Shopify Sidekick and Shopify Magic are AI features built into the Shopify admin. Magic generates and edits text and images, such as product descriptions, emails and background edits, while Sidekick is a conversational assistant that answers questions about store data and helps carry out admin tasks. For B2B marketing teams, they work best for catalogue copy, customer segments, reports and campaign drafts, with a human review before anything goes live.
What do Sidekick and Magic actually do?
Shopify Magic is the name for the AI features spread across the admin. You see it as a sparkle button next to text fields: product descriptions, blog posts, email subject lines in Shopify Email, FAQ answers and store policies. Image tools let you remove or replace product photo backgrounds. Magic also suggests replies in Shopify Inbox.
Sidekick is the assistant panel. You ask questions in plain language, such as which wholesale customers ordered less this quarter than last, and it reads store data to answer, build reports, create discounts or segments, or explain where a setting lives. Shopify has expanded what Sidekick can do with each update, so the exact list depends on your plan and the current release.
Both are included in Shopify plans at the time of writing, though some capabilities roll out in stages and by language. Shopify Plus merchants using B2B features get the most relevant data for wholesale use cases.
Why do B2B teams need a different playbook?
B2B buying on Shopify usually means company accounts, price lists, volume pricing, payment terms and catalogues limited to certain buyers. The audience is a purchasing manager, not an impulse shopper. Copy must be precise about specifications, minimum order quantities and lead times rather than emotional.
Generated text defaults to consumer-style marketing language. Left unedited, it can sound wrong to a buyer comparing technical data sheets. The playbook below adjusts the tools to that reality.
How should B2B teams use Shopify Magic for catalogue copy?
Give Magic the facts and ask for structure, not flair. Paste key specifications, materials, certifications and MOQ into the prompt field, set the tone to professional or a custom tone, and ask for a short summary followed by a specification list.
- Write a brand voice note for B2B copy and reuse it in every prompt.
- Ban vague superlatives in the note, such as best-in-class, premium quality and unbeatable.
- Require units on every measurement and check them against the data sheet.
- Keep certification claims, such as ISO or CE marks, out of generation; add them by hand from documents.
- Run a sample of twenty products first and have sales review them before rolling out to the catalogue.
How can Sidekick support B2B campaigns and reporting?
Segments
Ask Sidekick to build customer segments such as companies that have not ordered in ninety days, or accounts that bought product A but never product B. Check the filter logic it creates in the Customers section before using the segment, because a small difference in conditions changes who is included.
Reports
Questions like which product categories grew most among wholesale buyers this quarter can be answered in seconds. Treat the answer as a first look. For board reports or commission calculations, verify figures in Shopify Analytics or your accounting system.
Discounts and campaigns
Sidekick can set up discounts, and Magic can draft email copy in Shopify Email. For B2B, keep price list changes and payment terms with the person responsible for pricing; an assistant creating a discount that stacks with a negotiated price list can cut margin quickly.
What are the limits and risks?
- Generated copy can include features a product does not have; every claim needs checking.
- Sidekick answers depend on clean data; untagged customers or missing company records give misleading results.
- Language support for some features is narrower than English.
- AI-drafted emails still need to meet consent rules under KVKK, GDPR or your local law.
- Changes made through Sidekick are real admin changes; restrict staff permissions accordingly.
How Alien Road applies Shopify Sidekick and Magic
Discovery starts with a review of the client’s Shopify setup: B2B features in use, catalogue size, data quality on customers and companies, and who on the team has admin permissions. We also collect the brand’s existing sales materials, because the best B2B copy usually exists already in quotes and data sheets.
Setup includes writing the B2B voice note, a prompt library for product types, and a review workflow where each generated description is checked by someone who knows the product. For example, an industrial supplier might regenerate descriptions for a product line in batches of fifty, with a technical reviewer signing off each batch.
We then train the client’s team on Sidekick for segments and reporting, with a checklist for verifying results. Measurement covers time spent per product listing, organic search impressions on updated product pages, email campaign engagement for AI-drafted versus manual campaigns, and repeat order rates in targeted segments.
How do you keep data clean enough for Sidekick?
Sidekick can only answer as well as your store data allows. In B2B setups, the common gaps are companies without assigned locations, customers missing company links, inconsistent tags such as wholesale and Wholesale, and products without types or vendors.
Fix these before relying on AI answers. A short clean-up project, often a few days for a mid-sized catalogue, pays back in every report afterwards. Agree a naming convention for tags and product types, write it down, and make it part of onboarding for anyone who edits the store.
Then test with questions you already know the answer to. If Sidekick’s figure for last quarter’s wholesale revenue matches your accounting system, you can trust it for exploratory questions. If it does not, the difference usually points straight at a data problem worth fixing.
Where to start this week
Pick ten products with weak descriptions and write a one-paragraph B2B voice note. Generate new descriptions with Shopify Magic using that note and the product data sheet, then ask your best sales person to mark every sentence they would not say to a buyer. Their edits become the rules for the rest of the catalogue. In parallel, ask Sidekick one question you usually answer with a spreadsheet and compare the results.