Board game gift season: budget, occasion and recipient, and what to fix in your catalogue first

• Budget: shoppers write a ceiling into the sentence. Decide which bands you want to answer well (for example small stocking-filler games, mid-priced family games, a premium big-box game) and make sure each band has games whose descriptions say who they suit. Use your own currency and prices; the assistant shows the price from your catalogue.
• Occasion: Christmas, a birthday, a family holiday, a housewarming. A game for “the whole family on Boxing Day” and a game for “two of us on a weeknight” are different products.
• Recipient: the buyer often describes the group, not the person. Shoppers on public forums ask in this form: “Games for more than 4 players, any recommendations?” and “A party game best for 4 players”.
• The fear underneath: buying something too heavy, or something the group has already played. Replies on those forums ask back which games the person has played and liked; a short reason on the card does the same job.

• Write player count, playing time and a plain complexity word (light, medium, heavy) into each description or product data.
• Say which games suit families, which suit couples and which suit big groups.
• Name starter-friendly games as such, and say what a newcomer should expect from the rules.
• Mark expansions as expansions and say which base game they need, so a gift shopper does not buy one by mistake.
• Keep price and stock current in Shopify; the assistant reads them from your catalogue by product ID.

It reads the request in the shopper’s words and picks one product from your catalogue with a one-line reason. The name, price and stock on the card come from your catalogue by product ID. The reason is written by the AI, labelled as such, and can be wrong. If nothing in your catalogue fits, it says so and, where your consent settings allow, takes a contact and writes the request to your Requests tab, so you see which gifts people wanted and you did not have.

Your own delivery times and cut-off dates apply, not ours. Publish them where gift shoppers look, and tell them to order early before Christmas. The assistant does not know your cut-off unless it is written in your store policies or product data.

Install OneSite Assistant from the Shopify App Store. In the Shopify app you approve the plan right after install and start with a free trial. See the pricing and the questions worth asking before you install.

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