Connect Shopify

What it does

Installs on your Shopify store and sends what the store knows into a knowledge base. The assistant then answers from it and cites the product or page it used.

It only ever reads. Nothing in this app writes to your store.

What it reads

Only products that are for sale. A product in Draft, Unlisted or Archived is never sent -- and if one that was already synced changes to any of those, it is removed from the knowledge base rather than left behind. The same holds for a page you unpublish and a collection whose description you delete. Anything the assistant could still offer after you took it down would be offering it at yesterday's price, for ever.

Products that are for sale but not on your online store. Shopify has two separate switches: one says a product can be sold, the other says it appears on your storefront. A product with only the first one on is real and has no page, so the link the assistant would give a shopper leads nowhere. Those are left out.

If your store has any, the app asks you once, on its own screen, and only then. Say "include them" if you sell those products another way -- wholesale, in person, through a marketplace -- and you want the assistant to answer questions about them anyway. It will describe them without a working link. Including them still never includes a Draft product: not on the storefront and not finished are different things.

It does not read customers or orders. The app asks for products and content and nothing else, so who bought what never reaches us.

What a shopper gets

A cited product is shown as a product, not as a footnote: its photo, its name and a button that opens it on your store. That works in every surface -- the chat panel, the search box, the full page -- and in your own Playground, so you can judge an answer the way a visitor will see it.

Do you have a snowboard for under 700? The Hydrogen Snowboard is 600.00 USD and in stock. It comes in one size, and it is in the Winter collection. (with the product's photo and a link to it) Do you ship to Ireland, and how much is it? Yes. International shipping is 30.00 USD, and free on orders weighing 20 kilograms or more.

The second one is worth noticing: shipping rates and their conditions are read from your delivery profiles, so "is it free" has an answer before the basket does.

Connect it

1. Install the app on your store.
2. Choose a plan. The app opens Shopify's own plan page in your admin. Every plan starts with a free trial, and it is charged on your Shopify bill -- see [Plans and billing](#plans-and-billing). Until a plan is chosen, the app shows that page and nothing else.
3. Paste your User ID and an API key. Both are in your workspace under API keys: the User ID at the top of that page, and a key you create there with the ingest:write scope. They are checked before anything is saved, so a wrong value fails immediately. No account yet? The app's I do not have an account yet link creates one, already billed through Shopify.

The two have to belong together: a key pairs with the id of the member who created it, which is shown beside the key in the list and again the moment the key is created. If you are signed in to the workspace, the id at the top of the page is yours and a key you create there matches it.

1. Choose a knowledge base. If your workspace has none yet, create one first -- the app says so rather than failing later.

The first sync starts on its own as soon as you connect. There is a Sync now button for the rest.

Changing the key, or checking it still works

Both are on the Connected card in the app, and neither needs you to disconnect first:

• Re-check the saved key asks WelcomeAI whether the key on file still works, still belongs to the User ID you gave, and can still write into the knowledge base this store uses. It saves nothing; it tells you which of the three is the problem, if one is.
• Change credentials opens the same two fields you filled in when you connected. The new values are checked before anything is saved, so the old ones stay in place until the new ones pass. Choosing a different knowledge base does not move what has already been synced: those documents stay in the old one until you disconnect.

Uninstalling, and coming back

Uninstalling the app in Shopify forgets everything you gave it: your User ID, your API key and the knowledge base. If you install it again, it asks for them again. Your Shopify data is never touched, and the documents already in your knowledge base stay there.

The store in Connected sources

A connected store appears as a source in the knowledge base's Sources tab, alongside a crawl or a WordPress site. Pause it to stop accepting what the store sends without uninstalling anything; delete it to detach the documents it wrote. Its Settings hold only a site address, and a Shopify store never needs one: the app sends every product with its full address already on it.

Plans and billing

The app is paid for on your Shopify bill, never by a separate card with us. Shopify hosts the page where the plan is chosen, collects the charge with the rest of your bill, and handles trials, proration and refunds.

