Getting started with Shopify Sidekick

Shopify Sidekick is changing website creation and store management, making it accessible to beginners and optimizing tasks to save times for experienced merchants. It’s an AI assistant that’s built into the Shopify Admin, making content generation, sales tracking, and even website design a fast and efficient process.

Sidekick is trained for the Shopify ecosystem, so it can proactively guide you to different sections, automate tasks like product or discount creation, and more. It’s available to merchants on all plans, including Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus.

In this guide, I’ll explain what Shopify Sidekick is and how to use it for improving your store.

What is Shopify Sidekick?

Shopify Sidekick is an AI-powered commerce assistant designed to understand how Shopify works and provide personalized support for various tasks. It acts as a conversational assistant that you can use to navigate the Shopify Admin, analyze data, or generate visual or written content.

Unlike other AI tools, Sidekick is trained specifically for Shopify. So, it can proactively guide you through the Shopify Admin, automatically create products with generated images, set up discounts, and more. Instead of searching through Shopify guides, you can simply ask Sidekick specific questions.

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How does Shopify Sidekick work?

Shopify Sidekick is built into the Shopify Admin dashboard and available to all merchants. It stands out from other AI tools because it has secure access to your store’s data, like products, orders, customers, and inventory, which helps support your business efficiently.

Essentially, Shopify Sidekick works as an AI chatbot, so you can communicate your needs using natural language.

Here’s how Shopify Sidekick works:

• Native Shopify feature. It’s a free, native Shopify feature that doesn’t require installation or any additional configuration.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP). Sidekick can understand, interpret, and generate human language – both text and speech. You can use conversational prompts to ask the AI assistant to perform specific tasks.
• Machine learning. Sidekick has been trained to understand how Shopify works, which helps it analyze data and provide Shopify-specific guides. 
• Respects user permissions. Sidekick can only interact with data based on user permissions. For example, if a staff account doesn’t have access to financial reports, Sidekick won’t be able to provide insights.

Sidekick features

Sidekick works as an AI assistant rather than a simple chatbot, so it can automate tasks, optimize your store, and more. Here are the key features that Sidekick offers:

• Automatic setups. You can ask Sidekick to help set up your store, such as creating a discount for specific product(s) or creating product pages. It automatically does the steps for you – all you need to do is review and save it, helping you save loads of time.
• Quick support. With steps that require your involvement, Sidekick provides clear step-by-step guides. It often adds a button for you to click that directs you to the section you need.
• Mention option. No matter where you are in your store, you can use the “Mention” option under the “+” icon to specify what product, customer, order, or collection you want to make changes to.
• Content generation. You can request Sidekick to write text for you, such as product descriptions, email drafts, or FAQs. It helps you save time on content creation, especially if you have hundreds of products. Sidekick has memory, so you can also give it specific instructions for content writing to ensure consistent branding.
• File uploads. You can easily upload files to the chatbot, whether from the Shopify files or your device. This makes it easy to generate exact images that you need in seconds or analyze document data.
• Customer segmentation. Sidekick can create customer segments based on your needs, like purchase behavior or order value. You can use it to create personalized marketing strategies or reward loyal customers more quickly.
• Theme editing. Sidekick can edit different sections of your store, like typography, fonts, and even design. It doesn’t just make customizations faster – it makes professional designs accessible even for beginner users.

What can Shopify Sidekick help improve?

Sidekick can help improve multiple areas of your store, from content writing and image generation to technical support, design, and more. It helps automate tasks that could take hours for merchants to do manually and eliminates the need to look for resources and guides outside of Shopify.

However, after testing Sidekick for a few days, I highly suggest that you request one task at a time instead of writing detailed instructions for multiple tasks. For example, ask to change the color scheme and add an image in two separate messages, one after another.

Now, let’s review the key areas it helps improve and my experience with it.

Store design

Shopify Sidekick can turn your store idea into a design in just a few seconds. All you have to do is describe what store you want, and it will generate it for you. When I tried it myself, I found that it took around 25 seconds on average to create a store based on this prompt:

“Create me a coffee bean store with a brown background and white text.”

However, you can also request to generate images for your banner or add specific sections, like a blog or FAQ section.

When generating designs with Sidekick, make sure to create a theme backup through Online Store > Themes > Actions > Duplicate theme. This ensures you can quickly recover your store if something goes wrong.

Here are a few prompts you can use for store design:

• Create a professional-looking website for a luxurious jewelry store.
• Update my store’s color scheme to green and brown palettes.
• Change my store font to Times New Roman.
• Add a blog section to the homepage.

Photo editing

Shopify Sidekick can generate or edit any photo for your site. I found it especially handy for product photo editing. You can upload a photo of your product and ask Sidekick to remove the background, create a lifestyle picture, and more.

For example, I uploaded a photo of a red t-shirt and asked to put it on a model. Here’s the result:

Personally, I felt like the photos look more realistic than with AI models like ChatGPT. It would be harder to tell that the picture is made with AI if you didn’t know it, and it only took a few seconds to make.

If you need prompt ideas for photo editing, here are a few I tried and liked:

• Create a close-up of a model with this item.
• Create an Instagram-style photo with this item.
• Generate a professional product photo in a white background.

Content writing

Sidekick can easily generate GEO, AEO and SEO-friendly content, whether product titles, product descriptions, FAQ content, or email campaign drafts. It’s especially useful if you have tons of products – Sidekick can create unique product descriptions for all of them faster.

