Create Advisor starter chips and conversation axes
Olvio Advisor starts a guided conversation from a starter chip. When a shopper opens the chip's link, its label starts the conversation, and its conversation axes are the topics the AI uses to choose its questions before it recommends products. You manage both from Advisor in the Olvio admin. Olvio Advisor is available on the Growth and Scale plans.
Before you start
Your plan must be Growth or Scale. On Starter, the Advisor page shows Advisor is available on Growth and above with a See plans button, and the Add a chip, Edit and Remove buttons are disabled.
Shoppers open a chip only from a link to a page of your store whose address ends with the chip's URL hash, for example in your menu, a banner or a marketing email. Turn on the Olvio Advisor app embed so these links work on every page of your store. If you have at least one chip and the embed is off in your published theme, the Advisor page usually shows Advisor isn't visible on your storefront yet, with an Open Theme Editor button that takes you to the theme editor to turn the embed on. The banner can take up to an hour to appear after the embed is turned off, and it doesn't appear if Olvio can't read your theme. If Advisor links don't open, check the Olvio Advisor toggle in the theme editor yourself. See Turn on the Olvio Advisor and add Advisor links to your store.
For an overview of what the Advisor does for shoppers, see What is Olvio Advisor?.
Add a starter chip
Open Widget in the app menu, then click Configure on the Advisor card.
In the Starter chips section, click Add a chip. The New chip page opens.
Under Chip label, type the chip's opening message in the Label field.
Optional: under Conversation axes, add the topics the AI should cover (see below).
Click Save in the save bar. You return to the Advisor page, and the new chip appears at the bottom of the list.
You can create up to 5 chips. When you have 5, the Add a chip button is disabled, so remove a chip and click Save before you add another. If you open the New chip page before you save the removal, it shows You already have 5 chips. Delete one before adding a new one. Each chip in the list shows its label, a badge with its number of axes (for example 3 axes), and Edit and Remove buttons. You can't change the order of the chips.
Write a good chip label
When a shopper clicks the chip's link to start a new conversation, the label is sent as their first message and the AI starts from it. Write it the way a shopper would ask:
Find my skincare routine
Help me choose a running shoe
Find a gift for a wine lover
Keep it short: 2 to 7 words usually reads best. The field accepts up to 80 characters and shows a character count. A label is required: while the Label field is empty, the save bar doesn't appear.
Olvio doesn't translate chip labels or allowed values. If your widget serves more than one language, the label is sent as you wrote it, and the answer buttons for an axis can show your allowed values as you wrote them, while the AI replies in the shopper's language if your widget serves that language. Write labels and values in your store's default language, or keep them understandable in every language you serve. See Multi-language: choose which languages your widget serves.
Add conversation axes
An axis is one thing the AI should find out before it recommends a product, such as skin type, goal or budget. Each chip has its own axes.
On the chip's page, click Add an axis. A new axis card appears.
In Axis label, name the topic, for example Skin type. The field accepts up to 80 characters.
In Allowed values, type one possible answer and click Add. Repeat for each answer. Each value appears as a tag under the field. Only values shown as tags are saved. Pressing Enter doesn't add a value, so click Add before you click Save.
In Criticality, choose how important the axis is (see the next section). New axes start at Medium — preferred but not blocking.
Click Save in the save bar.
Each chip can have up to 30 axes, and each axis up to 8 allowed values. Give every axis a label and at least two allowed values: Olvio saves an axis even when these are empty, and the AI then has less to go on. An axis with a single value can replace the answer buttons of other questions that happen to include that value. Keep axis labels and allowed values short. If a chip's axes hold a lot of text, for example many axes with long values, saving the chip can clear all of its axes even though the save looks successful. After you save a large chip, check that its axes are still there. If you add a value that's already on the axis, written exactly the same way (including capital letters), it isn't added twice. When an axis has 8 values, the field and the Add button are disabled until you remove a tag. To delete an axis, click Remove on its card.
Avoid commas, parentheses, brackets and the < and > signs in allowed values. The AI is told not to use these characters in answer buttons, so it rewords those values, and the buttons for that axis then won't match your list exactly. Write ranges in words instead, for example Under $30 rather than < $30.
