Shopify's Conversational Shopping Experience: A Case Study

Shopify's customers are merchants who run their own retail locations and require hardware products for their stores. These merchants visit the Shopify Hardware Store to purchase items such as card readers, label printers, barcode scanners, sustainable packaging, and retail stands. However, they often have difficulty deciding what hardware they need and which products they should bundle together. They also have varying levels of experience with POS hardware, and their needs are specific to their individual retail locations. Shopify's solution is designed to help these merchants easily find the right hardware for their needs and provide a more personalized shopping experience.

Shopify operates two ecommerce stores: The Shopify Hardware Store and Shopify Supply. The Hardware Store sells hardware products for brands’ retail locations, including card readers, label printers, barcode scanners, sustainable packaging, and retail stands. However, Shopify noticed that merchants visiting the Hardware Store were having difficulty deciding what hardware they needed and which products they should bundle together. They identified three key challenges: the need for a virtual consultation to help merchants navigate which hardware is best for their store’s setup, the need to collect zero-party data to learn more about the merchants visiting the hardware store, and the need to collect merchant’s email addresses to notify them when a product they wanted was back in stock.

To address these challenges, Shopify implemented Octane AI’s Shop Quiz to create a more consultative shopping experience. The quiz asks merchants about their POS needs and ensures they don’t have to search through hardware products and read help documentation to try and bundle a POS system on their own. The end result is a complete hardware bundle for the merchant to easily integrate into their brick-and-mortar. The hardware quiz has multiple potential results pages, as bundles are matched to each merchant’s specific needs. Shopify uses merchants’ responses to the quiz questions to direct them towards the best results page and accompanying products. Shopify also collects zero-party data from every quiz user, which tells them something unique about the merchant, such as how many retail locations they have, what type of retail location it is, and what specific hardware the merchant requires.

• The implementation of the Shop Quiz has transformed the shopping experience on Shopify's Hardware Store. It has created a consultative experience that replicates what it would be like for customers to enter a retail store and ask questions about the hardware they’re looking for. The quiz makes it incredibly easy for merchants to answer 1-3 questions and get a personalized POS bundle to suit their needs. As Shopify’s hardware store offers more products and POS solutions in the future, the results pages will only continue to get more customized, but never complex for the customers. The quiz also allows Shopify to collect zero-party data, which provides valuable insights about the merchants and their needs. This data powers the rest of their marketing campaigns, ensuring every message, recommendation, and event is relevant to every individual—no matter what stage of the buyer’s journey they’re at.