This is your quick-reference guide to Shopify Sidekick prompts. Copy, paste, get answers. For the full explanation of each prompt — why it matters, how to use the answer, and when to run it — see the three articles in the series:
- Part 1: Business Health Monitoring
- Part 2: Operations & Inventory
- Part 3: Marketing & Customer Insights
A Reminder on What Sidekick Is
Shopify Sidekick is the AI assistant built into your Shopify admin — the chat icon in the top-right of admin and in the mobile app. It has direct access to your store's data, which is why it can answer specific questions about your sales, inventory, customers, and orders rather than offering generic e-commerce advice it found on a blog. It's included with your Shopify plan, so there's nothing to upgrade to and nothing to be talked into.
The single biggest factor in whether Sidekick is useful is the specificity of your prompts. "How are sales?" is a bad question and will get a bad answer. "Compare this week's sales to last week's, broken down by channel" is a good one. The prompts below are written to skip that learning curve, because nobody enjoys the learning curve.
Business Health Monitoring
1. Sales Snapshot
How did my store perform this week compared to last week? Show me total sales, number of orders, and average order value.
2. Top-Performing Products
What were my top 10 best-selling products this month by revenue?
3. Underperforming Products
Which products had the most views but the fewest sales this month?
4. Inventory Health
Which products have fewer than 10 units in stock and sold at least 5 units in the last 30 days?
5. Customer Retention
What percentage of my orders this month came from returning customers vs. first-time customers?
6. Conversion Trends
How has my online store conversion rate changed over the past 4 weeks?
7. Average Order Value
What is my average order value this month, and how does it compare to last month?
8. Abandoned Checkouts
How many abandoned checkouts did I have this week, and what's the total value of those abandoned carts?
9. Year-Over-Year Comparison
Compare my store's performance this April to last April. Show total revenue, total orders, and new customer count.
10. Marketing Channel Performance
Which marketing channels drove the most revenue this month? Break down by source.
Operations & Inventory
11. Full Inventory Overview
Give me a summary of my current inventory. How many total SKUs do I have, how many are in stock, and how many are out of stock?
12. Dead Stock
Which products have had zero sales in the last 90 days but still have inventory in stock?
13. Reorder Timing
Based on the last 30 days of sales, which products will likely run out of stock in the next 2 weeks?
14. Variant Performance
For my best-selling products, which size or color variants sell the most and which sell the least?
15. Fulfillment Status
How many orders are currently unfulfilled, and how long have they been waiting?
16. Shipping Performance
What was the average time between order placement and fulfillment this month? How does it compare to last month?
17. Returns and Refunds
What was my return rate this month? Which products had the most returns?
18. Product Margins
What are my top 10 products by revenue, and what is the profit margin on each?
19. Discount Impact
How much revenue came from orders with discount codes this month, and what was the average discount percentage?
20. Shipping Costs
What was my total shipping cost this month, and what percentage of revenue did shipping represent?
Marketing & Customer Insights
21. Customer Acquisition
How many new customers did I acquire this month, and which channels did they come from?
22. Customer Lifetime Value
What is the average lifetime value of my customers? How much does a typical customer spend across all their orders?
23. Email Performance
How much revenue came from email marketing this month? What percentage of total revenue was that?
24. Promotion Effectiveness
Compare revenue during my last sale event to the same period without a sale. Did the promotion actually increase total revenue?
25. Top Customer Segments
Who are my most valuable customers? Show me customers who have placed more than 3 orders or spent over $500 total.
26. Geographic Performance
Which states or countries generate the most revenue? Are there regions where I get traffic but few sales?
27. Cross-Sell Opportunities
Which products are most often purchased together in the same order?
28. Review Sentiment
What is my average product rating? Which products have the lowest ratings, and what are customers saying about them?
29. New vs. Returning Behavior
What is the average order value for first-time customers vs. returning customers?
30. Campaign ROI
How much revenue came from paid advertising this month, and what was my return on ad spend (ROAS)?
Suggested Routine
Run prompts on a cadence that matches how quickly the underlying data actually moves. Running everything weekly produces noise; running everything monthly misses problems; running everything quarterly means hearing about issues at the post-mortem.
|
Frequency |
Prompts |
|
Daily (high volume) |
#1 Sales Snapshot, #8 Abandoned Checkouts, #15 Fulfillment Status |
|
Weekly |
#2 Top Products, #4 Inventory Health, #6 Conversion Trends, #11 Inventory Overview, #13 Reorder Timing, #23 Email Revenue, #30 Ad ROAS |
|
Monthly |
#3 Underperformers, #5 Retention, #7 AOV, #9 YoY, #10 Channels, #12 Dead Stock, #16 Shipping Performance, #17 Returns, #19 Discount Impact, #20 Shipping Costs, #21 New Customers, #24 Promo Effectiveness, #28 Review Sentiment |
|
Quarterly |
#14 Variants, #18 Margins, #22 LTV, #25 Top Segments, #26 Geography, #27 Cross-Sell, #29 New vs Returning |
Tips for Better Results
- Be specific with time frames. "This week," "last 30 days," "this month vs. last month" all give Sidekick something to work with. "Lately" does not.
- Ask follow-up questions. If a number looks off, ask Sidekick to break it down further — by product, by channel, by customer type. Sidekick will keep going as long as you keep asking.
- Always compare periods. A number without context is decoration, not information.
- Verify before acting. For decisions involving actual money, cross-check Sidekick's answer against the underlying report. Trust, but verify, and verify before the wire transfer rather than after.
- Pick a cadence and keep it. Consistent check-ins beat occasional deep dives by a wider margin than most merchants believe, right up until the moment they wish they'd been more consistent.
Want help turning these insights into action? Contact us to optimize your Shopify store.