AI Is the Devil, but It's Really Good at Organization
I make Shopify's Sidekick AI my gimp and do all my work for me.
I have a confession to make; I dream about e-commerce, and it might be a sickness.
As you likely know (because I’m no stranger to telling everyone I see about it), I use Shopify, One thing I love about the platform is the multiple ways to automate tasks you need done, where many other platforms require manual work, so much so that a lot of people don’t do them because they take too much time.
This morning, bleary-eyed and still in darkness, I had a random thought. “Can I automate creating collections based on colors or themes?” First, what was I dreaming about that caused my first waking thought to be about that idea in particular? I don’t know, but as the fog of sleep lifted, I imagined this might be a good way to put together random collections for different holidays or events.
Turns out, you can…
Three Notes:
This will be more impressive when I have more products listed
There’s a green shirt in the “blue” collection because there is a blue variant to that shirt, but it’s not front facing on the listing.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it does create possibility. The answer is in being thoughtful with tags because those tags allow me to create these opportunities.
Several years ago, my buddy Adam Luedicke turned me onto Shopify, and what I noticed right away about his shop is that many of his products showed up in multiple collections from his navigation. Most of his shirts are unisex fit, so clicking “Mens” or “Womens” will show slightly different selections of tees, but not entirely different.
He creates these groupings of products using Shopify’s Smart Collections that allow him to automate what products go into which collection. Once I figured this out, it changed how I operate.
I use the tagging method to create collections, where I add tags to products and then turn those tags into collections, but before today, I never considered that I could get Shopify’s Sidekick AI to do it for me.
Tags aren’t the only way to create Smart Collections, though. There are several ways to pull together interesting collections. I’m not going to get into the weeds with all of these (yet), but here’s just some of the wild ways I’m learning to create
Create sale items by setting conditions based on compare-at price so every discounted item instantly appears
Tag items by seasons (if that’s your jam) to instantly bring together collections for seasonal need
One of my favorites; maintain a “New Arrivals” collection that actually stays new by using creation date conditions to rotate older items out automatically
Spot inventory issues faster by creating collections for low-stock items, out-of-stock products, or bestsellers based on inventory levels
Automatically spotlight your one-of-a-kind or limited edition pieces using tags or metafields
Filter by multiple attributes at once like price range, product type, vendor, weight
Build complex product groups like “hoodies under $60 tagged ‘vintage’ with more than 5 in stock.” Why? I don’t know, but that sounds freaking cool
Here’s the real beauty of all this. Right now, I only have 21 products in my shop (I know, I should have more by now—get off me), but I can scale my catalog to 200 without organizational fear. As long as I know the conditions each product needs to meet when I make a listing, the item will slot itself into collections automatically, creating less work and headache for me.
Or, if I decide that I want to create a collection based on parameters that I haven’t set up yet, I can use Sidekick to identify items, add the parameters, and then automatically create that new collection within minutes.
Ok, a lot of nuts and bolts happening above, and none of that may mean anything to you if you’re not trying to get on the e-commerce train, but I know a lot of people slog their way through their online sales platforms because they just don’t know about the alternatives.
I know there are a lot of artists and creatives reading this post, and I know how you operate. You want the pretty interfaces, and the WYSIWYG graphic interface that makes sites pretty, but those platforms don’t fully consider what’s really important…
HOW TO SERVE YOUR CUSTOMER BEST!
I legitimately believe Shopify is the best e-commerce platform out there, even though it doesn’t have all the fancy graphical editing interfaces that make artists drool over themselves.
You can still make beautiful websites on Shopify, but more importantly, you can make beautiful data and automations in the backend to help you sell more things to more people.
Which one matters more?
Yes, I’m a Shopify slut, for good reason — I love it. Yes, the links to Shopify are affiliate links, which allow you to test the platform for two weeks FREE, and then only pay $1 a month for the first three months. Ninety days — Three bucks!
If you’re interested in trying it out, and you believe I’ve been helpful, use that link above and you’ll be helping me out without any additional cost to you.