Documentation
Everything you need to set up and get the most out of Carti.
Last updated May 2026
Carti installs directly from the Shopify App Store. Click Add app, authorize the permissions, and you will land in the Carti dashboard inside your Shopify admin.
Once installed, Carti automatically syncs your products, collections, variants, inventory, and pricing. Sync time depends on the size of your catalog. Stores with a few dozen products typically finish in 2 to 3 minutes, while larger catalogs with thousands of products can take up to an hour. The average store syncs in about 5 minutes. You can track sync progress on the dashboard home screen.
The onboarding wizard walks you through six steps: customize appearance, configure settings, enable triggers, adjust tone, review your knowledge base, and go live. You can skip any step and come back to it later from the dashboard sidebar.
After installing Carti, you need to enable the theme embed so the Carti appears on your storefront. Without this step, Carti is installed but invisible to your customers.
How to enable Carti
- Open the Carti dashboard inside your Shopify admin.
- If you're still going through the onboarding wizard, the final step (step 6) is Go Live. Click the link it provides to open your Shopify theme editor.
- In the theme editor, find the Carti embed in the left sidebar and toggle it on.
- Click Save in the theme editor.
- Visit your storefront in a new browser tab. You should see the Carti chat launcher in the bottom corner of your store.
Carti automatically detects whether your theme embed is active. If it gets disabled for any reason, you will see a status indicator on your dashboard home screen letting you know.
Open Customize in the dashboard sidebar, then select the Appearance tab. All changes preview in real time so you can see exactly how Carti will look before saving.
Primary color
This controls the color of the chat header, the floating launcher button, and the send button inside the chat window. Pick from the color picker or enter a hex code directly to match your brand. Most merchants use their primary brand color here.
Chat placement
Choose whether the chat launcher appears in the bottom-left or bottom-right corner of your store. Most stores use bottom-right because it's where shoppers expect to find chat. If you already have another widget in the bottom-right (like a loyalty program or review prompt), choose bottom-left to avoid overlap.
Header text and welcome message
The header text appears at the top of the chat window and is the first thing shoppers notice when the chat opens. The welcome message is the greeting displayed below it. Keep both short and inviting. For example, you might set the header to your store name and the welcome message to something like "Hi there! Looking for something specific?"
Logo
Upload your store logo to display in the chat header alongside the header text. Supports PNG, JPG, and GIF formats. A logo makes Carti feel like part of your store rather than a third-party tool.
Open Customize in the dashboard sidebar, then select the Tone tab. This controls how Carti communicates with your customers. Getting the tone right matters because Carti is speaking on behalf of your brand.
Presets
Choose from six presets to quickly set Carti's personality: Minimalist, Upbeat, Luxury, Friendly, Professional, or Custom. Each preset automatically adjusts all of the settings below to match that style. If none of the presets feel right, choose Custom and set each option yourself.
Individual sliders
For more control, adjust each slider independently:
- Formality: Ranges from formal to informal. A luxury brand might lean formal, while a streetwear brand would lean informal.
- Empathy: Ranges from low to high. Higher empathy means Carti will be more understanding and supportive in responses.
- Humor: Ranges from none to playful. Use sparingly for professional brands, or crank it up if your brand has a fun personality.
- Confidence: Ranges from tentative to confident. Higher confidence means Carti will be more direct in recommendations.
- Brevity: Ranges from concise to detailed. Concise works well for simple product catalogs, while detailed is better for stores with complex or technical products.
- Personality: Choose from friendly, professional, quirky, or elegant.
Custom notes
Add specific instructions for Carti's voice that go beyond what the sliders cover. These notes supplement whatever preset or slider configuration you've chosen. Some examples:
- "Use emojis when appropriate."
- "Don't use semicolons."
- "Mention our $100 free shipping threshold whenever appropriate."
Knowledge Base in the dashboard sidebar is where Carti learns everything about your store. When you install Carti, it automatically scrapes your website and populates much of this for you. You should review and edit the auto-generated content to make sure everything is accurate, especially your return policy and shipping details, because these are the most commonly asked questions.
