Automate Shopify Search & Discovery with AI: Guide for Merchants

Have you installed the free Shopify Search and Discovery apps for your store? They’re effective when used properly.

However, I’ve found that many shop owners and eCommerce managers aren’t leveraging these tools to their full potential. Installing the app is only half the job—you also need to provide it with the right product data so it can really start working for your business.

Today, you can use AI to generate rich product information and unlock powerful search and discovery features.

In this post, I’ll share practical tips for making the most of Shopify’s built-in search and discovery apps and introduce advanced AI tools to help you automate the entire process—because I know how busy Shopify merchants can be, managing a million different tasks.

Start with Updating Metafields

Why it matters: Shopify’s search and discovery features depend on the quality and detail of your product data. The more information you provide, the easier it is for shoppers to find what they want.

How to do it:

• Use Shopify’s Metafields: Shopify now offers auto-generated category metafields for products. When you assign a category, Shopify suggests relevant attributes—like neckline, color, pattern, and sleeve—to enrich your product listings.

• Leverage AI Tools: Tools like ChatGPT or your favorite GenAI can help you extract and organize product information quickly. For an even more advanced approach, consider AI-powered solutions that automatically update product metafields with fashion-specific attributes such as fit, length, occasion, and style vibe.

Pro Tip: Platforms like YesPlz AI can automate this process, extracting 10–15 fashion attributes from product images and updating your product metafields in bulk. This saves you time and ensures your data is always up to date.

Enhance Your Search Experience

Why it matters: Shopify’s default search is effective for smaller stores, but it’s limited when it comes to synonyms, typos, or variations. This can frustrate shoppers and lead to lost sales.

How to improve it:

• Use Product Boosts: With your metafields in place, add keyword variations to each product using the Shopify Search app’s ‘Product Boost’ feature. This helps shoppers find products even if they use different terms in their search.

Automate Keyword Updates: For larger catalogs, manually updating keywords is impractical. AI-driven tools can automate this process, ensuring your product boosts are always optimized. Take YesPlz AI, for instance: it extracts key attributes and automatically updates them for each product boost. As shown in the image below, all these products have been updated with relevant fashion attributes—completely automatically.

For example, these products don’t have “boatneck” as a keyword in either the product title or description. However, based on product tagging, the system has extracted the “boatneck” attribute and updated it for relevant products, ensuring they appear in searches for that keyword. All of this happens automatically, so you don’t have to manually update keywords.

Pro Tip: If your store has more than 1,000 products, consider upgrading to a hybrid search engine. These solutions combine product titles and image data, using “fashion embedding search” to match items even without exact keyword matches.

Streamline Your Product Filters with Fashion-Forward Options

Why it matters: Well-organized filters help shoppers narrow down their choices quickly and easily. This is especially important in fashion, where shoppers have specific preferences.

How to do it:

• Focus on Key Attributes: Prioritize filters for color, neckline, sleeves, length, pattern, and occasion—these are the most popular options for fashion shoppers.

• Customize Filter Names: Tailor filter labels to your target audience, whether you’re catering to high-end, fast fashion, or casual shoppers.

Pro Tip: Good filtering can increase add-to-cart rates by up to 1.7 times. Make sure your filters offer style-specific options. The filter list should be well organized, not too long or overwhelming, and use facets to help shoppers narrow down their choices effectively. With GenAI tools, you can also offer popular fashion filtering options, such as “occasion” or “vibe,” that help shoppers easily find their favorite styles.

Enhance Product Recommendations

Why it matters: Shoppers expect to see relevant product suggestions as they browse. Personalized recommendations keep them engaged and increase the likelihood of a sale.

How to do it:

• Use Shopify’s Built-in Widgets: Take advantage of features like “Complete the Look” and “You Might Also Like” to showcase related products.

• Curate Recommendations Manually: For smaller stores, manual curation can be effective. However, this becomes time-consuming as your catalog grows.

• Automate with AI: Advanced recommendation apps use machine learning to suggest similar, complementary, or frequently bought-together items. Look for solutions that understand fashion context, as these deliver higher click-through rates.

Pro Tip: Image-based recommendations can boost conversion rates by 4.5–5.6%. Make sure your recommendation engine is always up to date and relevant to your shoppers’ interests.

Automate for Maximum Efficiency

Running a Shopify store involves countless tasks. As someone who was once a Shopify merchant, managing every aspect of eCommerce from sourcing and photography to packaging and even handwriting personal notes to customers, I know how important it is to automate repetitive work. 

Shopify’s metafields, search, and discovery apps are a great starting point. With a bit more effort, you can create a much more polished discovery experience. Your shoppers will be delighted and more likely to come back.

I hope this post helps you start thinking about how to leverage AI-powered tools, so you can eventually fully automate the process and focus on growing your business instead of manual updates. As we all know, time is essential for every business.

If you’re looking to take your store’s discovery experience to the next level, feel free to reach out. I’m here to help you automate and optimize every step of the process.