Aide's chat now installs on a Shopify store the way Shopify apps are meant to: switch on the Aide chat app embed in your theme editor and save. No code to paste, and Aide in your Shopify admin shows you whether it is on. Once it is live, shoppers can ask about your products and get answers that stick to what your catalogue actually offers (the colours, sizes and other options each product really has) and add the right option to their cart without leaving the chat.
How it behaves
- Installing: in Aide, the widget's install section has a Shopify store step with an "Open
theme editor" button. It opens your live theme with the Aide chat embed ready to switch on;
turn it on and save, and the chat bubble appears on every page of the store. Pasting the embed
snippet into
theme.liquidstill works for stores that prefer code; use one or the other. - Embed status: Aide's home page in your Shopify admin shows whether the chat is on your storefront, with a link to turn it on, and passes what it sees on to the dashboard. The dashboard's install step shows "Switched on" with when it was last checked, and "Live on yourstore.com" once a visitor has opened the chat on one of the store's own sites in the last week (the store's Shopify previews don't count). To check right after saving, open your store and click the chat bubble.
- Page speed: the chat loads once the rest of the page has finished loading, so it doesn't slow your storefront down. The bubble appears a moment after the page does; links that open the chat directly still open it.
- No key to copy: connecting the store fills in your widget key for the embed. If it ever needs setting by hand, the embed's settings in the theme editor take the key from Aide's widget settings.
- A shopper asks which colours or sizes a product comes in: Aide answers from the product's real options and values, as synced from Shopify. If a product only comes in colours, Aide says so and doesn't offer or ask about sizes.
- A shopper asks if something is in stock: Aide answers from each option's stock as your store reports it (in stock, sold out, or available on backorder). It never turns "in stock" into a shipping or delivery promise such as "ready to ship" or "arrives tomorrow" unless your knowledge says so.
- Checking before it replies: Aide's check of each reply now also treats an option the product doesn't have, or "in stock" read as a delivery time, as an unsupported claim, the same as any other fact your knowledge doesn't back.
- When your product details don't say: if a shopper asks for something your catalogue doesn't describe, such as boards for beginners, Aide says the product details don't cover it, still shows the products that match otherwise, and asks a question to help them choose, instead of handing the chat to your team. The short line under each product only appears when the product's details back it up, so Aide never calls a product "great for beginners" or "versatile" unless you've said so.
- Pointing to the cart: Aide tells shoppers they can pick an option and add it to their cart from the card under its reply. It never says it added something itself.
- Recommending and buying: product suggestions show as a carousel under the reply, with a picker for each option and "Add to cart" straight into the shopper's own Shopify cart (see Product recommendations as a carousel in chat). Logged-in shoppers are recognised automatically, so Aide can help with their orders in the same chat.
- Matching your brand: in the widget's Appearance settings, under Theme, set the panel, text, surface, accent, message bubble and link colours, corner rounding for the panel, cards and buttons, the font, and an optional frosted background. Switch on "Dark mode colours" to set a separate palette for shoppers whose device is in dark mode. Left off, those shoppers get the widget's own dark palette, and your light colours apply only in light mode. The settings preview toggles between light and dark.
Also in this change
- Fixed: with custom light colours and no dark palette, shoppers in dark mode saw light text on a light panel, which made Aide's replies hard to read.
For developers
- New
GET /v1/integrations/:id/storefront-embedfor a Shopify integration:{ object: "storefront_embed", status: "enabled" | "disabled" | "unknown", statusSource, statusCheckedAt, themeName, editorUrl, seenOnStoreAt, seenOnStoreOrigin }.statusis read from the store's live theme when the store granted theme access (read_themes;statusSourcetheme), else it is the last status Aide in Shopify admin reported (shopify_admin), elseunknown.editorUrlopens the theme editor with the embed ready to activate.seenOnStoreAtandseenOnStoreOriginare the last time, at most hourly, and the site a widget session started on one of the store's own domains. - New
PUT /v1/integrations/:id/storefront-embedwith{ status: "enabled" | "disabled" }records the status Aide in Shopify admin read through App Bridge; answers 204. It is stored when it changes, and its check time refreshed at most hourly. - The Aide Shopify app requests
read_themesagain (app versionaide-2-6). Each store reports the status from its theme once a merchant approves the updated access, which Shopify asks for the next time they open Aide in the Shopify admin; until then it reports through Aide in Shopify admin as above.