Brand story
Fill in your store overview, founding story, brand values, and mission statement. Carti uses this information when shoppers ask questions like "who are you?" or "what makes your brand different?" A few sentences in each field is plenty.
Shipping and orders
Document your shipping policy, costs, international order details, and order tracking process. Shipping questions are consistently the most common type of inquiry on Shopify stores, so the more detail you provide here, the fewer emails your support inbox will receive.
Returns and support
Add your return policy, exchange policy, cancellation policy, and customer service details. When shoppers ask about returns, Carti will use this information to give clear, consistent answers instead of guessing or making something up.
FAQs
Add question and answer pairs for anything specific to your store that Carti might not learn on its own. You can also upload files (PDF, DOCX, TXT, MD, or CSV) with additional information like sizing guides, ingredient lists, or care instructions. Carti indexes these files and uses them to answer questions.
Triggers let Carti proactively reach out to shoppers based on their behavior instead of waiting for them to initiate a conversation. Open Triggers in the dashboard sidebar. Each trigger type can be toggled on or off independently. Carti automatically generates a contextual message for each trigger based on the shopper's behavior and the page they're on.
Available triggers
- Rage click: Fires when a shopper clicks repeatedly in frustration. You can configure the click threshold to control how many rapid clicks trigger the message.
- Inactivity: Fires after a shopper has been idle for a set number of seconds. This is useful for re-engaging browsers who have stalled on a page without taking action.
- Exit intent: Fires when a shopper moves their cursor toward the browser's close or back button, signaling they're about to leave. You can attach a custom message and an optional discount code to try to retain them before they go.
- Scroll depth: Fires when a shopper scrolls past a configurable percentage of the page. This is useful for engaging shoppers who are browsing deeply but haven't interacted yet.
- Time on page: Fires after a shopper has spent a set number of seconds on a page without clicking. This catches shoppers who might be undecided or comparing options.
- Post add-to-cart: Fires after a shopper adds an item to their cart. This is ideal for suggesting complementary products or upselling related items while the shopper is in a buying mindset.
The Settings page in the dashboard sidebar contains configuration for product cards, escalation routing, reviews, and discount offers.
Product card actions
When Carti recommends a product in the chat, it displays a product card with one or two action buttons. You can choose what those buttons do:
- View Item: Clicking the button takes the shopper to the full product page on your store, where they can see all details, images, and reviews before deciding.
- Add to Cart: Clicking the button adds the product directly to the shopper's cart from inside the chat without leaving the conversation.
- Both: Shows both buttons on every product card, giving shoppers the flexibility to browse or buy immediately. This is the recommended setting for most stores.
Escalation routing
When Carti can't resolve a question or detects that a shopper needs human help, it can escalate the conversation. You control where escalations go:
- Disabled: Turn off escalation entirely if you prefer Carti to handle all conversations without routing to your team.
- Email: Escalation details are sent to a support email address you specify.
- Zendesk: Creates a ticket directly in your Zendesk account. Enter your subdomain and API token, then use the Test Connection button to verify.
- Gorgias: Creates a ticket directly in your Gorgias account. Enter your subdomain and API token, then test the connection.
Re:amaze, Help Scout, and Freshdesk integrations are coming soon.
Reviews integration
Connect your reviews provider so Carti can reference real customer reviews during conversations. When a shopper asks something like "is this product good?" or "what do people think of this?", Carti can pull from your actual review data to give an informed answer. It will summarize what customers tend to like about a product, highlight standout features, mention common praise, and give an honest overview based on real feedback.
Supported providers:
- Judge.me
- Yotpo
- Loox
- Okendo (coming soon)
For each provider, enter your API credentials in the settings panel and use the Test Connection button to verify everything is working.
Discount offers
Configure how Carti handles discount offers during conversations. There are four modes:
- Off: Carti will never offer discount codes to shoppers. Use this if you don't run promotions or prefer to keep discounts out of the chat experience.
- Email capture without verification: Carti offers a discount code in exchange for the shopper's email address. The shopper enters their email, receives the code immediately, and their email is synced to your Shopify customer list. If you use a CRM like Klaviyo, the email automatically flows from Shopify into your CRM.
