In Shopify’s recent Summer 23 Edition, the leading ecommerce company and website builder announced the launch of Shopify Magic — a suite of free artificial intelligence (AI) powered features designed for commerce.
Stand-out tools include Sidekick, a ChatGPT-like commerce assistant that helps users accomplish a wide range of tasks. There’s also Marketplace Connect, a platform that makes it easier for businesses to brand into wholesale, and automatic text generation to speed up your writing process.
As generative AI continues to automate more workplace processes, these updates are part of what the company is heralding as a “new era of commerce.” Here’s what we know about Shopify’s new AI-fueled toolkit.
Shopify to Launch New AI-Powered Features
Shopify is no stranger to product updates, but the company’s bi-annual Editions showcase has teased one of its biggest improvements yet — Shopify Magic.
Shopify Magic is a collection of AI-driven features that aim to make building, managing, and growing a business with the platform easier than ever. We break down some of the biggest updates below:
Sidekick
Sidekick is an AI-enabled commerce assistant that responds to user-generated prompts in a similar fashion to ChatGPT or Google Bard. The tool is purpose-built to help users kickstart and scale their businesses, answer creative queries, boost productivity, and streamline workflows.
According to Shopify’s recent blog post, example use cases include using the tool to redesign their store, displaying best-selling products, and setting up seasonal discounts.
Sidekick is being marketed as the centerpiece of Shopify Magic and will be available to Shopify businesses soon.
Instantly generated blog posts
Shopify is also launching a tool that lets you write and edit blog posts using automatic text generation. The new AI-powered capability responds to user prompts and gives users granular control over the topic and tone of their blog posts.
The feature can also be used to boost page SEO by improving keyword ranking and prioritizing important brand keywords and terminology.
Instantly generated commerce emails
For all the email marketers out there, Shopify’s update will also make it easier for users to create high-performing email campaigns. The new commerce tool uses Shopify Magic to generate compelling subject lines and body content. It also uses powerful data-driven insights to help you send emails at the optimum time.
Shopify AI-generated email marketing feature
Unlike Sidekick, this feature is available to Shopify customers now.
Is Shopify the Best Ecommerce Builder Available?
Shopify’s powerful sales tools and ever-evolving feature offering truly separate it from its competition. In fact, after researching the leading providers, our insights team deemed Shopify to be the best ecommerce website builder on the market.
Shopify’s impressive inventory software lends itself especially well to large businesses with sizable or complex stocks, while smaller stores may be better off opting for cheaper solutions like Wix and Squarespace.
There’s no shortage of great ecommerce website builders to choose from, though. Check out our table below to see how our top-rated options compare:
| Test Score Our score is based on independent assessments of ease of use, features, ecommerce functionality and value for money | Starting Price | Pros | Cons | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BEST OVERALL  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Wix | Shopify | Squarespace | Hostinger | GoDaddy | BigCommerce | Square Online |
| 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.6 | 4.0 | 4.1 | 4.5 | 4.6 |
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