Ask Shopify Sidekick What's Happening in Your Store

What This Does

You don't have a business analyst pulling reports for you. Sidekick is Shopify's built-in chat assistant that answers plain-language questions about your store, how a collection performed this week, which products are running low, whether a discount code is worth setting up, without you building a report or digging through several admin screens first.

Before You Start

• You have a Shopify store on any plan. Sidekick's core chat is free everywhere, though a few advanced actions (like generating a custom admin app) are limited to Grow, Advanced, and Plus plans
• You're logged into your Shopify Admin, on desktop, mobile, or the app
• You have a specific question in mind. Sidekick works better with "how did the summer collection do last week" than "how's business"

Steps

1. Open Sidekick

Look for the purple glasses icon in the top-right corner of your Shopify Admin. Click it to open the chat panel. There's no setup, no login screen, no API key. It's already connected to your store data.

What you should see: A chat window where you can type, or in some versions speak, a question.

2. Ask your question in plain language

Type what you actually want to know. Sidekick can answer performance questions ("which products sold best last week"), draft things for you ("write a 20% off discount code for the sandals that haven't moved in a month"), or explain a store setting you're unsure about.

3. Review before anything gets saved

If your question results in an action, like creating a discount code or drafting an email subject line, Sidekick shows you the result and asks for approval before saving or publishing anything. Read what it drafted. One seller review noted Sidekick sometimes just displays data you could already see in the admin rather than genuinely acting on your request, so check that the answer actually addresses what you asked.

Real Example

Scenario: You launched a new collection last Monday and want a quick read on how it's doing before you decide whether to boost ad spend on it.

What you type: "How did my new collection do in its first week?"

What you get: A summary pulled from your store's sales data covering units sold, revenue, and maybe a comparison to a past launch, instead of you exporting a report and building a pivot table by hand.

Tips

• Ask follow-up questions in the same conversation. Sidekick keeps context, so you can go from "how did the collection do" to "which single product in it sold the most" without restarting
• When Sidekick surfaces a number you plan to act on (reordering stock, pausing an ad), cross-check it against the actual report in your Shopify Analytics before spending money on it. Treat the chat answer as a starting point, not the final word
• If you're on a lower-tier plan and a feature like app generation isn't available, Sidekick will tell you rather than fail silently

Tool interfaces change. If a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.