Key Takeaways
- QuackChat now connects to Shopify. The bot reads your live catalogue and answers product, variant, price, stock and category questions from it, rather than from a crawled copy of your storefront.
- It also reads your metaobjects, which is where most stores keep the tables that matter: size and fit charts, care instructions, ingredient lists, spec sheets, compatibility matrices. A bot that answers from a chart instead of guessing from a product description is the difference between a sale and a return.
- Shoppers can add an item to their own cart from inside the chat, in one tap. No in-chat checkout, and the bot never writes to your store.
- Install is one approval and one toggle. No theme code, no snippet to paste, and it survives theme updates.
- Order lookup is not included on Shopify yet. We explain why below rather than letting you find out later.
- Available on Pro and Managed.
Your catalogue, not a copy of your website
Most chatbots that claim to know your products have read your storefront the way a search engine would. That works until something changes. A product sells out, a price moves, a variant is discontinued, and the bot keeps confidently selling it, because it is answering from a snapshot taken days ago.
QuackChat asks Shopify directly. When a shopper asks whether the oat linen throw is in stock, the bot queries your catalogue in that moment and answers with what is actually true right now: the price, the variants, the stock, the category it sits in.
The practical test is the one worth running on any tool, including ours. Set a product out of stock and then ask the bot for it. Anything reading a stale copy will try to sell it to you.
The tables you built yourself
This is the part we are most pleased with, and it is Shopify specific.
Most stores selling anything that needs explaining accumulate structured reference data over time. A size and fit chart. Washing and care instructions. What something is made of. Which part fits which model. A warranty matrix.
On Shopify these live as metaobjects, which is Shopify's own name for structured data you define yourself. They are not a page and not a paragraph in a product description. They are a table with named fields, built deliberately, because the answer has to be exact.
QuackChat reads them. When a shopper asks "I am between sizes, which should I take?" or "can I put this in the dryer?", the bot answers from your chart.
The alternative is a bot inferring from prose. "Probably machine washable" and "cold machine wash, do not tumble dry" are very different answers, and only one of them is safe to give a customer on your behalf.
Two details worth knowing. First, the bot reads your field definitions before it reads the entries, because the shape is yours: one store's size guide carries chest and waist, another's carries EU, UK and US. There is nothing for us to hardcode, so we do not try. Second, if your store keeps no reference tables, nothing breaks. The bot simply answers from the product details and is told not to invent an attribute.
Add to cart without leaving the conversation
When the bot recommends something, it shows a tappable product card. One tap puts the item in the shopper's cart.
Worth being precise about what that is, because "AI adds to cart" sounds more alarming than it is. The tap is a shopper action, running against your store's own cart in the shopper's browser, exactly like the button on your product page. It is not the bot reaching into your store. There is no checkout inside the chat, and the connection to Shopify stays read-only in both directions.
The same cart awareness drives a free shipping nudge. If your store offers free shipping over a threshold, the bot can tell a shopper how close they are.
Install: one approval, one toggle
There is no code.
In QuackChat, open your bot's Settings, then Integrations, then Online Store. Pick Shopify, enter your .myshopify.com address and approve the permissions. That installs our app on your store and connects the catalogue in the same step.
Then, in your Shopify admin, open Online Store, click Edit theme, open the App embeds panel and switch QuackChat on. Paste your Bot ID, save, and the widget runs on every storefront page.
Because it is a theme app embed rather than a pasted snippet, it survives theme updates and theme switches, and uninstalling the app removes the widget cleanly and deactivates the connection on our side. Full walkthrough with screenshots is in the Shopify setup guide.
What is not included yet
Order lookup.
On WooCommerce, our bot can verify a customer with their order number and the billing email on that order, then tell them where their order is. On Shopify it cannot, and we would rather say so plainly than let you discover it in front of a customer.
The reason is Shopify's protected customer data programme. Reading the email on an order is gated behind an approval process, and we have not shipped a capability whose approval we do not hold. When that changes, it will be a deliberate release rather than something that quietly appears.
Two smaller gaps, for completeness. Merchant curated product links are a WooCommerce feature ("Linked Products") with no direct Shopify equivalent, so cross sell suggestions on Shopify come from the bot's own reading of your catalogue rather than from pairings you set by hand. Bestseller lists are WooCommerce only for the same kind of reason.
Everything else on this page is live on Shopify today.
Set it up
If you are already on Pro or Managed, it is Settings, then Integrations, then Online Store. It takes about five minutes end to end, and the setup guide has the screenshots.
If you are not, the Pro plan includes the store connection and a 30 day trial. Connect it to your own catalogue rather than a demo store, because your catalogue is the part that matters. Ask it the question your customers actually ask, the one where the answer lives in a chart rather than a description, and see what comes back.