What Is Chat Bot?
Chat bots are a diverse bunch of software applications that can imitate human-like interactions with users through both text-based and voice-based interfaces. Rules of human conversation, which a chat bot receives as a readymade algorithm or "figures out" from Machine Learning, allow this little helper to analyze, understand, and generate appropriate responses to a wide variety of user inquiries and requests. User input is processed in real-time, which is an easy task for a simple rule-based, keyword-driven chatbot, although it requires quite a lot of resources for a voice-based bot.
If you wish to learn about the very basics of this process, look no further than our previous post about best chatbots for Shopify. This topic, however, remains of much interest from our partners and customers. Today we'll talk a little more about chat bots in e-commerce, and best chat bots on the market for this particular purpose.
How to Choose the Right Chat Bot for E-commerce
For a start, you might not need an expensive conversational chat bot for an online shop. Even the most intelligent AI agents powered by some of the most powerful LLM models won't solve your business's problems if you don't have the right strategy to use them. A well-programmed rule-based chat bot may be just as good for your needs, if not better. You should always start with the strategy, and what your customers really want.
AI-Powered vs. Rule-Based Chat Bots
Chat bots function through two primary mechanisms: either via carefully crafted pre-programmed response scripts that follow specific conversation flows, or through more advanced artificial intelligence systems. The AI-powered versions leverage cutting-edge technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to comprehend user intent, context, and nuances.
We have already covered the main advantages of using AI in e-commerce in a separate article — feel free to revisit it if you need a crash course in the very basics of AI automation.
Live Chat Bots vs. Automated Bots
Even the most powerful AI agents can't solve 100% of customer requests or complaints. To ensure customer satisfaction, you might need human support nearby. However, a live chat with some automation will still be of tremendous help to your support specialists — or to yourself, if you are the owner of a small e-commerce enterprise.
Would I Be Better Off with a Live Chat Bot?
Consider these pros and cons to make a strategic decision about the level of automation that you want from your chat bots.
Live chat is limited by available staff, whereas chatbots can handle unlimited simultaneous requests and automatically collect feedback and contact information.
Live chat is better for situations needing a personal touch (like complex customer support), while chatbots excel at handling simple tasks, FAQs, and basic information requests.
Live chat platforms offer multichannel communication through social media, email, and messaging, while chatbots interact through specific interfaces like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
What Are Best Chat Bots for Online Shops?
In their simplest implementations, chat bots perform the same function as the Search Website box, but better, faster, and more efficiently. They answer questions about your services, step by step, but they don't shower your customer with too much information that they don't need at the moment. In this capacity, bots are also frequently used for troubleshooting and complaint management. On the other hand, if your company routinely manages tens of thousands of customer requests, it would be unwise not to use this data for training your in-house AI core as well as chat bots, which can be easily integrated with it.
Most importantly, chat bots can handle orders for your customers, which is the main reason why you should use chat bots on an e-commerce site. In this domain, AI chatbots may be more beneficial, as they learn to predict what customers want and suggest tailor-made offers based on that.
Other tasks include booking appointments, lead generation, and multi-language support. Your business will definitely benefit from using AI chat bots in several languages if your customer base is multinational.
E-commerce Chat Bot for Website Integration: Where to Start?
A truly smart chatbot is the one that best understands the customer journey. Start with the data and the documentation that you have on your customers' journeys — and Shopify's blog already has an in-depth article about customer journey maps.
Then, turn to your company's knowledge base (it might need an update and optimisation to be used with chat bots). Do you also have enough text data in the form of conversations with clients to train your chat bot on them? These two sources of information will be of tremendous help in integrating a chat bot in your business.
How to Create a Chat Bot?
Naturally, software development skills give you a major advantage in creating your own little helpers for your website or an online store. Even before the rise of commercial AI, some of the first exercises in programming for many students were chat bots. There are, however, endless opportunities even for those who've never coerced their computer into uttering "Hello World".
So, let's talk about Chatbot builders…
These platforms offer user-friendly interfaces with drag-and-drop tools, pre-built templates, and integrations with various services. No coding skills are required.
A solution by companies like Stanley 1913, the brand behind the famous Stanley cup. The company offers free courses in chat bot building and implementation. Besides, this provider offers a conversational AI agent Lyro capable of sorting through your company's internal knowledge base and answering up to 70% of customer problems.
This company helps its customers build bots for web and WhatsApp, and is known for its easy integrations with other instruments for marketing and sales — Shopify, of course, but also such important platforms as HubSpot, Mailchimp and Slack. The visual flow builder is user-friendly enough, and the Free Forever plan includes 100 free chats per month.
The official Meta partner, this solution is popular for building Facebook Messenger bots. Like Landbot, it is easily integrated with Shopify as well as other software. Chatfuel has its own AI agent Fuely, which you can hire for your customer support.
Built on top of its Google Cloud, Google has its own solution for chat bots, including Dialogflow CX and Conversational Agents, which is still in preview as of February 2025. This sounds very promising, as Google offers omni-channel implementation that includes web, mobile, messengers, and even telephony partners.
All these services provide clear and thorough instructions on how to implement a chat bot on a website. However, let us know if you want to know more!
Getting a Custom Customer Service Chat Bot
The topic of chat bots is so rich and broad that no amount of articles can cover it all. We hope that we've put together a friendly guide all about chat bots in e-commerce. These helpful digital assistants are like your virtual team members, ready to chat with customers through text or voice. We've covered everything from simple rule-based bots to smart AI-powered ones, showing you how they can make your business life easier — whether it's answering customer questions or helping process orders. We want you to know that picking the right strategy comes first, so we've included some practical tips on getting started. We've also shared some great platforms you might love, like Tidio, Landbot, Chatfuel, and Google's Dialogflow.
On the downside, no readymade solution can cover your particular business needs. You might want to develop a chat bot on your own, just for the fun of it. It is, however, more efficient to ask for help from an expert. If your business needs a custom integration of best-performing chatbots for Shopify — don't hesitate to contact us!