- Email capture with OTP verification: Same as above, but the shopper must verify their email by entering a one-time code sent to their inbox before receiving the discount. This is slightly slower but prevents spam and ensures only real email addresses are collected.
- Instant offer: Anyone who asks for a discount code receives one immediately with no email exchange required. This maximizes conversion but does not capture any contact information.
For each active mode, you can configure the offer title, discount code, and description.
The Analytics dashboard (available on Pro) is where you optimize Carti to drive more revenue. Every section connects to a specific action you can take in the dashboard. You can filter all data by 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or a custom date range. Use the 7-day view after making changes to see if they had an impact, and the 30 or 90-day views for broader trends.
Store performance
A side-by-side comparison table breaks down visitors, conversion rate, orders, revenue, and average order value for Carti shoppers versus non-Carti shoppers. This is the clearest picture of Carti's direct impact on your business. Daily trend charts below the table show how these numbers move over time.
Engagement rate tells you what percentage of your visitors are interacting with Carti. If this is low, you're leaving money on the table. Enable more triggers, lower your trigger thresholds so they fire sooner, or rewrite your welcome message to be more inviting.
Conversion lift compares the conversion rate of shoppers who interact with Carti against those who don't. If your lift is high, focus on driving more conversations (more triggers, lower thresholds) because every new conversation is disproportionately valuable. If your lift is flat, the conversations themselves need work. Check your chat logs for weak answers, update your knowledge base, or try a more confident tone preset.
AOV lift shows whether Carti shoppers spend more per order. If this number is flat, add custom notes encouraging Carti to mention complementary products, bundles, or your free shipping threshold. You can also connect a reviews provider so Carti can reference social proof when recommending higher value items.
Trigger performance
This is the most actionable section on the page. A per-trigger breakdown shows how many times each trigger type fired, how many shoppers responded, and how many of those responses led to a conversion. Carti automatically highlights your best-performing trigger.
Use this data to make targeted changes. If exit intent has a high response rate but low conversion, your discount offer might not be compelling enough. If inactivity is converting well, try lowering its threshold so it fires sooner and catches more shoppers. If post add-to-cart is your top converter, Carti is successfully cross-selling, and you should make sure your knowledge base has strong information about which products go well together. Disable any trigger that fires frequently but rarely converts.
Chat engagement
Tracks total conversations, response rate, average reply speed, and messages per session. A breakdown shows how many conversations were shopper-initiated versus started by a trigger. If the majority come from triggers, your proactive setup is doing the work. If most are shopper-initiated, your shoppers are finding Carti on their own, and enabling more triggers could significantly increase your total conversation volume.
A high message count per session usually means shoppers are engaged, but it can also mean Carti is taking too many turns to answer a question. Cross-reference this with your chat logs to see which it is. If Carti is being too verbose, try a more concise tone setting.
Button clicks
Shows what shoppers are clicking inside the chat: product views, add-to-cart actions, collection browsing, suggested replies, and more. If shoppers are clicking to view products but not adding to cart, switch your product card actions to show both View and Add to Cart buttons so shoppers can buy without leaving the conversation. If add-to-cart clicks are strong but orders aren't following, the issue is likely in your checkout flow rather than in Carti.
Chat Logs in the dashboard sidebar is where you can review every conversation Carti has had with your shoppers. This is one of the most important sections of the dashboard because it's how you improve Carti's performance over time.
How to use chat logs effectively
We recommend reviewing your chat logs every couple of weeks. Here's the workflow:
- Open Chat Logs and filter to show Unread sessions so you only see conversations you haven't looked at yet.
- Skim through each conversation. When Carti handled something well, mark the session as Reviewed to move it out of your queue.
- If you find a conversation where Carti gave an incorrect or unhelpful answer, click on the specific message and use the feedback form to write a correction. For example, if a shopper asked whether you offer gift wrapping and Carti said no because it wasn't aware that you do, correct the response with the right answer.
- Carti automatically creates an FAQ from your correction so it handles the same question correctly going forward. You don't need to go add it to your Knowledge Base separately.
