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AI FOR ECOMMERCE · SHOPPING ASSISTANT

A 24/7 sales rep for your store.

Most stores are silent. A shopper lands, has a question, and no one is there, so they leave. A live AI avatar greets them by voice, answers sizing and fit, recommends the right product, and adds it to the cart. Here is the exact no-code stack to build one, with links.

01

Build the live avatar

HeyGen LiveAvatar

HeyGen LiveAvatar gives you a real-time, talking video avatar that greets shoppers and holds a natural back-and-forth conversation, no developer setup. Pick a look and a voice, and you have the face of your store. The easiest place to start.

02

Give it your products and brand voice

HeyGen Knowledge

An avatar is only useful if it knows your catalog. Feed it your product feed, sizing, returns policy and brand tone so its recommendations are accurate and on-brand. This is the step that turns a chatbot into a stylist that actually helps people buy.

03

Want it fully custom?

Tavus

Tavus is the developer-first option for conversational video, sub-500ms, two-way, and deeply customisable. Reach for it when you or a developer want full control over the experience and the lowest possible latency.

04

Put it on your store (no code)

Shopify

Embed the avatar widget in the corner of your storefront, Shopify, WooCommerce, Webflow or a custom site all work. It sits there like a live assistant, ready the moment a visitor lands, 24/7 and across every time zone.

05

Let it close the sale

Cart & checkout

Wire the assistant to your cart so it can do the one thing that matters: add the right item and move the shopper to checkout. "Should I add that to your cart?" is where a conversation becomes revenue.

One honest note

A great avatar can’t save a bad catalog

The avatar only sells as well as the information behind it. Keep the product data, sizing and stock accurate, give it a clear brand voice, and let it hand off to a human for anything it is unsure about. Done right, it lifts conversion; done lazily, it frustrates buyers. Aim it at real questions shoppers actually ask.

Want this built for you?

Klevere builds a custom AI shopping assistant, trained on your catalog and brand, embedded on your store, and wired to your cart so it sells while you sleep.

Tools, features and pricing change quickly; check each tool’s own site for current plans before committing. Tool names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Who this is for

A live avatar assistant suits online stores selling considered purchases, where shoppers have questions before they buy: fashion sizing, skincare routines, furniture dimensions or technical compatibility. It works best with a well-maintained product feed and enough traffic to justify per-minute costs. It is a poor fit for low-price impulse products, stores with thin or inaccurate product data, and sectors where advice is regulated, such as medicines or financial products.

Step by step setup

  1. 01

    Decide what the assistant is for

    Pick two or three jobs, for example size and fit questions, product comparisons and order help, and write down what a good answer looks like for each. Decide which topics it must hand to a person. A narrow, well-defined assistant performs far better than one told to help with anything a shopper might ask.

  2. 02

    Prepare the knowledge it will use

    Export your catalogue with sizes, materials, care instructions and stock status, plus your shipping, returns and warranty policies. Clean the data first, because missing measurements and contradictory descriptions become wrong answers. Add a short brand voice note covering tone, phrases to avoid and how to talk about alternatives. Keep this data in one source that updates automatically.

  3. 03

    Build and test on the LiveAvatar free plan

    Start with a preset avatar on the free plan, which allows one session at a time of up to two minutes, with a watermark. Full mode is the quickest setup because speech recognition, the language model and the voice are included. Test the twenty questions shoppers ask most and correct the knowledge wherever answers are wrong.

  4. 04

    Consider Tavus if you need deeper control

    If a developer will build the experience, Tavus offers white-labelled APIs for conversational video, with a free developer tier to experiment on. It suits stores that want a custom face, their own language model or close control over latency. Expect noticeably more engineering time than with a preset avatar. Prototype the conversation flow before committing to a build.

  5. 05

    Embed it on the store

    Real-time avatars typically need a small server-side step that creates a secure session token, so plan for a developer or app integration on Shopify, WooCommerce or a custom site. Load the widget only on pages where it helps, such as product and size guide pages, so it does not slow down every page.

