From product question to checkout: your Swiss shop chatbot launch checklist

A useful shop assistant answers a question that stands between a shopper and their next step. “Which jacket fits this use?” needs product discovery. “Can I return it?” needs a reliable policy. “Where is my order?” needs a verified lookup of private order data. A single website crawl does not solve all three.

This guide is for Swiss Shopify and WooCommerce merchants preparing a practical pilot. The suggested schedule and pass criteria are a starting point, not a promise of sales or a substitute for testing your store. Begin with one category or support journey, then expand after reviewing real conversations.

Installing the widget does not grant access to orders. Connecting a public catalog does not connect a customer account. Set up and test each capability separately.

Prioritize the languages your customers use. For a national pilot, test Standard German, French and Italian, then English if relevant to your audience. These four are a test scope, not a claim that every Swiss shopper speaks them. Add Swiss German wording your team actually receives; do not assume that understanding a dialect means every reply will sound natural.

Create one approved policy sheet before translating the prompt. Use CHF where your catalog uses CHF, distinguish a dispatch estimate from a delivery guarantee, and name the destinations your shipping policy covers. If your shop ships across borders, use your published terms for charges and delivery; let your team resolve questions the sources do not cover.

First install the widget with your agent’s Share instructions. On Shopify, add the supplied script to a duplicate theme before publishing. On WooCommerce, use the WordPress installation instructions. Check the bubble on mobile, a category page, a product page and the cart.

Next choose Actions → Connect your website and test product search. Train shipping, payment, returns and size guides under Knowledge. Keep the current policy authoritative and remove obsolete versions. If you want order status, configure Orders separately: Shopify needs the permissions described in the order documentation; WooCommerce needs read-only REST API credentials over HTTPS.

Then enable only the extra workflows you intend to test: photo search requires visitor attachments; cart and checkout requires Starter or higher; return requests need their own switch. Where Shopify app installation is available, use it; otherwise follow the documented custom-app path. Never put private keys in the agent’s knowledge or instructions.

Adapt these instructions to your store and insert the approved policy sources. They define behavior; they do not create an integration or override missing permissions.

Use a product and policies you control. Repeat the relevant cases in every pilot language and keep the same expected facts. Order tests use your own test order and approved test account; the examples below contain no customer data.

Shopify and WooCommerce do not behave identically. Shopify checkout uses a cart link containing variants and quantities. WooCommerce presents an add-to-cart link for each item plus View cart; shoppers must add each item through those links. Verify your theme, variants and destination cart manually on a phone and a desktop.

Check currency, quantity, unavailable variants and the final price after a store price change. The chat cart shows the price from when an item was added or its quantity increased; checkout uses your store’s current prices. Test your existing payment methods in the store’s own test mode. A chat checkout click is not evidence that an order was paid.

Use intoCHAT’s simulated-customer tests for conversational regression where available. They simulate orders, returns, handoffs and other side effects; they cannot prove that your live order permissions, checkout links or inbox delivery work. Run a separate manual end-to-end check with your own test records and a team member.

This is a suggested schedule. Extend it if catalog access, translations or support ownership are not ready. Never trade a failed privacy or price test for a launch date.

Record a baseline before launch. Review product discovery, policy answers and post-purchase support separately: a helpful delivery answer is not the same outcome as a checkout click. Classify a sample of real conversations as answered, needs source correction, needs a human, or failed. Check each language rather than averaging a weak language into a good overall score.

intoCHAT records checkout-link clicks and photo-search product-card clicks. Paid orders and revenue still need your store analytics and a suitable attribution method. Compare similar periods, record promotions and traffic changes, and do not label a visitor who chats and later buys as an incremental sale without a controlled comparison.

Use the free website demo for a first look at answers from public pages. It is not an end-to-end test of private order lookups or checkout. For catalog discovery, use the store demo; for the pilot itself, create an agent and follow the docs linked below.

Start with the online-shop assistant template, then adapt the order-status or returns template if that is your primary journey. Run the twelve tests on this page, give each failed case an owner, and repeat them with your next policy update. A tested narrow assistant is a useful starting point for a larger shop workflow.