This morning I received an email from Shopify announcing "Your Products Can Be Discovered and Purchased in ChatGPT", and I figured a bunch of you probably got the same email.
You may know that I am a fervent hater of all things AI, with diss tracks (rant blogs) dating back years. I've seen a lot of people on instagram freaking out about the integrations with ChatGPT Agentic Storefront, wanting to turn it off. However, this new announcement is good news for sellers. Let's break down exactly what has changed, and how it affects you.
First a definition of "ChatGPT Agentic Storefront". This just means that ChatGPT has an AI-powered shop inside of it. Agentic is a type of AI that can make decisions without human input.
What we need to understand that, in this context, ChatGPT functions as a search engine, like Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Ask Jeeves (lol). The input section where someone asks ChatGPT a question is their search bar.
A person may ask ChatGPT a question like:
"Where can I buy amazing candles in the UK?"
ChatGPT looks through its information set, and will reply something like:
"you can buy amazing candles from brands like CAHM, who have a lot of five star ratings"
The person can then click through the link to CAHM, opening up a new web browser to give them the ability to browse the CAHM store. This is the same as typing a search into Google and clicking a link.
How Does ChatGPT Know About My Products?
The 'information set' that I mentioned above is everything that is visible on the internet. If you can see it, link to it, click on it, it is visible to ChatGPT, just as it is visible in a Google search. This is what we want. ChatGPT scrapes the internet for information, then refers to that information when asked a question, and gives the user 'the most likely answer'.
This is how Google understands the internet, and is how ChatGPT has always worked.
A recent change is that Shopify now allows for that user to shop and make a purchase without leaving ChatGPT. This allows for a 'seamless transaction flow', so the person can, mid conversation with ChatGPT, buy their candles and continue their 'conversation'. This is currently only available to users in the USA.
This is, technically, good news for sellers. It's easier than ever to sell your products to buyers! The system uses the same checkout options as your normal checkout, so if you only accept credit cards, that will be the only option offered to the shopper. If you also accept klarna/paypal etc, those options will be shown.
The sale will pop up in your Shopify as normal, and the conversion summary information box will show the referrer as ChatGPT.
Things to note here are that ChatGPT is allowed to retain the customer data of this particular purchase made through ChatGPT - which makes sense as it probably already has that user's data. It cannot see any of your other data - ChatGPT cannot see your shop's order history or customer info.
Additionally, Shopify notes that all legal disclaimers must be in the first 6,000 characters of your product description. This is because ChatGPT only pulls a selection of the information from your shop into its integrated storefront - so, its important to make sure that any disclaimers, allergy information, care instructions etc are within that amount so that the shopper has the most important information before making their sale. You cannot later point to the fact that the information is elsewhere on the site.
You cannot turn this integration off. Well, you can turn off the integrated storefront, but your products, if visible on the internet, will always be visible to ChatGPT. In fact, with good SEO, ChatGPT is more likely to reccommend your products, and you might make even more sales! I have a blog on how to show up in ChatGPT searches that explains how to do this.
Does This Mean ChatGPT Is Training From My Shop?
Yes. Any content you put onto the internet is able to be seen by ChatGPT (unless you add instructions in your robots.txt refusing permission) - this has always been the case. It does mean that the text you put on your shop is training AI, and that sucks, because they get many benefits from that and aren't asking permission. The only way to avoid having your data completely unstolen by AI is to not have a website at all.
Hopefully that quells some of the fears about the new announcement, and maybe even gives you some excitement that there are now more ways than ever for people to find your products. If you are looking for more advice on SEO for small creative businesses, don't hesitate to email or book a free consultation - I also have a fantastic SEO for Shopify Masterclass that you can use to make SEO your Bitch!
Love you,