When I tried it myself, I opened the product I wanted to edit, and asked Sidekick to “write me a product description for this t-shirt.” It used a clear structure – a hook headline, value proposition, benefit list, and use case scenarios.

But what impressed me most was that it generated the copy straight inside the Shopify product editor:

So, there’s no need for copying and pasting. You can easily tweak what you don’t like and just click Save.

Technical support

Shopify Sidekick is designed with beginner users in mind – if you don’t know how to set up and run a site, it can simplify and speed up the process. You can ask how to customize your domain, set up payment methods or shipping rates, add or generate store policies, or even set up multi-currency.

Once you ask a specific question, it won’t just answer with plain text. Instead, it will give you a clickable button that will take you directly to the relevant section in Shopify Admin.

Since Sidekick knows the ins-and-outs of Shopify, it can walk you through important steps. This makes learning how to run your store much faster, since you don’t need to look for tutorials or video guides.

Marketing

Sidekick isn’t just for setting up your site or helping with in-store tasks. It can also be useful for post-launch store promotion. You can ask it to generate content for email campaigns, ask to set up discounts, connect your social media accounts, or perform other tasks.

Here’s an example – I requested Sidekick to create a 20% discount on my product. It automatically redirected me to the Discounts section and created the discount code. All I had to do was review the information and click Save.

Even if you know how to set up a discount, Sidekick is useful when you have loads of products. You can ask to set up discounts for specific products or for all products – it can do it all.

Reports

Many users on Reddit claim that they use Sidekick mostly for reports or data analytics. It’s a quick way to get answers without having to search for specific reports. It guides you to the report you need or gives you the specific information you’re looking for straight in the chatbox.

Here are a couple of useful prompt examples you can use for reports:

• Compare this month’s conversion rates to last month’s.
• What drove most sales this week?
• What is my most sold product?
• Tell me the bounce rates on my white t-shirt product page.
• Which traffic source converts the best?
• Which of my products have high views but low conversions?

Can Shopify apps integrate with Sidekick?

Shopify is planning to allow apps to integrate with Sidekick through Sidekick app extensions. It will allow developers to connect their apps so Sidekick can access app data and workflows. Currently, it’s selecting app developers for early access and testing so they can provide feedback.

Once apps integrate with Shopify Sidekick, merchants won’t need to manually open different apps and search for specific features. Instead, the AI assistant will be able to take merchants to the section they need.

Plus, app developers will be able to allow Sidekick to perform specific tasks inside the app. For example, it could be setting up image lazy loading in one click or managing script control.

Shopify app integration with Sidekick would mean that merchants can interact with apps using natural language. It helps find features quicker, so you don’t need to understand and remember each app’s navigation.

Shopify Sidekick limitations

Shopify Sidekick has been rolled out in December 2024 and has gone a long way throughout the year. However, it still has some limitations you should be aware of:

• Sidekick can’t do customer support – only you can communicate with your customers, but Sidekick can still assist with drafting emails.
• It’s only available on desktop – you won’t be able to use it on mobile or tablets.
• It can’t edit images within your theme or product list – if Sidekick generates an image, you’ll have to upload it to your store yourself.
• Sidekick can’t make changes without your approval – you’ll need to review and approve each change by saving the changes.
• It can’t share private data of other merchants with you for security reasons.
• Sidekick can’t perform bulk optimizations – it can’t edit SEO metadata at scale, automatically generate multiple file names or alt texts, or compress large batches of images simultaneously, as TinyIMG can.

How to use Shopify Sidekick?

Sidekick is accessible from any of the pages in your Shopify Admin, so you can access it at any time. Here’s how to use it:

1. Open your Shopify Admin.
2. In the menu bar, click the Shopify Sidekick icon, which looks like a superhero.
3. Write your first prompt and follow Sidekick’s suggestions.
4. To upload a file, click the “+” icon by the chat bar and press “Files” to search your Shopify files or click “Upload from device.”

If you want to start a new conversation, simply click on the title of the conversation and press “New Conversation.” You can also use a voice chat function, but you’ll have to provide access to your microphone. Keep in mind that Shopify may record your calls to help improve the tool.

How to provide feedback about Sidekick

Providing feedback about Sidekick responses helps the Shopify team improve the AI assistant, allowing it to keep getting better. After each Sidekick response, you can leave feedback about its answers by clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons to indicate whether the response was helpful or not.

If something goes wrong, you can click “Add comment” and share your experience. You can checkmark if Sidekick misunderstood the question, made an inaccurate suggestion, or provided a low-quality response.

Final thoughts: is using Sidekick worth it?

Shopify Sidekick is a useful tool for any merchant who is looking to save time on store management tasks. It automates website setup, design, content creation, and other areas to help you focus on product development, marketing efforts, and growing your business.

Sidekick is also an excellent tool for beginners. Thanks to conversational language and prompts, it reduces the learning curve for new merchants so they can speed up their business growth.

However, keep in mind that Sidekick is only an assistant – it can’t come up with a unique strategy for your business. It also can’t bulk optimize or boost SEO like TinyIMG, choose products to launch or branding, or develop marketing strategies, which still require your creativity and judgment for long-term success.

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About the author

Kristina Jaruseviciute

Kristina is a Senior Writer at TinyIMG responsible for informing and educating readers on all things Shopify-related. In her writings, she covers a broad range of topics, from the best apps and themes for Shopify merchants to tips on how to optimize your website for SEO, performance, and higher conversion rates.