Using Shopify Sidekick and AI to Manage Your Store
Shopify Sidekick AI Assistant
Running a Shopify store means you’re switching between a lot of jobs in a single day. You write product copy, check inventory, create sales reports, tweak your theme, build promotions and lots, lots more. If you’re a solo merchant or have a small team, then that’s a lot of hats to wear. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a store manager who could take care of all that for you. Well, now you do, in the form of AI.
Sidekick is Shopify’s built-in AI assistant that helps you do all these tasks right from the Shopify admin. And you can do it all using simple, plain language. No coding or Liquid required. If you’ve used ChatGPT or Gemini then you can use Sidekick. Just type what you want in the prompt and Sidekick will do its magic. You can even use your microphone and speak directly to it, you don’t even have to type anymore (ah, the future is here!) AI tools and prompts are quite common these days so we’ll assume (for the sake of this blog) that you already know about AI and writing prompts. So let’s jump into Shopify’s Sidekick assistant and see what it can do for you.
What is Shopify Sidekick
Sidekick is an AI assistant built into Shopify. You access Sidekick inside your Shopify admin from the nav bar. The icon in the nav bar looks like a little purple superhero guy. Once you start learning Sidekick, you’ll think it’s a superhero too. It’s trained to understand Shopify features and workflows. You won’t use it for random stuff like ChatGPT, you’ll use it for Shopify specific needs. It understands your store’s specific context, meaning it can respond in a way that matches what’s in your admin instead of giving generic advice.
What’s cool is that Sidekick can answer questions but it can also complete work. You can ask it to update parts of your theme or create and update things like reports and automation. You’ll do all of this from the Sidekick panel in the Shopify admin. Just enter your prompt into Sidekick and it gives you an output to review. You’re able to confirm everything before you actually apply it to your store. That way you can be sure it’s not making a mistake or using the wrong data (it’s AI after all so you should always double check.) Anyone on your team can use the tool. Don’t worry though, Sidekick works with the permission rules you already use in Shopify so you can decide who has access. Now that you know what it is, let’s get into all the fun stuff you can do with Sidekick.
Using Sidekick in Shopify
Shopify Sidekick is similar to using ChatGPT, Gemini or any other AI tool. You enter something into the text prompt and it returns a result. To get the most out of Shopify’s Sidekick however, it’s best to treat it like a “generator” and not like a search box. You need to give it a goal, or task to complete. If you need to accomplish something, use Sidekick. If you just want to search for a product in your store, then you’re not making the best use of its capabilities.
The more specific you are with your prompts, the better results you’ll get from the system. Remember, Sidekick is trained specifically on Shopify’s features so you can “mention” specific store resources like products, orders, discounts, pages, customers, segments, and more. That means you can ask Sidekick directly about any of these as part of your prompt. Let’s look at some examples to help you understand.
Example #1: Creating Shopify reports using Sidekick
You can create any type of Shopify report right from the prompt. Sidekick will generate the ShopifyQL behind the scenes and output a sample of that report. You can review the results and if it looks good, save it to your store analytics. If it doesn’t seem quite right, simply tweak the text and Sidekick will update the output with the new information. To get the most out of your prompt, you should include specifics about the desired time range, product, or customer. For example, a typical report prompt would look like this:
“Show total sales for California customers over the past 60 days, then break it out by first-time vs returning.”
Sidekick will then pull this information from your store sales and provide the report. If the results aren’t what you want, refine the prompt and try again. Once you’re satisfied with the results, you can choose to save the report in your Shopify analytics for future usage.
Example #2: Adding metafields and metaobjects
You can do more than just generate reports, you can actually affect fields and values within your store. Take Metafields and metaobjects, creating them tends to be a slow and repetitive process that is easy to mess up. This is a great use case for Sidekick. Use it to create and manage the metafield values and metaobject entries.
Let’s say you want to use metaobjects to add designer or supplier info to your products. You can ask Sidekick to create and enter the fields like name, description, location and details. Your prompt may look something like this:
“Add a new designer to my Designer metaobject. Name: Joe Designs. Description: Top fashion house for shirt designs., location: New York. Link it to the Products with the vendor ‘designer-joe’.”
