Add the Allinaa chatbot to a Big Cartel shop

Big Cartel shops are usually run by one person who makes the things they sell, which makes the chat assistant's job unusually clear: answer the shipping, sizing and "is this back in stock" questions that arrive at eleven at night, so the maker is not answering the same four messages every evening.

Before you start: copy your embed code

Create your account at bot.allinaa.com/start using your shop's address. The setup wizard reads your own shop pages - shipping, returns, about, FAQ - and drafts the knowledge from them so you can edit and approve it. Step 5, "Install", shows your line with a copy button:

<script src="https://bot.allinaa.com/widget.js" data-bot-id="your-bot-id" defer></script>

Keep a copy of the theme before you edit it

Big Cartel's design section lets you edit your theme's code, and before changing it you should have a way back. Either duplicate the theme if your plan allows it, or copy the whole layout file into a text file on your computer first. It takes ten seconds and it is the difference between "undo" and "rebuild the shop". This is the same advice every platform's own documentation gives about theme editing, and it is the step people skip.

Where it goes: the layout, before the closing body tag

In your shop's design settings, open the theme's code and find the layout template - the file that wraps every page of the shop. Scroll to the end, find the closing </body> tag, paste the line on the line just before it, and save.

That one paste covers every page of the shop, because every page uses the layout: the front page, each product, your about and contact pages. If the menu does not look as described, search Big Cartel's own help for editing theme code - their layout is stable, but a vendor page is not where to look for the current menu names.

The one thing to remember later

The line lives in the theme. If you later change theme, or reset the one you have, the line goes with it - and the chat quietly disappears without anything failing. Put a note somewhere you will see it, or check the shop in a private window after any design change. This is the most common way a correctly installed widget vanishes months later, on any platform where the install lives in a theme.

What a small shop should put in the knowledge

These are the questions that lose sales on a maker's shop, and they all have fixed answers:

• Shipping: where you ship to, what it costs, how long you take to make and post an order, and what happens at busy times.
• Sizing and materials: what the measurements mean, what the item is made of, how it should be cared for.
• Returns: whether you take them, who pays the postage, and how long a refund takes. Write this as it really is - a clear "no returns on made-to-order pieces" loses fewer customers than a vague answer.
• Restocks and custom work: whether you make more of a sold-out item, whether you take commissions, and how somebody asks.
• Who you are. On a maker's shop this sells, so let the assistant tell it.

What it cannot see

The assistant has no access to your shop's data: it cannot say whether an item is in stock, cannot look up an order and cannot apply a discount code. Write the sentence it uses for each - your order-tracking route, your contact for order questions - and it will give that every time instead of guessing. If you want it to answer product questions with real prices and links, the Premium catalogue import does that from your own published prices and product links. See online stores.

Check it worked

1. Open your shop in a private window. The bubble should appear on the front page and on a product page.
2. Ask it your most common shipping question and read the answer.
3. Ask it where an order is. It should decline and give your order-contact route.
4. Open the shop on a phone and check the bubble is not covering anything.

See install troubleshooting and the launch checklist.