How to Set Up Shopper (Quick-Start Checklist)

Shopper is Postscript's AI-powered shopping assistant. It has real, personalized conversations with your SMS subscribers to help them find the right products and complete their purchase. Think of it as your best sales associate, available 24/7 over text.
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Shopper is built specifically to drive revenue. It asks discovery questions, recommends products from your catalog, handles common objections, and can even share exclusive offers when the moment is right. Brands using Shopper see subscribers who are 1.5x more valuable and 22% more likely to stay subscribed.

The best part: Shopper works alongside your existing SMS marketing. Your campaigns and automations keep doing their job. Shopper layers on top, picking up conversations with subscribers who haven't converted yet or who text in with questions on their own.
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Setting up Shopper takes four steps. This article walks through each one so you know exactly what to expect.
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Brand Center is where you train Postscript AI on everything it needs to know about your brand. The more complete your Brand Center is, the better Shopper performs.

There are three areas to set up:
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Brand Guidelines — This controls how Shopper sounds when it talks to your subscribers. Your brand summary, persona, tone preferences, and preferred language all live here. These settings also shape Infinity Testing AI messages, so getting them right has broad impact across Postscript AI.

For detailed instructions, see Setting Up Your Brand Voice & Tone.
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Content Library — This is Shopper's knowledge base. It's where you add the information Shopper needs to answer questions accurately: your FAQs, shipping policies, return policies, care instructions, and anything else a subscriber might ask about. You can add this information via website links, uploaded documents, or text snippets.
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For detailed instructions, see Content Library Overview and AI Best Practices for Content Library.
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Product Catalog — This controls which products Shopper can recommend. It syncs automatically from your Shopify store, but you'll want to review it to make sure Shopper isn't referencing products you don't sell individually or items you'd rather not promote.
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For detailed instructions, see Managing Your Product Catalog.
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Your Shopper Settings page is where you handle the remaining configuration. Most of these are quick — a few minutes total.
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Offers — Set up the Strategic Offers and Onsite Offers that Shopper can use in conversations. This is important enough to have its own article, so head to Setting Up Shopper Offers for the full walkthrough. Note that at least one Strategic Offer must be added before you can activate Shopper.
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Excluded Product Tags — If you have products in Shopify that you don't want Shopper to recommend (like replacement parts or service items), you can exclude them by tag. Enter the tag exactly as it appears in Shopify, and any product with that tag will be hidden from Shopper. You can verify it worked by searching for a product you know has that tag in the Product Catalog page — it should show as toggled off.
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Support Details — Confirm that the support email and handoff message shown in Shopper Settings matches the email you want subscribers directed to when Shopper can't handle a conversation. This email is pulled from your Shopify store settings. An email is required, but you can also include a phone number or link to a support chat page.
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Fallback Message — Review the message that Shopper will use in case of a system outage that prevents an immediate response.
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Outreach Messages — These are the conversation starters that Shopper uses to engage subscribers. You'll see several categories: Discovery, Purchase Objection, Offer Proposal, and Offer Nudge. Each category has pre-written message options. Review them, approve the ones that feel right for your brand, and make sure at least one Discovery Message is selected. Based on the messages you approve, Postscript creates two automation flows in your account: Shopper | Link Clicked Approved Outreach and Shopper | Welcome Series Approved Outreach.
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Before you activate Shopper for your subscribers, test it yourself. You can do this two ways:
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Playground — Available inside the Shopper settings page and Brand Center, Playground lets you simulate a Shopper conversation without sending a real SMS or using any credits. This is the fastest way to check that Shopper sounds right, recommends the right products, and answers questions accurately.
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Demo via SMS — For a more realistic test, scan the QR code on your Shopper Settings page or text SHOPPERDEMO to your shop's number. This starts a real text conversation with Shopper on your phone, so you can see exactly what the subscriber experience feels like. Share the QR code with your team so they can test too.
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When testing, pay attention to how Shopper sounds (does it match your brand voice?), what it recommends (are the products relevant?), and how it handles questions about shipping, returns, or anything in your Content Library. If something feels off, go back and adjust the relevant area of Brand Center, then test again.
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For a deeper walkthrough on what to look for and how to iterate, see Testing Shopper Before You Go Live.
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Once you're happy with how Shopper sounds and responds, you're ready to go live. Activating Shopper means it will start responding to inbound subscriber messages and begin reaching out through the automation flows you configured in Step 2.

After activation, Shopper will also respond to any subscriber who texts in a question at any time — even outside of your automation flows. This means if someone replies to a campaign or flow message with a product question, Shopper picks it up and handles the conversation.
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For guidance on building a conversational strategy beyond the default flows, see How Shopper Starts Conversations (Conversational Strategy).
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For tips on keeping Shopper's knowledge base current after launch, see Keeping Shopper Accurate Over Time.