• The same plans and prices as on welcomeai.dev: Starter, Pro and Business, monthly or yearly, as listed on our pricing page. Each starts with a 14-day free trial; Shopify keeps count of the trial days a store has used, so reinstalling does not start a new one.
• Changing plan. Open the app's Plan and usage tab and choose Change plan: it opens the same Shopify page, where moving up or down is one click and Shopify prorates it. The change reaches your workspace as soon as you are back in the app, and within the hour if you are not.
• What the plan covers. The workspace your store connects to takes that plan: its limits, its usage meters and its features are exactly the ones the plan has on welcomeai.dev. Its Billing page says it is billed through Shopify and links to the plan page instead of offering a checkout.
• Already paying us directly? Connecting a store moves the workspace to your Shopify bill, and the subscription you had with us stops renewing at the end of the period you already paid for. Nothing is charged twice and nothing paid is lost.
• Bring your own key is not available on plans billed through Shopify yet.
• Two stores, one workspace. Each store chooses its own plan. The workspace gets the larger of the two, and a store without a plan does not sync.
• When a plan ends -- cancelled, or paused by Shopify because the store's own bill is unpaid -- the store stops syncing and the chat stops answering until a plan is active again. Everything already in the knowledge base stays where it is.

Uninstalling the app ends the plan, as Shopify does for every app. The workspace stays yours: it becomes read-only, and you can carry on with it by choosing a plan on its Billing page in WelcomeAI.

Put the chat on your storefront

Syncing puts your store in a knowledge base. It does not put the chat on your site -- that is a second, deliberate step, and it is a switch rather than a snippet:

The app shows you the key and a button that opens your theme editor with the switch already found. If you would rather do it by hand: Online Store > Themes > Customize > App embeds, turn on WelcomeAI chat, and paste the key. It starts with wg_.

Because it is an app embed and not pasted code, uninstalling the app takes the chat with it. Nothing is left behind in your theme.

Every widget type goes on without code

The app embed can pass a key and nothing else, so it carries the two types that place themselves. The other four go in as an app block -- a WelcomeAI widget block you add to whichever section you want in the theme editor:

The Install tab of each widget says which of the two applies, opens the theme editor with the block already being added, and shows the key to paste into it. The same is in the app's Settings tab under Put the chat on your storefront.

Both are owned by the app: uninstalling it takes the chat, the embed and every block with it, and your theme goes back to exactly what it was. You never paste code into a theme.

Staying current

Products and collections re-sync when Shopify tells us they changed, which is within seconds.

Pages, articles, policies and shipping rates do not: Shopify publishes no webhook for them. They refresh when you press Sync now. If you have just rewritten your refund policy, press it.

Questions

Why is it billed through Shopify? Apps on the Shopify App Store charge through Shopify, and it keeps everything for your store on one bill: Shopify collects it with your other apps, shows it in your admin, and handles refunds and failed payments.

I already pay WelcomeAI with a card. Do I pay twice? No. When your store connects, the workspace moves to your Shopify bill and the card subscription stops renewing at the end of the period you already paid for.

Does it slow my store down? The sync reads through Shopify's API from our servers and touches your storefront not at all. The chat itself is one 565-byte script, loaded async, so it cannot delay a page from rendering -- and nothing further loads until a shopper opens the chat.

What happens to a product I unpublish? It is deleted from the knowledge base on the next sync, which a product change triggers within seconds. Cached answers for that knowledge base are dropped at the same time, so nobody is told an old price a minute later.

Can I choose what gets synced? Not yet. The whole store goes into the knowledge base you pick, and you can delete documents from the knowledge base afterwards.

It says the user id does not belong to this workspace. The id and the key have to come from the same workspace, and the id has to be a member of it. The usual cause is an id copied while signed in somewhere else. Open API keys inside the workspace the key belongs to and take both values from there.

It says the key was issued to a different member. The key is real, but somebody else created it. Use the id shown beside that key, or create your own key and use the pair it gives you.

It says a knowledge base is not one this key can write to. The key is scoped to a single knowledge base and you chose a different one. Create an unscoped key, or pick the base the key belongs to.