Integration with Ecwid by Lightspeed

Connect your Ecwid by Lightspeed store to your ChatLab chatbot. Once connected, the chatbot searches your products, indexes the whole catalog for AI Search and checks the status of customer orders directly in the Ecwid store.

Important: e-commerce best practices

After you finish the integration below, read the detailed guide on optimising your chatbot for e-commerce: How to set up ChatLab for your e-commerce store

What the integration provides

AI product search - Customers describe what they need in their own words and the chatbot finds matching products in your catalog. The answer contains:

• Product name and description
• Current price in your store currency, and for products on sale also the regular price and the discount
• Product image
• Direct link to the product page in your store
• Availability, SKU, categories and product options (sizes, colours) when the product has them

Product search by phrase - A simple keyword search using the Ecwid search engine. AI product search replaces it automatically once the catalog is indexed.

Order status - The customer gives the order number and the e-mail address used at checkout, and the chatbot answers with the payment status, fulfillment status, shipping method, tracking number and the ordered items. Orders are always matched against the customer's e-mail, so a guessed order number never reveals someone else's order.

Categories - The chatbot can narrow a search to a category, using the category tree of your store.

Add to cart - Product cards in the chat can show an Add to cart button. When the chatbot runs on your Instant Site, or on a website where your Ecwid store is embedded, the button puts the product straight into the customer's Ecwid cart. For products with options such as size or colour, the customer first picks the variant in the chat. Anywhere else, and for products with options the chat cannot fill in (for example a text field for an engraving), the button opens the product page.

What the integration does not provide

• Checkout in the chat. The customer completes the purchase in your Ecwid store.
• Live stock alerts. Prices and availability are read from Ecwid when the chatbot answers, but the chatbot does not notify customers about later changes.

Requirements

• An Ecwid store on the Venture, Business or Unlimited plan. Ecwid enables API access from the Venture plan upwards; the Starter plan cannot be connected.
• The Ecwid integration included in your ChatLab plan.
• For AI product search: AI Search capacity assigned to the chatbot large enough for your enabled products. Check the available capacity in Shop > Products.
• No other store integration connected to the same chatbot.

Step 1: Get the Store ID and the secret token in Ecwid

1. Log in to your Ecwid admin panel.
2. In the left menu click Apps, then My Apps, and open Develop apps (or go directly to https://my.ecwid.com/#develop-apps while logged in).
3. If no custom app is listed yet, click Create app. Ecwid creates the app with the permissions the chatbot needs: read store profile, read catalog and read orders. If the screen shows a permissions list, make sure these three are ticked.
4. Open the Details page of the app and click Show secret token. Copy the token. It starts with secret_. Do not use the public token, which starts with public_.
5. Note your Store ID. It is the number shown in the footer of every page of your Ecwid admin and in the address bar of the panel.

Keep the secret token private. It gives read access to your catalog and orders. You can revoke it at any time by uninstalling the app in Apps > My Apps; installing it again generates a new token.

Step 2: Connect the store in ChatLab

1. Open your chatbot in ChatLab and go to Shop.
2. Click the Ecwid tile.
3. Paste the Store ID and the Secret token.
4. Click Check connection. ChatLab reads the store profile and shows the store name, the storefront address and the currency.
5. If your store has more than one language, choose the Shop Language the chatbot should use for product names and descriptions.
6. Click Connect.

ChatLab tests the connection and switches on the product search and order status actions. When AI Search capacity is assigned to the chatbot, the catalog indexing starts right away and the confirmation window tells you so. The secret token is stored encrypted and is never shown again; leave the token field empty when you only want to change the language.

Step 3: Configure the actions

Go to Settings > AI Actions. Three actions are available for Ecwid:

• Ecwid - AI product search - semantic search over the indexed catalog. In its settings you can include the full product card in the answer, limit results to products in stock and enable the Add to cart button.
• Ecwid - product search - keyword search through the Ecwid search engine, used when AI Search is not available for the chatbot. It can also be limited to products in stock and show the Add to cart button.
• Ecwid - order details - order status lookup. Rate limiting and masking of personal data are available in the action settings.

Every action has an editable prompt and an action label shown in the chat while the chatbot is working.

Step 4: Check the catalog

Open Training > E-commerce catalog to follow the indexing progress, browse the indexed products and retrain the catalog after larger changes in the store. Only products that changed since the last run are re-indexed. Disabled products are removed from the index automatically.

Products without a description are indexed by name, categories and attributes only. If your products have no descriptions in Ecwid, adding even a short one noticeably improves the search results.

Step 5: Add the chatbot to your storefront

The Ecwid integration connects the chatbot to your store data. To show the chatbot to your customers, add the ChatLab script to the website where the store lives:

Instant Site (requires the Venture, Business or Unlimited plan):

1. In ChatLab, open your chatbot, go to Deploy, choose Ecwid and copy the code.
2. In your Ecwid admin, go to Website > Overview.
3. Scroll down to Advanced website settings and click Add Code under Custom JavaScript code.
4. Paste the code into the field that opens and click Save.
5. Refresh your Instant Site - the chatbot appears in the bottom corner of every page.

Ecwid recommends the body section (Custom JavaScript code) for chat widgets. Do not use Header meta tags and site verification in the SEO settings - that field is meant for verification tags.

Store embedded on another website (WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and others): add the code to that website, exactly as described in Adding chatbot to your website. The chatbot then appears on every page of that website, not only on the store page.

Troubleshooting

• "Ecwid rejected the secret token" - The token was copied incompletely, or the app was uninstalled or reinstalled in Ecwid, which generates a new token. Open the app's Details page again and paste the current token.
• "The Ecwid store plan does not include API access" - The store is on the Starter plan. Upgrade to Venture or higher in Ecwid.
• The chatbot finds no products - Check the indexing status in Training > E-commerce catalog and make sure the products are enabled in Ecwid. Disabled products are never returned.
• The order is not found - The chatbot needs the e-mail address used at checkout together with the order number shown in the confirmation e-mail, including any prefix or suffix your store adds to order numbers.