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SimGym

SimGym is a Shopify app in AI Research Preview that uses AI-powered shoppers to simulate buyer behavior on your online store. SimGym creates AI shoppers that browse your store the way real customers do. These shoppers interact with your products, navigate through collections, add items to their cart, and provide qualitative feedback about their experience.

You can compare your active theme against a theme from your Draft themes to determine which theme has a better add-to-cart ratio among the AI shoppers. You can also analyze a single live or draft theme to get feedback from AI shoppers, without needing a comparison.

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Eligibility

To use SimGym, your store must meet the following requirements:

  • Your store uses a Liquid storefront. Hydrogen and headless storefronts aren't supported.
  • Your store has Shopify Network Intelligence (SNI) activated.
  • Your store isn't password protected.

If your store doesn't meet these requirements, then SimGym displays a screen that explains why you can't use the app and what action to take, if applicable.

Limitations and considerations

Consider the following limitations when using SimGym to simulate shopper behavior:

  • Theme comparisons require your active theme and at least one other theme from your Draft themes.
  • Simulations work best for stores with existing products and content.
  • Simulations use AI shoppers that mimic real buyer behavior, but results might differ from actual buyer behavior.

Pricing

SimGym uses a pay-per-use pricing model where each simulation you run costs one credit. During the research preview, you might be allocated free credits. After your free credits are depleted, you can purchase top-ups to continue running simulations. More details on pricing are available in the SimGym app.

Before you begin

Before you start using SimGym, ensure your store meets the following requirements:

  • Your store has at least one product listing.
  • For theme comparisons, your store has at least two themes installed, including your published theme.
  • For single theme analysis, you can analyze any live or draft theme.

Installing SimGym

Install SimGym from the Shopify App Store to start simulating AI shoppers on your store.

Steps:

  1. Install the SimGym app from the Shopify App Store.
  2. From your Shopify admin, go to Apps > SimGym.
  3. Start creating simulations.

Simulations

A simulation is a session where AI shoppers interact with your store. You can run two types of simulations:

  1. Theme comparison: Compare your live theme against another installed theme to analyze how theme changes affect shopper behavior.
  2. Single theme analysis: Analyze any live or draft theme on its own to get feedback on what's working and where to improve.

Common use cases for simulations

Review these common use cases for SimGym simulations:

  • Theme changes: Compare your live theme to a new theme before publishing. This is the primary use case for SimGym.
  • Seasonal updates: Test holiday themes or promotional layouts before campaign launches.
  • Store navigation: Compare different theme-based menu structures or collection organization.
  • Store audit: Run a single theme analysis to get a detailed review of your current storefront without setting up a comparison.
  • Draft theme review: Analyze a draft theme before publishing to catch issues early.
  • Focused feedback: Narrow your analysis to specific site areas such as your homepage, product pages, collection pages, cart, or informational pages.
  • Before-and-after: Run a baseline analysis on your current theme, make changes, and then run another to tell if the experience improved.

Tips for successful simulations

Consider these tips to improve your simulations:

  • Test one change at a time: This makes it easier to understand what caused any differences in shopper behavior.
  • Review individual shoppers: Dive deeper into specific shopper recordings, insights, and action logs to understand behavior patterns.
  • Test before major changes: Run simulations before implementing significant updates to your active store's theme.

Running a simulation

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Apps > SimGym.
  2. Click Create simulation.
  3. Select a simulation type:
    • Analyze a theme: Get prioritized recommendations to improve conversion and customer experience.
    • Compare two themes: Determine which theme is likely to convert better, with side-by-side results to guide your choice.
  4. In the Simulation name field, enter a name for your simulation.
  5. Select a theme:
    • For Analyze a theme, select a live or draft theme. Optionally, select a Focus area to direct AI shoppers to a specific part of your store: Home page, Products, Collections, Cart, or Search.
    • For Compare two themes, select a second theme from your Draft themes to compare against your active theme.
  6. Click Start simulation.

Your simulation is added to the queue and will begin shortly. After the simulation starts, you can view live progress as AI shoppers interact with your store.

Viewing simulation analysis

After your simulation completes, you can review the analysis to understand how the AI shoppers interacted with your store.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Apps > SimGym > Simulations.
  2. Click a completed simulation to view the analysis:
    • Theme comparison: The winning theme is the one with the highest add-to-cart rate. Ties with a score of 0 are considered inconclusive.
    • Single theme analysis: Results include a summary of the shopping experience, strengths, areas for improvement, and prioritized recommendations ordered by conversion impact. If you selected a focus area, then the analysis is centered on that area.
    • Store recommendations: AI shopper feedback is synthesized into actionable changes to make to your store.
  3. Click individual shoppers to view their browsing behavior and feedback.

Managing simulations

Use these settings to manage your simulations:

  • View simulation history: View all past simulations and their analyses.
  • Delete simulations: Remove old simulations that you no longer need with the Delete simulation button.

Understanding AI shopper feedback

Shopper feedback includes these criteria:

  • Navigation experience: How easy it was to find products.
  • Checkout experience: How easy it was to add a product to the cart.
  • Store layout: How intuitive the overall store structure was.

Use this feedback to identify patterns across multiple shoppers. If many shoppers report similar issues, then those areas might need attention. To act on this feedback, you can edit your theme to address the areas that AI shoppers flagged.