Searching and filtering
Use the search bar to find conversations containing specific keywords. This is useful for checking how Carti handles a particular topic. For example, search "return" to see every conversation where a shopper asked about returns and verify Carti is giving accurate information. You can also search for product names to see how often shoppers ask about specific items.
The date range filter lets you narrow conversations to a specific time period, which is helpful when you want to review sessions after making a change to your knowledge base or tone settings.
Bulk actions
Select multiple sessions at once to mark them as reviewed in bulk. This makes it faster to clear out sessions where everything went well so you can focus on the ones that need attention.
The Playground lets you have a real conversation with Carti as if you were a shopper on your store. It uses your live settings, including your current appearance, tone, knowledge base, and triggers.
When to use it
Use the Playground after making any changes to your tone settings, knowledge base, or triggers. It's the fastest way to verify that Carti sounds right and has accurate information before real shoppers see the changes.
Features
- Reset: Clear the current conversation and start a new one from scratch. Use this to test different scenarios without leftover context from a previous chat.
- Copy transcript: Copy the full conversation to your clipboard so you can share it with your team or reference it later.
- Mobile preview: Switch between device presets (iPhone, Galaxy, Pixel) to see how Carti looks and behaves on different screen sizes.
- Fullscreen: View Carti in a fullscreen overlay for a distraction-free testing experience.
Free plan
The Free plan includes everything you need to get started:
- 50 AI conversations per month
- Proactive customer outreach (triggers)
- Smart search and product recommendations
- Auto-learns your products, policies, and content
- Supports 90+ languages and 15+ currencies
- 5-minute setup, no code required
Pro plan ($39/month)
Pro removes the conversation limit and unlocks everything you need to grow:
- Unlimited AI conversations so you never hit a cap during high-traffic periods
- Direct revenue tracking to see exactly how much revenue Carti is generating for your store
- Advanced conversion analytics including conversion lift, revenue per conversation, and engagement trends over time
- AI-powered review summaries so Carti can reference and synthesize your customer reviews during conversations
- Personalization for returning shoppers so Carti can greet customers by name, remember their preferences, and recommend products based on their purchase history
- Remove "Powered by Carti" branding for a fully white-labeled experience
- Priority chat support from the Carti team
Pro includes a 14-day free trial so you can see results before you pay.
Changing plans
You can upgrade or downgrade anytime from your Carti dashboard. Upgrades take effect immediately with a 14-day trial. Downgrades take effect at the start of your next billing cycle. There are no penalties or fees for changing plans.
Carti not showing on my store
The most common cause is the theme embed not being enabled. Open the Carti dashboard and check the status card on the home screen. If the onboarding wizard is still available, the final step (step 6) is Go Live, which links directly to your theme editor. If you've already finished the wizard, go to Settings, scroll to the bottom, and click Run setup wizard to get back to the Go Live step.
Products not appearing in recommendations
Check the sync status on your dashboard home screen. If sync is still in progress, wait for it to complete. Products that are out of stock or set to draft status in Shopify won't appear in recommendations. If sync has completed and products are still missing, reach out to support@heycarti.com and we'll investigate.
Carti is giving incorrect answers
Review your Knowledge Base to make sure your policies, FAQs, and brand information are accurate and up to date. If Carti learned something incorrect from your website's content during the initial scrape, edit or remove it. You can also use Chat Logs to find the specific conversation, leave a correction on the message, and Carti will use the correct information going forward.
Add to Cart or discount codes not working
Carti supports the vast majority of Shopify themes out of the box, but some custom themes require minor adjustments to ensure that Add to Cart and discount code application work correctly from the chat.
If either of these features isn't working on your store, click the Carti support chat in the bottom right corner of your dashboard and let us know. We'll adjust the theme settings to get it working right away. Fixes typically take less than 24 hours.
Escalations not working
If you've set up Zendesk or Gorgias integration, go to Settings and use the Test Connection button to verify your API credentials are correct. Make sure the subdomain, email, and API token are all entered accurately. If the connection test passes but escalations still aren't appearing, contact support@heycarti.com.
Still have questions?
Check our FAQ for common questions, or reach out to our team at support@heycarti.com.