IDEA89 AI Shopping Assistant

Description

IDEA89 adds a floating chat widget to your WooCommerce storefront. Shoppers ask it questions in plain language, “what’s waterproof under £50?”, “do you ship to Ireland?”, “what’s your return policy?”, and it answers from your actual catalogue and site content, then adds the right product straight to the basket when asked.

The plugin’s job is entirely on the WordPress side: it reads your store and keeps a copy of it in sync with the IDEA89 service, and it prints a small loader script that renders the chat widget on the storefront. All of the AI itself (understanding the question, searching your catalogue, generating the reply) runs on IDEA89’s servers, not on your WordPress install. See External services below for exactly what that means for your data.

What it syncs

• Products: name, description, price, images, categories, attributes, variations, stock levels, and review excerpts
• Categories: so the assistant understands how your catalogue is organised
• Pages: About, shipping, returns, and other policy pages, so the assistant can answer from them
• Coupons: active, unexpired discount codes, so the assistant can mention live promotions
• Store details: store name, currency, and the context you provide in settings
• FAQs: auto-detected from your content (see Limitations below), with a settings screen to review what was found
• Posts and other public content types: blog posts and any custom post type you opt in, indexed and searched rather than dumped into every reply, so a large blog doesn’t overwhelm the assistant

Order tracking (optional)

Switch this on and shoppers can ask about an order in the chat instead of emailing you. They see status, items, delivery method and a tracking link where one exists.

Order details never reach IDEA89 or any AI provider. The chat panel asks your own site for them, from the shopper’s browser, using the login they already have. Signed-in shoppers see their recent orders. Guests can look up a single order with its number and the email address used to place it, limited to four attempts an hour so the form cannot be used to probe for which orders exist. Tracking numbers are read from the official WooCommerce Shipment Tracking extension or AfterShip if you use either.

Store finder (optional)

Publishes a store finder page at a URL you choose, with a searchable map and your own header and footer around it. Headings, help text and the meta description are all editable, and each store is published as structured data so search engines can read its address and opening details. Your store list is managed in your IDEA89 dashboard. Availability depends on your plan.

Personalization (optional)

Lets the assistant recognise a returning customer so it can pick up where a conversation left off. Your site signs a short-lived token holding only a customer reference, a group reference and whether the shopper is signed in. No name, email address or order history is sent, the token expires after an hour, and it cannot be forged in the browser because the signing secret never leaves your server.

Sync runs in the background via Action Scheduler (bundled with WooCommerce), triggered by product, stock, coupon and content saves, plus a daily full reconcile. Nothing runs until you enter an API key, and nothing blocks a page save waiting on a network call. Every sync is queued and processed asynchronously.

What it adds to the storefront

A single, asynchronously-loaded script tag that renders the chat widget. It does not touch your theme, does not add page weight to the initial render, and adds products to the WooCommerce cart through the standard Store API, the same cart your theme already shows.

The chat panel carries a small “idea89” label in its footer, linking to idea89.com. This is part of the hosted assistant’s own interface, the same way an embedded video player carries its provider’s mark, and is rendered by the IDEA89 service, not injected into your theme or content. It appears only inside the chat panel, and only when a shopper opens it.

What it does not do

• It does not store your product catalogue, page content, or chat transcripts anywhere in your WordPress database. That data lives on the IDEA89 service (see External services).
• It does not modify your theme, checkout flow, or existing cart behaviour.
• It does not require a WordPress.com account, and it does not phone home for anything beyond what is documented below.

External services

This plugin connects your store to the IDEA89 SaaS API at api.idea89.com, a third-party service operated by 4K Technologies Ltd, in order to power the chat assistant. This is a paid service; a plan and an API key from your IDEA89 dashboard are required for the plugin to do anything.

Nothing is transmitted until you enter an API key and save it in Settings. With no key configured, every sync is a no-op and the storefront widget does not load.

Once a key is configured, the following data is sent to api.idea89.com:

• Catalogue data: product names, descriptions, prices, images (URLs), categories, attributes, variations, stock levels, and review excerpts, sent when a product is saved, when stock changes, and on a daily reconcile.
• Page and post content: the text of WordPress pages and (if you opt in under Content Sync) posts and other public content types, sent when that content is saved or on the daily reconcile, so the assistant can answer questions from it.
• Coupon codes: active, unexpired coupon codes and their terms, so the assistant can mention live promotions.
• Store details: your store name, currency, and any store-context text you enter in Settings.
• Shopper chat messages: when a visitor uses the widget, their messages are sent directly from their browser to api.idea89.com to generate a reply. This traffic does not pass through your WordPress server.
• Your site’s domain and your API key, sent with every request, so IDEA89 can identify which store the data belongs to.

The widget itself is served from api.idea89.com rather than bundled into the plugin, because the assistant’s interface is part of the hosted service and is updated centrally. The plugin prints only the loader tag and your public configuration.

No data is sent for training third-party AI models on other customers’ behalf, and the plugin never transmits WordPress user accounts, passwords, or payment details.

Full terms and privacy policy for the IDEA89 service: Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Technical details