Agentic Storefront is Swap's merchant-owned AI-powered shopping experience. It lives on a .ai domain that exists alongside your .com, allowing your customers to discover and buy products through natural conversation, without leaving your brand world.
This guide covers what Agentic Storefront is, why brands use it, the three ways to build it, and what you need to get your core build live.
What is Agentic Storefront?
Agentic Storefront is a conversational shopping experience that replaces the traditional browse-and-filter journey with an AI agent that guides your customers to the right product — through natural language, including text and voice.
Your customers shop directly in the agent. They can search by text or image, try products on virtually, save items, and check out — all without leaving your brand environment. Every interaction captures first-party data that belongs to you, not a third-party platform.
Unlike placing your products on ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews, Agentic Storefront keeps customers inside your world. The agent speaks in your tone, applies your logic, and builds a data layer you own.
Why use it?
Brands already live on Agentic Storefront are seeing:
Metric | Result |
Conversion rate | 2x improvement through AI-guided discovery |
Time on site | 3x increase with deeper customer engagement |
Intent data quality | 10x improvement — keystroke-level first-party signals captured end-to-end |
Returns | Up to 20% reduction through better sizing and fit guidance |
Beyond the numbers, Agentic Storefront gives you:
Owned discovery — your customers find products on your terms, in your space, not via a neutral AI platform that treats your products like any other listing
First-party data — every session captures intent signals (preferences, occasion, style, budget) that belong to you and feed into your personalisation and retention strategy
Personalisation at scale — first-time visitors get discovery guidance; returning customers see tailored recommendations; loyal customers see curated collections
Your three build options
There are three ways to build an Agentic Storefront. Most brands start with the core build.
Core build
You will be assigned an onboarding manager who will onboard you onto our default theme, upload your brand assets, connect your product catalog, and train the AI agent on your behalf.
Best for: Shopify brands who want to go live quickly without custom development work
Go-live time: 2–6 weeks
Agency involvement: None required
The reference implementation is Studio Nicholson.
What's included:
Prompt-led discovery (text and voice)
Image search
Virtual Try-On for fashion brands
Preference centre
Chat history and saved items
Off-canvas cart
Swap-built checkout via Adyen
💡 Core build is currently available for Shopify brands. Support for Centra and Salesforce Commerce Cloud is coming soon.
⚠️ Branded and custom builds involve design & development work that should be completed by a qualified agency, and may incur additional costs billed at their standard rate. Ask your agency about the below — if they aren't suitable for the work involved, Swap can recommend you one of our preferred partners!
Branded build
Your agency reskins Swap's base theme to match your brand. Swap's infrastructure handles everything underneath.
Best for: Shopify brands who want a custom look and feel without a fully bespoke build
Go-live time: 4–8 weeks
Agency involvement: Agency-led design and build, with support from Swap as needed
Custom build
A fully bespoke build, co-developed between your agency and Swap. Supports non-Shopify and headless platforms.
Best for: Brands with complex technical requirements, non-Shopify platforms, or a GMV of $100M+
Go-live time: 4–32 weeks depending on scope
Agency involvement: Co-development between your agency and Swap
Getting set up: core build
Here is what you need to have ready before your core build can go live.
1. Your Shopify store
Your Shopify store is the source of truth for your Agentic Storefront. Product data, inventory, and pricing sync from Shopify in real time — you manage products in Shopify as normal, with no separate system to maintain.
Before kickoff, check that:
Your product catalog is live and complete on Shopify
Product titles, descriptions, and variant data are accurate
Sizing information is consistent across your catalog
⚠️ The quality of your product data directly affects the quality of the AI agent's recommendations. Clean, complete data means better results from day one. Flag any legacy or inconsistent data to your Swap onboarding contact before kickoff.
2. Brand assets
Swap will set up your storefront with your brand assets. Have the following ready before onboarding begins:
Logo files (SVG preferred)
Brand colour palette (hex codes)
Typography (font files or Google Fonts references)
3. Your brand and product knowledge
The AI agent is trained to speak in your tone and handle the questions your customers ask. To train it well, you need to provide:
Tone of voice guidelines — how your brand sounds, including any words or phrases to use or avoid
Sizing and fit information — size charts, fit notes, and any product-specific guidance your customers need
Shipping and returns policies — the information your customers need before they buy
Product context — occasion, use case, or styling notes that help the agent guide discovery (for example: "this jacket runs large", "best for smart-casual occasions")
The more context you provide, the better the agent performs from day one.
4. A point of contact for onboarding
Swap manages the technical setup, but you'll need someone on your team who can review and approve the agent's behaviour before go-live. This person should be able to:
Review test conversations and raise any concerns about serious deviations from brand guidelines
Validate that product data has parity with Shopify (images, prices, etc.)
Sign off on the agent's tone and discovery logic
⚠️ The Storefront agent is AI and runs on a non-deterministic model, meaning that its output is tailored to each individual customer and the agent's knowledge of their behaviour, responses and preferences. Like all generative AI the agent can make mistakes, and we cannot interrogate each individual agent response unless it seriously deviates from the brand guidelines provided.
What happens next
Once you're ready to go, your Swap onboarding contact will walk you through setup step by step. Most core builds go live within 2–6 weeks of kickoff.
If you have questions before you start, or you're not sure which build type is right for you, reach out to your Swap contact or get in touch with our team.