Merchant AI User Guide

What Is Merchant AI?

Merchant AI is an AI-powered assistant for BigCommerce store owners. Instead of navigating complex admin dashboards, you manage your entire store through natural language - just type what you need done.

The Assistant

The Assistant is your primary tool for day-to-day store management. Type commands or questions in plain English and the AI will take action or retrieve information on your behalf.

What you can do

• Products & Inventory — Update prices, descriptions, stock levels, or variants. ("Increase all prices in the Outdoor category by 5%.")
• Orders & Shipments — Check order status, update details, create or manage shipments. ("Show me all pending orders from yesterday.")
• Customers — Look up customer profiles, order history, and account details.
• Payments & Refunds — Capture or void payments, process refunds.
• Promotions & Coupons — Create promotions, generate coupon codes, manage discount campaigns.
• Price Lists — Build and assign price lists to customer groups or channels.
• Brands & Categories — Manage brands, category trees, and sort orders.
• Shipping — Configure shipping zones, methods, and carrier connections.
• Pages & Blog — Create or edit storefront pages, blog posts, and banners.
• Email & Abandoned Carts — Customize email templates and configure abandoned cart recovery.
• Store Settings — Adjust general store configuration and operational settings.
• Instant Answers — Ask questions about your data. ("What are my top 10 best-selling products this month?" "Which items are low on stock?")

Note: The Assistant can make mistakes. Always review changes applied to your store.

The Specialist

The Specialist is a premium AI agent designed for complex, multi-step, long-running projects that require deeper analysis and sequenced actions across your catalog or operations.

Example tasks well-suited to the Specialist:

• "Audit my catalog for missing meta descriptions and fix them."
• "Find products with no sales in 90 days and flag them for review."
• "Rewrite product titles in my Outdoor category for SEO."
• "Reconcile last month's refunds against my refund policy."

A status badge in the interface shows whether the Specialist is Idle or Running. The Specialist is available on the Premium plan only.

Note: The Specialist can make mistakes. Always review changes applied to your store.

Subscription Plans

Credits are consumed each time the AI performs an action or answers a question. When your credits run low, an upgrade prompt will appear.

Managing Your Subscription

Access subscription options from the menu in the top-right corner of the app.

• Manage Subscription — Upgrade, downgrade, or restart your plan.
• Update Payment Info — Change the card on file.
• View Invoices — Review past payments and download receipts.
• View Usage — See how many credits you have used versus your plan limit.

When upgrading from a paid plan to a higher tier, the app will show a pro-rata preview before you confirm. When downgrading, a warning will display the difference in credit limits.

Tips for Best Results

• Be specific in your requests. Instead of "fix my products," try "set all products in the Electronics category to free shipping."
• For large-scale changes, use the Specialist to plan and execute across your full catalog.
• After any AI-generated change, spot-check a few items in your BigCommerce admin to confirm results.
• If you hit a credit limit mid-task, upgrade your plan and re-submit the request.

Support

Use the support chat widget (bottom-right corner of the app) to contact the Merchant AI support team.