The online shop that helps the customer choose

It is a Wednesday evening and Gunnar suddenly remembers his nephew turns fourteen on Saturday. He opens an online store a friend pointed him to, has never shopped there before, and has no idea what a fourteen-year-old wants. In front of him is a search box and twenty categories. In a shop he would ask the assistant. Here there is no one to ask. He types into the chat anyway: “What would you recommend for a fourteen-year-old boy, around five to eight thousand krónur?”

Anna asks whether the boy is into sports or video games, and from the answer she suggests three things the store has in stock, each with a link. Gunnar has a gift in two minutes, without paging through categories he does not know.

This is the biggest difference between a shop and an online store. In a shop, someone stands on the floor who knows the products and can point you to the right shelf. Online, you stand alone in front of a search box, and if you do not know exactly what you are looking for, you often give up.

Anna is the shop-floor help your online store otherwise never had. A customer who is not sure what they want, or where to find it, can simply ask, and Anna narrows it down, suggests products from your catalogue, and points straight to them. She does not complete the purchase herself, but she gets the customer to the right product, in Icelandic and English, at any hour of the day.

The hardest customer is the one ready to buy

The customer who knows exactly what they want finds it themselves. The one with no idea rarely browses their way to a decision. Between them is a large group who are ready to buy, card in hand, but do not know what fits. A static website serves that group worst, and it is the group that decides the most sales.

It also happens at the worst time for the store. People shop in the evening and at weekends, after dinner and after the children are asleep, when no shop is staffed. That is exactly when the question comes that an assistant would answer in a second, and when it gets no answer, the customer goes elsewhere.

How online stores try to solve it

The search box only works if you know the name of the product. “A gift for a fourteen-year-old” returns nothing useful, because search knows words, not occasions.

Categories and filters help whoever is willing to work their way through, but they put the assistant's job on the customer. Many will not bother, and they close the tab.

Suggestions like “others also bought” are generic and do not answer your occasion. They are a guess based on other people, not a conversation about what you are looking for.

A generic chatbot answers at once, but it does not know your catalogue and sends the customer in circles between buttons that never quite fit.

The newest option is an AI that knows the catalogue and can talk to the customer the way an assistant would.

When the store is connected, Anna knows the products

If your online store is connected, Anna reads the catalogue as it is at any given time, the price, the variants, and what is in stock, and lets what the store says take priority over what she was taught. That way she only suggests what you actually have, and sends a link straight to the product. If no store is connected, she works from the product information you have recorded.

The connection is to your store, whether it runs on Shopify or another platform, and we keep adding more platforms over time. This is not an add-on you install inside the store, there is no extra coding and no “plugin,” just one line of code on the page like everything else with Anna.

Frequently asked questions

Can Anna recommend a product? Yes. She asks about the occasion, the budget, and who it is for, and suggests products from your catalogue that fit, compares them, and sends a link to each. She only recommends what you sell and have in stock.

Does she complete the purchase or take payment? No. She guides the customer to the right product and can send a link straight to it, to a search result, or to a ready cart, but the purchase itself is completed in your store. Payment never goes through Anna.

Can she look up an order that is already on its way? Not at the moment. Questions about shipping, returns, and delivery times she answers from what you have taught her, and for a specific order she points to your order overview or hands the matter to the team. She does not guess at the status of an order.

Which online stores does this work with? The connection works with your online store, for example on Shopify, and we add more platforms as we go. There is nothing to install inside the store, the connection is one line of code on the website.

Does she answer foreign customers in their own language? Yes. Anna reads each visitor's language and answers in it. Icelandic and English come with every plan, and she does her best in more languages when needed.

This is why Anna answers the way she does

Anna is built to be the shop-floor help that greets the customer who is not quite sure what they want. She knows your catalogue, asks the right questions, suggests what fits, and gets the customer straight to the product, in Icelandic and English, long after closing too. She only recommends what you have in stock, and what she does not know she does not guess at. And if someone on the team is around, they can step into the chat and take over themselves, at any time.

In a shop you ask the assistant. Your online store can have one too, around the clock.

See what Anna does or chat with her right now, no signup needed. And related: why the first answer wins the sale, how she answers every visitor in their own language, and why a wrong answer is worse than none.

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