Otto on your Shopify store
Otto answers your customers in chat from your products. On Shopify, one line of code in theme.liquid and a product feed address are enough.
Adding it on Shopify
No developer needed. All you need is the Shopify admin and the Otto panel, which you get in the pilot.
Copy the code from the setup guide
When you first sign in, the setup guide opens in the panel. In its second step, under the heading Add the code to your site, click Copy code. Later you’ll also find the code in Overview, on the Installation & integrations card, under the Custom code tile. It looks like this:
<script async src="https://ottoai.sk/widget.js" data-otto-key="pk_your-key"></script>This is only a sample. Copy the code from the panel, as it contains your own key.
Duplicate your theme
In the Shopify admin, open Online Store. Next to the theme labelled Current theme, click the three dots (⋯) and choose Duplicate. The copy is your backup.
Open theme.liquid
Next to that same current theme, not the copy, click the three dots (⋯) and choose Edit code. In the Layout folder, open theme.liquid.
Paste the code before </body>
Paste the line right before </body> at the end of the file and click Save. Otto ties itself to the store address where it first appears. If you’re only testing on .myshopify.com and will move to your own address later, write to us before you add the code.
Open your store
Open your store at the address your customers use. The chat bubble pops up in the bottom right corner and the setup guide in the panel tells you that Otto is on your site. Then click Next in the guide. No bubble? Check that you pasted the whole line and saved it, then reload the page.
Finish the setup guide
Continue through the setup guide with the Next button. In the last step, What else Otto should know, paste the feed address into the XML feed field and click Load catalogue. Without that click, the feed won’t load. On Shopify, an app creates the feed, see below. Otto reads your store on its own.
Feed not loading? In the panel, open the Catalogue section in Settings. If “I have no XML feed” is switched on, turn it off. Then click Check feed and the panel will tell you what’s wrong. If you’re not sure, write to us and we’ll go through it together. ponuka@ottoai.sk
Where Otto gets your products
A feed is a file listing your products with their prices and stock. Otto reads it as XML in Heureka, Zboží or Google Merchant format. Shopify doesn’t create one in these formats by itself; an app does.
An XML feed app
The Shopify App Store has apps that create a Heureka or Google feed, for example Feedyio. You copy the feed address in the app.
Not the Google & YouTube channel
It sends products straight to Google and gives no public feed address. Otto needs an address it can download the feed from.
Without a feed
Otto reads your store pages, products included. A feed still keeps prices and stock most accurate.
What Otto uses from the feed
From each item in the Heureka feed, Otto takes the following data:
- Product name and a link to its page
- Price including VAT
- Availability from the delivery time (0 = in stock)
- Category and manufacturer
- The first 8 parameters
- The description without HTML, up to 4,000 characters
- Image for the product card in the chat
From a Google feed, it takes similar data, availability included, just not the parameters.
Checking the feed shows the price currency. If it’s wrong, change it in the Price currency field, save and update the catalogue.
It treats each feed item as a separate product. It doesn’t group variants under one product.
We don’t limit the number of products. The feed can be at most 25 MB and must download within 45 seconds.
When you change a price or stock level
A change goes into the feed first, then into Otto. It reaches Otto on its own, or right away when you click.
Otto rereads your website’s pages, such as shipping or terms, once a week. If a change should apply right away, add it to Knowledge.
What Otto doesn’t do on Shopify
So nothing surprises you after launch.
- It isn’t available as an app in the Shopify App Store yet, which is why Shopify shows Coming soon in the panel. That doesn’t apply to the line of code, which works today.
- It can’t see orders in Shopify. It tells customers their parcel status once you connect a carrier in Settings → Connections (Packeta, GLS, SPS, Slovenská pošta, PPL; Pro plan and up). Otherwise, it points them to the tracking instructions in your Knowledge, or to you.
- It doesn’t add products to the basket. The card in the chat opens the product page.
- When you switch to another theme, paste the line into the new theme again. When you update your theme, Shopify usually carries the line over by itself. If it says your code edits couldn’t be included, paste the line in again.
- While your store is password protected, the bubble doesn’t show on the password page and Otto can’t read your store pages. Until then, give Otto your products through a feed.
- It only works on the address where it first loads, with or without www, and on subdomains too. On any other address, the bubble won’t show. Still on .myshopify.com, or using a different domain for another country? Write to us before adding the code and we’ll add the extra address for you.
Shopify questions
General questions about Otto are on the home page.
The line only loads the chat and touches nothing else in the theme. To be safe, duplicate the theme before editing.
No. Shopify checkout doesn’t use theme.liquid, so Otto is in your store, not at payment.
It doesn’t hold up page loading. The code loads asynchronously and the page doesn’t wait for it.
A Google feed carries the currency with the price. For Heureka, Otto infers it from the feed address, but on Shopify the feed usually sits on the app’s address. So choose the currency in the Price currency field.
Each feed item as a separate product with its own price and availability.
The first 7 days are free, no card needed, then from €59 a month. The full pricing is on the home page.
Have another question? Ask Otto, it answers right away. Or write to us at ponuka@ottoai.sk