Sidekick will create the required metobject fields and then apply the value to the appropriate products that match the tag from your prompt.
Example #3: Make theme edits
If your design or HTML skills aren’t the best, don’t worry, Sidekick can suggest and apply theme changes within the theme editor. To make design changes, enter the theme editor in your Shopify admin and let Sidekick do the work. Once you enter your changes, Sidekick will show you a preview of the new design. If you like it, you have to manually save changes for them to take effect. Here is an example of a change you can quickly accomplish via Sidekick:
“On the product pages, increase spacing between the price and the Add to cart button and keep it consistent on mobile.”
That’s it, Sidekick will apply the correct HTML, Liquid and CSS required to make the design update. You can even ask for other design related tasks like changing the color of your buttons, or generating an all new image for your hero banner.
Save time with Shopify Sidekick
Sidekick saves you time because it cuts down the busywork. Stop spending your day clicking through menus and jumping between Shopify screens. Now you can describe what you need in Sidekick and it will output a draft for you to review. If the output isn’t totally correct, then you can try another prompt until you get it right. Bring your idea to life just by describing it. The goal of Shopify Sidekick is to reduce the number of clicks it takes to implement your goals. This helps you stay focused on business. Sidekick will also save you time on those annoying repetitive tasks you have to do every week or month. Just create a Flow and say hello to automation.
Recurring tasks
One great thing about Shopify’s Sidekick is using it to create recurring workflows. Sidekick can tap into Shopify Flow and make automated services. You just need to break the workflow down into a set of rules, then Sidekick can make almost anything. Think of a workflow rule looking something like this:
“When X happens, do Y, and tell Z”
If you can break your tasks into this rule model, then you can Sidekick to make it for you. Following this prompt model, you’re specifying the trigger, the action and the alert. Sidekick will draft this rule into a real Shopify Flow. This may sound a bit confusing but it’s actually rather simple. Using this rule model, let’s create a recurring prompt:
“Create a recurring workflow that sends a discount email to customers who placed their first order, then tag the customer”
Sidekick will analyze that prompt and break it down into a series of steps. Those steps then get converted into the workflow in Flow. So in this case, the trigger is an order, the action is sending an email, and the alert is adding a tag. Go back and look at the prompt above and see how each piece influences the Flow. Let’s outline another workflow prompt:
Trigger: A customer is from New York
Action: Add them to a New York Segment
Alert: Send them an email with a discount for NY locals
Your prompt for that would look something like this:
“Create a recurring workflow that send a discount code to any new customer based in New York then add that customer to a New York segment”
Sidekick will then generate the Flow from that prompt. Flow provides lots of easy editing capabilities so you can always go back and edit it any time. Within Flow, just open each step in the editor and adjust the values or triggers as needed.
Creating recurring tasks is that easy, describe what you want, let Sidekick build the first version. Shopify lets you save prompts as Sidekick “skills,” so you can turn the requests into repeatable shortcuts and use them again whenever you need them.
Getting The Most Out of Sidekick
Most of the time, you already know what you want, you just may not know where to do it within the Shopify admin. This is how you’ll get the most out of Sidekick. Let it bring your ideas to (virtual) life. Describe the outcome you want in plain language and then review what it produces. That’s the real win. Sidekick helps you spend less time on tasks and more time running your business.
If all this sounds intimidating, don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it right away. It’s designed to be easy. Think of it as a support tool and not your replacement. You are still the one making decisions, setting the rules and approving changes. The AI is simply doing the work. Smart merchants are not using AI to replace their whole staff, they’re using AI to remove delays and gain efficiencies. That means you can move faster and keep your store updated without burning your day on busywork. When you embrace Sidekick, you are choosing to work smarter.
If you’re still confused and feel AI is too daunting, then we’re here to help. Contact Sunrise Integration and we can provide help with our Shopify Success plans. This includes lots of Shopify support services including training on using Sidekick. Let’s work together on increasing sales, improving efficiency and driving more traffic to your Shopify store. Reach out today!