  6. 06

    Connect it to the cart carefully

    Let the assistant suggest products and add items to the cart only after the shopper confirms. Pass exact product and variant identifiers, and show the cart change on screen so the shopper can see what happened. Never let it apply discounts or change prices on its own initiative. Log every cart action for review.

  7. 07

    Disclose, monitor and hand off

    Tell shoppers they are talking to an AI assistant in the greeting and on the widget, and offer a clear route to a person or to email support. Review transcripts weekly for wrong answers, missed questions and complaints, and fix product data at the source rather than patching the prompt.

What it costs

Taken from each vendor's own pricing page. Plans change, so check the link before you commit.

HeyGen LiveAvatar

Free plan with 10 credits a month, one concurrent session of up to two minutes and a watermark; Essential is $99 a month with a custom avatar and no watermark.

Tavus

Free developer plan with a small allowance of conversational video minutes; paid developer plans are listed from $22 a month, with pay-as-you-go usage on higher tiers.

Shopify

Three-day free trial, then $1 a month for the first three months on most plans; Basic is $29 a month billed yearly or $39 billed monthly.

Common mistakes to avoid

Not disclosing that shoppers are talking to AI

A realistic human face makes disclosure more important, not less. In the EU, the AI Act requires people to be told they are interacting with an AI system unless it is obvious, from August 2026. Say so in the greeting and on the widget itself.

Treating answers as harmless

What the assistant tells a shopper about prices, returns or delivery may be treated as a statement from your business. Keep it to information in your catalogue and written policies, stop it inventing discounts or dates, and route anything uncertain to a person.

Stale stock and sizing data

Recommending sold-out items or the wrong size frustrates buyers and drives returns. Sync stock status automatically, keep size charts in structured data, and re-test the most common questions whenever the catalogue changes.

Storing conversations without telling people

Voice and video conversations are personal data. Explain in the greeting and your privacy notice whether conversations are stored, for how long and by which provider, and avoid collecting more than the assistant needs.

Ignoring cost per conversation

Real-time avatar minutes add up when every visitor can start a session. Trigger the assistant on high-intent pages, cap session length, and compare the cost per conversation with the extra margin it actually brings in.

Slowing the store down

Heavy widgets loaded on every page can hurt page speed and conversion. Load the avatar only when a shopper opens it, and measure page speed before and after installing so you know the true trade-off.

When to get help

The no-code route is enough to test whether shoppers want a talking assistant on a handful of product pages. A custom build is worth considering once it proves useful and you need live inventory, order history, personalised recommendations, several languages, reliable cart actions across variants, or reporting tied to revenue. Klevere builds custom shopping assistants trained on a store's catalogue and connected to its cart and support tools.

Book a free AI audit

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI shopping assistant?

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It is an assistant on your store that answers shoppers' questions, recommends products and can help add items to the cart. Some work as text chat; others, such as LiveAvatar or Tavus, use a real-time talking video avatar. All of them depend on accurate product data and clear rules about what they may say.

How much does a live AI avatar cost for a website?

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LiveAvatar by HeyGen has a free plan for testing with short, watermarked sessions, and its Essential plan is $99 a month for a custom avatar without a watermark. Tavus has a free developer tier and paid plans listed from $22 a month. Real costs depend on how many minutes shoppers actually use.

Does an AI shopping assistant work on Shopify?

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Yes. An avatar or chat widget can be embedded on Shopify, WooCommerce, Webflow or a custom site. Real-time avatars usually need a small server-side step to create sessions securely, so plan for a developer or a ready-made app, especially if the assistant needs to add items to the cart.

Do I need to tell customers the assistant is AI?

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It is good practice everywhere, and in the EU the AI Act requires it from August 2026 unless it is obvious. With a lifelike video face it rarely is obvious, so state it in the greeting and on the widget, and offer shoppers an easy way to reach a person.

Will an AI shopping assistant increase conversion?

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It can, when shoppers have genuine questions that block a purchase, such as sizing or compatibility, and the answers are accurate. It can hurt conversion if it is slow, intrusive or wrong. Test it on a subset of pages and compare conversion and return rates with similar pages that do not have it.

Sources