It is no secret that Shopify’s well-built and streamlined e-commerce platform has created plenty of success stories over the last decade. In fact, a few of the most influential online shops are rooted in Shopify and continue to use the platform even today.
While the services offered by the platform are the main driver of this trend, another part of its operational success is the introduction and smooth integration of third-party chatbots into its features. If you are a retailer using Shopify and you desire to boost the effectiveness of your daily operations, it is usually highly recommended that you install a chatbot or two to interact with your online customers.
In a related article, I’ve discussed the effectiveness of chatbots for eCommerce and customer service, but in this article, I will consider some of the best Shopify chatbots for the Shopify eCommerce platform and briefly explain how these Shopify chatbots can positively influence your eCommerce business as a whole.
Shopify-optimized Chatbots Short List
(in no particular order)
- Messenger Chatbot Marketing
- Bargainator
- Tidio
- Relish
- Quick Reply Livechat & Chatbots
- Gorgias
- Gobot
Messenger Chatbot Marketing
(Ako-chatbot)
For the simplest chatbot that can be integrated into your Shopify store, Messenger Chatbot Marketing is perhaps the most straightforward option. There is one specific caveat, though: the platform is obviously restricted only to Shopify and Facebook.
That said, all the options available are fundamental, simple, and directly beneficial. For example, the Messenger Shopify chatbot can let customers directly place orders using Facebook without having to go through any other official channel. Setting up FAQ responses, a big part of any chatbot feature, is easy and you can do it with very clear action titles and advanced options that only require looking at simple customization menus.
So all in all, this Shopify chatbot is fast, easy, simple, and actually quite straightforward to implement especially for the time and money investment. If you’re a smaller business it only requires a basic lead generation platform, this will be your primary customer engagement engine (via Facebook, of course).
Bargainator
Do you know what’s one of the fastest ways to convince your customers of your chatbot’s conversational prowess? Have it learn how to deal with haggling and bargaining! True to the name of the chatbot, it is a sales assistant that does not just engage but is designed to be able to even entertains its potential sales leads through gamification.
And it’s not just some fake system that fools users into thinking they are getting something for nothing. At least, if you design your Shopify chatbot reasonably, customers may have direct positive experiences with the smart responses that you design when they attempt to haggle and discuss. Not only would your online shop have increased sales via optimization, but more people might simply get curious to see what the bargaining fuss is all about.
Aside from its titular “bargaining” features, Bargainator can also retarget sequences triggered by visitors who did not follow through with the final purchase (recover abandoned carts). Smartly interacting with customers lets it collect additional bits of data that may be used for its total performance analytics as well.
Tidio
In this list that shows off lots of different unique perks for other Shopify chatbots, Tidio may seem like the boring outlier. But, reliability-wise, it is just as good, if not better, as it offers many of the things that other Shopify chatbot provide, but is optimized for Shopify, and offered at reasonable-ish rates (it has a free plan).
So, for the most part, Tidio can: greet visitors, guilt-trip visitors, eloquently explain a specific product, openly announce (scheduled) promotions, send targeted discount offers, or even just wave a green or red flag for item status notifications. Some of the typical optimization strategies, such as retargeting abandoned carts or handling processing queries, are also available for Tidio.
Yup, all are pretty typical and expected, but well known and reliable, reflected directly by its review numbers on Shopify’s app store. It is more than good enough to be a solid recommended Shopify chatbot platform for Shopify users of various business sizes.
Relish
Here’s another simple option for the relatively small-scale Shopify businessperson. It is officially classified as an AI-powered shopping assistant, built directly for sales promotion, with a bit of essential customer interaction features here and there. It is quite basic, to be honest. But Relish is wrapped with good developer support and lower than average cost (also has a free plan!) to help clients get started immediately.
Aside from not having uber-sophisticated features and customization options like other bigger chatbot platforms, another considerable drawback of Relish is that it has no analytics features. Depending on the nature of your online business, this could be a make-or-break moment, so be sure to evaluate whether having a significantly quicker to implement chatbot is a higher priority than data analysis.
Putting that aside, it is quite nifty to note that Relish has a 30-day trial period, where you will be given access to a select number of Pro and Premium features for you to fiddle and experiment with.
Quick Reply Livechat & Chatbots
(IntelliTicks)
Significant AI and algorithm enhancements ensure that chatbots stay effectively engaged with customers without breaking their intended function (due to some mismatched response). IntelliTicks demonstrates this beautifully with its smart interaction system. If Relish feels like an assistant, then IntelliTicks would feel like an adjutant.
In addition to the chatbot’s basic interaction capabilities, IntelliTicks also has relatively smooth(er) fallback options, making customer support seamless (still noticeable, of course!) and wait-free if the shop can implement it well (hint: back and forth). As for its UI, it is as easy to use as many others in this list, usually keeping its drag and drop elements, large and easily understandable menus, and clear calls to action whenever new workflow elements are added.
Oh yes, and this particular Shopify chatbot has a free plan as well.
Gorgias
On the tracking side of things, it is always convenient to pull up information, both in the way you want it and with the quantity you actually need. Bringing up sales information in a robotic, graph-like manner is formal and all, but adding a bit of personal flair to a customer’s sales information goes a long way to subtly improving their experience with your online shopping platform.
Gorgias is the platform that does all these kinds of information filtering for you. Well, “filtering” isn’t exactly the right term, as it is more like “transforming” the information requested into a more personalized form. With its AI support, the responses can be made even more dynamic according to the “customer intent” that it perceives.
Aside from conveniently automating data request tasks, it can also be integrated into a wide variety of platforms, albeit to varying degrees of effectiveness. Do be wary, though, Gorgias does not work on external sales channels if your business has more than one.
Gobot
Often touted as the Shopify sales-boosting chatbot, Gobot certainly has become one of the go-to options when it comes to building a quick and effective chatbot for an e-commerce platform. The name of the game is repetition, either by smartly offering multiple suggestions, “understanding” wide variations between queries of a similar nature (category), or providing both of these 24/7 with no delays.
But perhaps the main reason why it is highly recommended Shopify chatbot is because of its speedy implementation. Aside from having a very clean, intuitive interface, it also offers several chatbot templates that can be built on top of one another to finish a full-working chatbot in mere minutes.
Effectiveness would still depend on the actual implementation, of course. But, for most small-scale businesses using Shopify, Gobot remains one of the most effective platforms that doesn’t break the bank.
Other Shopify Chatbots That Might Interest You
Needless to say, this list is just a glimpse of the sheer number of chatbot options available on Shopify. If you don’t fancy any of the ones mainly listed above, then you could check out some of these alternatives:
- Botsify – universal, “implement anywhere” chatbot. Offers pre-built templates based on the business type.
- Engati – showcases a variety of integration options, most notably assistant options on the developer side.
- Octane – super jack-of-all-trades marketing chatbot that uses user data to churn out activities like (manually designed) quizzes.
- Ochatbot – powerful virtual shopping tool enhanced by a wide variety of advertisement optimization features.
- Toucan – targeted product recommendations, shopping guidance features, specific focus on rapid deployment and customization.
In short, there are plenty of options when it comes to choosing a Shopify chatbot. The trick is finding the one that best suits your business size and needs. Luckily, this shouldn’t be too difficult, as many offer free trials to aid your decision-making.
