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How to add an AI chatbot to your Shopify store (2026 guide)

Written by Joseph Russo, Principal Architect, Networks and Tech, AskVault · Reviewed by Allison Chan
Last updated: · 6 min read

What the chatbot does for a Shopify store

Most store questions fall into a handful of buckets, and a chatbot trained on your own pages handles them without you writing a single flow.

  • Product questions. Sizing, materials, compatibility and care, answered from your product descriptions and size guides.
  • Policies. Shipping times, return windows and exchanges, answered from your policy pages with a link to the page.
  • Order status. "Where is my order?" answered live from Shopify on Growth and up. Growth+
  • Hesitation on the cart page. A proactive rule opens the chat when a shopper lingers on /cart, so questions get asked instead of the tab getting closed.

The Free plan covers 50 messages a month, which is enough to try it on your real store. A store with steady traffic usually needs Starter ($39 a month, 2,000 messages) or Growth ($99 a month, 6,000 messages, plus order status and WhatsApp). See the pricing breakdown.

Step 1: paste the widget into theme.liquid

  1. In AskVault, open Channels > Web widget and copy your script tag.

  2. In Shopify admin, open Online Store > Themes, click the three-dot menu on your live theme and choose Edit code.

  3. Open Layout > theme.liquid.

  4. Find the closing </body> tag near the bottom and paste the snippet on the line above it:

    <script
      async
      defer
      src="https://api.askvault.co/widget.js"
      data-token="wt_yourtoken_here"
    ></script>

  5. Click Save and open your storefront in a private window. The chat launcher appears in the bottom-right corner.

The snippet lives in one theme. If you publish a different theme, duplicate a theme, or take a theme update that replaces theme.liquid, paste the snippet into the new theme too. Otherwise the widget quietly disappears from your store.

Step 2: train the chatbot on your store

Shopify publishes a sitemap at /sitemap.xml, and AskVault reads it to find your product, collection, policy and blog pages.

  1. In AskVault, open Knowledge > Add Source > Web Crawler.
  2. Choose Domain Crawl, paste your storefront address, and leave Use Sitemap on.
  3. Click Start Crawl. Each page becomes answerable as soon as it is indexed.

AskVault also notices that a crawled site is a Shopify store and picks up your public product catalog, so product names, prices and variants are available to the agent. Once pages are indexed, try questions like these in the chat playground:

  • "Do these jeans run small?"
  • "What is your return policy on sale items?"
  • "Do you ship to Canada, and how long does it take?"

Each answer links to the page it came from. If an answer is weak, add a Q&A pair with the exact wording you want.

Step 3: connect Shopify for order status

Growth+
  1. In AskVault, open Automation > Skills and enable Order Status (WISMO).
  2. Click Connect Shopify. Shopify asks you to approve read-only access to products, orders and customers.
  3. Approve, and you land back in AskVault.

When a customer asks where their order is, the agent asks for the order number or the email used at checkout, looks the order up in Shopify, and replies with the status and tracking link. Shopify's standard order access covers roughly the last 60 days of orders.

The skill only reads. It cannot refund, cancel or change an order; for those requests the agent can hand the conversation to your team with the escalation skill. Full details: Order Status skill and Shopify setup.

Coming next for Shopify Rolling out: product search and cart updates from inside the chat, and catalog-only product recommendations.

Step 4: nudge shoppers on the cart page

The nudge is a proactive rule. Open Automation > Proactive and create a rule with one of these triggers:

  • Page URL contains /cart, which fires as soon as the widget loads on the cart page.
  • After N seconds on the page, which fires on whatever page the shopper is on.
  • An event you track, which fires when your theme calls AskVault.track('<event name>').

Then write the opening line, for example: "Anything I can help with before you check out? Sizing, shipping or returns?"

The widget shows at most 2 proactive messages per visit, skips them for anyone already chatting, and remembers when a shopper dismisses one, so it does not turn into a pop-up. To target time spent on the cart page specifically, fire an event from your cart template after 30 seconds:

<script>setTimeout(function () { AskVault.track('cart_dwell'); }, 30000);</script>

AskVault never sees Shopify's checkout, so there is no built-in "abandoned checkout" trigger. Call AskVault.track('checkout_started') from your theme if you want one.

Match the widget to your store

Open AI Agent > Appearance to set the brand color, launcher side, welcome message and logo. Move the launcher to the bottom-left if it clashes with a sticky cart button. Changes preview before you publish and need no theme edit.

Speed and Core Web Vitals

The script loads with async and defer, so it never blocks your page from rendering. The widget bundle is about 73 KB compressed (gzip), and the launcher is positioned with fixed CSS, so it does not shift your layout.

Troubleshooting

The launcher does not appear. Open the store in a private window; Shopify caches themes for signed-in admins. Check that you edited the published theme, not a draft.

Answers are out of date. Open Knowledge, select the pages and click Resync selected. See keeping knowledge up to date.

"I couldn't find that order." Ask the customer for the exact order number, including the #, or the email used at checkout.

Two chat bubbles on the page. Another chat app such as Shopify Inbox is still installed. Remove it or move one launcher to the other side.

FAQ

Do I need Shopify Plus?

No. The widget works on every Shopify plan. Plus only matters for a widget inside checkout.

Can the chatbot apply discount codes?

It can share a discount code that appears in your content, but it cannot create or apply Shopify discount codes. The discount negotiator skill works with Stripe, not Shopify.

Does it handle multiple currencies?

It quotes prices in your storefront's single configured currency, captured when the catalog syncs. For per-visitor currency, link shoppers to the product page.

Does it know live stock levels?

No. Stock and prices are as of your last sync. Treat the product page as the source of truth for stock.

Will it lift my conversion rate?

We do not have published conversion data yet, so we will not quote a number. The useful test is your own: run the Free plan for a few weeks and watch which questions it answers in analytics.

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