You can also leave a chip without axes. The chip then works as a free-form chat: the AI recommends products based on the conversation alone.
Choose a criticality
Criticality | What the AI does | Good for |
Low — skippable if signal is strong | Treats the axis as optional and can skip it. | Nice-to-know details, such as a preferred scent |
Medium — preferred but not blocking | Asks about it when it helps, but can recommend without an answer. This is the default. | Most axes |
High — must be confirmed before recommending | Is instructed to confirm the axis before it recommends any product. | Information the AI must have before recommending, such as allergies or medical conditions |
Each axis you add shows a Manual badge and a badge with its criticality: Low, Medium or High. The AI is instructed to get an answer to every High axis before it recommends products, so keep High for what really matters.
How the AI uses your axes
The AI is instructed to:
Ask one question per turn.
Skip any axis the shopper has already answered, even if they mentioned it on their own.
Pick the question that narrows the choice most instead of following the order of your list, and follow up first on something the shopper just said when that helps.
Answer buttons and recommendations work as follows:
When the AI asks about one of your axes, it's instructed to offer that axis's allowed values as the answer buttons. If its buttons include all of your values, Olvio shows exactly your values, in your wording and order, and drops any option the AI added. Otherwise, the AI's buttons are shown as it wrote them. For a follow-up question that isn't one of your axes, the AI writes its own answer buttons. If those buttons happen to include all the values of one of your axes, Olvio replaces them with that axis's values.
A question shows at most 6 answer buttons. On an axis with 7 or 8 values, the buttons can never include all of your values, so the AI's own buttons are shown and they may not match your list. Keep each axis to 6 values or fewer.
Shoppers can click an answer button or type their own answer.
When the AI has enough information, it recommends up to 4 products.
Olvio doesn't send your axis list or criticality settings to your storefront. Shoppers see the AI's messages, the answer buttons and the recommended products.
Edit or remove a chip
On the Advisor page, click Edit next to a chip to open the Edit chip page. Change the label or the axes, then click Save in the save bar. You stay on the page and the message Advisor settings saved appears. Click Discard instead to go back to the last saved version.
Renaming a chip doesn't change its link, so links you've already added to your store or your emails keep opening the same chip.
To delete a chip, click Remove next to it on the Advisor page, then click Save in the save bar. Until you save, Discard brings the chip back. Removing a chip saves all of your remaining chips at once. If they hold a lot of axis text, for example several chips with many axes and values, that save can clear every chip even though Advisor settings saved appears. Check the list after you save. Links to a deleted chip no longer open it, so remove those links from your store and from any emails where you used them.
Copy a chip's link
The Direct link section appears on the Edit chip page once the chip is saved. It isn't shown on the New chip page: save the chip first, then click Edit.
URL hash: the text to add to the end of a storefront URL, for example
#olvio_advisor=chip:chip_a1b2c3d4. If the URL already contains a#part, such as#shipping, remove that part first, or the link won't open the Advisor.HTML example: a ready-made link to paste into the HTML of a page on your store. Its link text is Advisor, which you can replace with your own wording. For emails and menu items, use a full page address followed by the URL hash instead.
Click Copy next to a field to copy its content. The button briefly shows Copied. If it doesn't change to Copied, select the text in the field and copy it yourself. To place links on your store and test them, see Turn on the Olvio Advisor and add Advisor links to your store.
If a save fails
When Olvio can't save your changes, an error message appears at the bottom of the screen, and your unsaved changes aren't kept:
Too many requests: your changes weren't saved, and the page goes back to what was last saved. On the Advisor page, a chip you removed comes back, and the New chip page is cleared. Wait a moment, make your changes again, then click Save.
Subscription required: your current plan doesn't include Olvio Advisor. It's available on Growth and Scale.
Chip not found: the chip was deleted in the meantime, for example from another browser tab. Olvio takes you back to the Advisor page, and your changes to that chip aren't saved.
Chip limit reached: you already have 5 chips, and the New chip page is cleared. On the Advisor page, click Remove next to a chip, click Save, then create the new chip again.