to review each design proposal with Shopify Sidekick, but it's nice to know that these types of AI tools don't randomly pick colors and fonts and design placement. Instead, they leverage your past design behavior and leverage what's common in the industry to ensure that design decisions align with your brand.