Olvio answers shoppers from your own content. Most of it is read automatically from your Shopify store: your products, collections, store pages, blog articles and policies. You can add more on the AI Setup page and in a product metafield. Olvio starts reading your store once you've chosen a plan.

This article explains what the AI uses from each source. For how products stay in sync, see How Olvio keeps your catalog in sync.

Olvio uses your sources in three places: the chat on your product pages, Olvio Advisor (Growth and Scale plans) and the suggested questions on your product pages.

Olvio Advisor also follows the conversation axes you set for each starter chip. See Create Advisor starter chips and conversation axes.

Suggested questions are written from the product's own data: its title, product type, vendor, tags, description and metafields. Once shoppers have asked enough questions about a product in the chat, its suggested questions are also based on what they ask. To replace them with your own, see Customize the suggested questions on your product pages.

For the product the shopper is viewing, the AI gets:

On a product with a very large number of variants, the AI may not see all of them.

The AI doesn't see SKUs, stock quantities or the content of your product images. Olvio uses the featured image to show products in the chat, for example on product cards.

When a shopper asks about another product, the AI uses an overview of your active catalog and can search your catalog for matching products. A product the shopper names, or one already shown as a product card in the conversation, gets its full product details too, including variants, metafields and your product notes.

In Olvio Advisor, the AI works from a summary of the products that match the conversation: title, product type, price, whether it's on sale, tags, the start of the description and your product notes. It doesn't use metafields, variants or collections there.

Only products with the Active status in Shopify can be recommended or shown as product cards. Draft, unlisted and archived products are still imported, but the AI never recommends them. Olvio doesn't check sales channels, so an Active product that isn't available on your online store can still be recommended.

The AI reads product metafields from every namespace, including your own custom fields. Values such as rich text, lists, measurements and true/false fields are turned into readable text, and very long values are shortened.

Variant metafields are read when a product is created or edited in Shopify. A full catalog import doesn't read them. That includes the first import after you choose a plan and any import you start with Resync now or Retry sync on the Dashboard (click Olvio in the app menu). After a full import, the AI may not see a product's variant metafields until you edit that product again.

The AI doesn't use:

To give the AI facts about one product that aren't in its description, such as fit advice, compatibility or usage tips, write them in the product's custom.olvio_knowledge metafield. Use the Rich text type; plain text types also work. Olvio doesn't create this metafield for you: you add its definition once in your Shopify admin, then fill it in on the products that need it.

The AI treats these notes as your most reliable information about that product and states the facts without mentioning that they come from notes. It also uses them when that product comes up in a catalog search, is named by the shopper, has already been shown as a product card or appears in Olvio Advisor. In those cases, long notes may be shortened. If you empty the field, Olvio stops using the notes.

On the Unanswered tab of Conversations, Add info opens the product in your Shopify admin so you can add what was missing. See Add product-specific notes with the custom.olvio_knowledge metafield.

For the product being viewed, the AI also gets the description and metafields of the collections the product belongs to. When a product is in many collections, only a few are included. Collection details are used in the product page chat only.

Olvio keeps collections in sync when you create, edit or delete them in Shopify. An edit to a collection's description or metafields can take a few minutes to reach the chat.

Olvio reads your store's own content from your storefront, with no setup:

Olvio finds pages and articles through your storefront's sitemap and reads the version in your store's default language. It reads each page as shoppers see it, but only the area your theme marks as the page content, and leaves out the header, footer and navigation. Text from theme sections is included when it sits in that area. If a custom theme doesn't mark this area, Olvio can't read its pages and blog articles, but your policies are still read. Very short pages are skipped, and only the beginning of a very long page is used.

In the product page chat, when a shopper's question matches something you've written, Olvio gives the AI the most relevant passages to answer from. The AI states the information as your own, without saying it comes from your FAQ or a page. Olvio Advisor and suggested questions don't use this content.

Olvio first reads this content at its next daily check after you choose a plan, so answers based on your pages, articles and policies can take up to a day to appear, and a few days on a store with many pages. While your online store is password protected, Olvio can't read your pages or blog articles. After the first read, Olvio checks your store for changes once a day. An edit you save to a page or blog article in Shopify is usually picked up at the next daily check. Text that lives in your theme, such as a section added in the theme editor, may not mark the page as changed. If it doesn't, an edit there can take up to about a month, sometimes a little longer, to reach the chat. Olvio reads your policies again about once a week, so after you edit a policy, the chat can keep using the previous text for up to a week or a little longer. For a change that can't wait, also add the key information to your Business description or a knowledge file. See How Olvio reads your store pages, blog articles and policies.

On the AI Setup page, you brief the AI directly. Olvio uses this content in every product page chat and Olvio Advisor conversation:

Olvio uses orders placed on your online store for the sales figures in your Olvio admin, such as the revenue credited to conversations and Your conversion rate on the Dashboard. For every online store order placed while your store has a plan, whether or not the shopper chatted with Olvio, it keeps the order ID, total, currency and the products ordered, plus, when the order follows a conversation, the anonymous session ID that links the two. It doesn't store the customer's name, email address, phone number or address. See How conversion attribution works.

Before a shopper's message reaches the AI or is saved, Olvio masks email addresses, phone numbers, card numbers and other identifiers it detects. The AI is instructed never to ask shoppers for personal information. See What data Olvio collects about your shoppers.