Where Australian e-commerce loses customers
Shopify's own data shows 67% of carts are abandoned, and the most common reason isn't price — it's an unanswered question. The customer wonders if the dress runs small, whether the mattress ships to Tasmania, or how returns work for a $400 garden tool. They go to the chat widget; nobody's there because it's 9pm; they leave.
A custom GPT for your store knows your full catalogue, your shipping zones, your sizing guides, and your returns policy. It answers product questions instantly, recommends accessories from your own stock, and only routes to a human when something requires judgement.
What we typically build for e-commerce brands
Product Q&A Bot
On every product page. 'Is this dishwasher quiet enough for an open-plan apartment?' answered using actual product specs and existing customer review themes — not generic LLM hallucination.
Sizing & Fit Adviser
For fashion brands. Customer enters height, weight, and 'usually I wear M', and the GPT recommends the right size from your sizing chart and historical return data on which sizes get sent back most often.
Returns & Shipping Assistant
Handles 'where's my order?', 'I want to return this', 'do you ship to Norfolk Island?'. Connected to your Shopify orders API and Australia Post tracking — gives real, current answers.
Abandoned Cart Recovery
Not just an email. A GPT that reaches out via SMS or WhatsApp, asks specifically why they didn't complete the order, and either answers their concern or offers a calibrated incentive.
Platforms we connect to
- Shopify & Shopify Plus — full Storefront API + Admin API
- WooCommerce — REST API + custom webhook integrations
- BigCommerce — Storefront, Catalog, and Customer APIs
- Magento / Adobe Commerce — REST and GraphQL
- Klaviyo, Gorgias, Zendesk — for marketing flows and support handover
Numbers we've measured
A homewares brand on Shopify doing $2.4M in annual revenue saw a 6.1% lift in conversion rate after deploying a Product Q&A bot — driven almost entirely by capturing customers who would have bounced from the product page without buying. A fashion brand cut returns by 11% by using a sizing GPT to discourage size-up purchases that historically had a 38% return rate. A pet supplies retailer reduced first-response time on customer service tickets from 6 hours to 90 seconds.
Stays inside your brand voice. We fine-tune on your existing customer service transcripts so the bot sounds like your team, not like a generic Shopify chatbot. Tone matters — the bot using corporate language on a streetwear brand is worse than no bot at all.
Frequently asked questions
Does this work with Shopify natively or do I need a separate platform?
It runs as an embed on your Shopify store via a script tag. It reads your products, customers, and orders through the Shopify API. No replatforming needed — installation is typically 2 hours of dev work on your end.
How does it handle returns policy questions?
We feed it your written returns policy and tag each product with its returnability rules (some categories like underwear or food are non-returnable for hygiene reasons). The GPT applies the right rules to the right product without you having to remember every edge case.
Will it recommend competitor products?
No. The system prompt restricts it to your catalogue. If a customer asks 'is this better than [competitor product]?' the bot stays neutral and steers the conversation back to features of your product.
Can it speak languages other than English?
Yes — typically Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese for Australian audiences. We test with native speakers to make sure tone is right (Mandarin formal vs casual, for example, makes a big difference to conversion).
Ready to build your custom GPT?
Get a free 30-minute scoping call. We'll map your use case, data sources, and ROI before you commit.
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