WooCommerce and fashion retailer
The launcher on the one page that makes it look omniscient
WooCommerce puts the widget everywhere, including the signed in account area, which is the one page in the shop where a customer is looking at their own order history. They will ask where the parcel is with the order number on the screen in front of them, and the assistant will have no idea. That is not a bug, but on this page it reads like one, and it is worth deciding what to do about it before launch rather than after the first complaint.
Why this pairing is its own job
The WooCommerce install guide covers the tag, and the fashion retailer guide covers what the assistant has to know. What follows is the part that belongs to neither.
- The account area is a normal front end page, so the footer hook fires and the launcher renders. To a customer, something that appears while they are signed in looks like part of the shop's own account system. It is not: it reads published pages and documents, it cannot see who is viewing, and it cannot see the order sitting above it.
- Returns are usually started in that same account area through a returns plugin, so the process a customer needs explained lives behind a login at an address no crawl can reach. The only version of your returns flow the assistant can read is whatever exists on a public page, and most stores never wrote one.
- The size guide frequently lives inside a size chart plugin, attached to a category and rendered in a modal. It is a table in a database with no address of its own, which means it exists for shoppers and does not exist for anything reading the site.
- Sizes are a product attribute, so the archive and the product page show 8, 10 and 12 as term names. The measurements behind them appear nowhere in the text of any page.
What changes about the install here
<script src="https://cdn.askably.xyz/w.js" data-key="pk_live_YOUR_KEY" defer></script>The tag is the same one on the WooCommerce guide. Everything below is about where it goes on a fashion retailer site specifically.
Decide whether it appears on the account pages at all
The snippet can check for the account page and return early, exactly the way it can for the checkout. Turning it off there removes the illusion entirely, at the cost of losing the launcher at the moment somebody is most likely to want a return explained.
Leaving it on is defensible, but only if the handover wording is honest and immediate. If somebody asks about their order it should say plainly that it cannot see orders, take the order number in the message, and send that to you rather than talking around dispatch times.
Do not leave it on by accident. This is the one page where an assistant's limits are least obvious to the person using it, so the decision deserves a minute of thought rather than being whatever the default produced.
A seasonal redesign moves the pages, not the snippet
The snippet lives in the database, so a redesign pushed from staging leaves it in place and the launcher keeps appearing. What the redesign does move is everything the assistant learned: the size guide gets a new address, the returns page is folded into a tab, and half the citations now point at pages that redirect or no longer exist.
Fashion rebuilds run on a seasonal rhythm, so this happens on a schedule rather than as a surprise. Add a recrawl to the launch checklist, then ask three questions you know the answers to and check the citations still resolve.
Where the answerable material lives
| The returns process as a public page | Written as a sequence: what the customer does, where they do it, what happens next, and how long each stage takes. The real process lives behind a login inside the returns plugin, so this page is the only version anything can read, and it is the page most stores are missing entirely. |
|---|---|
| The size chart, copied out of the plugin | Whatever table the plugin shows in its modal, republished as a page with the measurements as text. The plugin keeps doing its job for shoppers. This exists so the numbers have an address, and so you can see which chart was cited when an answer looks wrong. |
| Category descriptions, which the archive template prints | WooCommerce prints the category description above the product grid, which makes it the natural home for a fit note at line level. Worth checking your theme has not hidden or truncated it, because a description the theme drops is a description nothing reads. |
| Your exchange wording, describing what actually happens | The returns plugin labels its button with one word and your policy may mean something else by it. If you refund and ask the customer to reorder rather than swapping the garment, say that in plain terms. Customers who expect a true exchange and receive a refund contact you twice. |
The first thing to get right
Write the returns and exchange process as a public page, in the same words the account area uses on its buttons, then check the assistant cites it rather than the terms and conditions.
It is the most asked question on a fashion store after fit, the real process is invisible behind a login, and the terms page is a poor substitute that will win the match by default because it is the only thing mentioning returns. Getting the citation to move to the new page is the proof it worked.
The failure that belongs to this combination
It looks like it can see the order, because of where it is standing
A customer signs in, opens their order, sees the launcher in the corner and asks why the parcel has not arrived. The assistant answers from your shipping policy with a general dispatch time, which is accurate and completely beside the point.
Read as a reply from something that appears to be part of the account system, that lands as evasion rather than as a limitation. The customer usually asks again, more sharply, and then emails anyway, so the conversation has cost you goodwill and saved nothing.
The reply that works is short and immediate: it cannot see orders, it can take the order number and pass it to somebody who can, and then it does exactly that. Write that into the fallback wording, and if you would rather not have the conversation at all, turn the launcher off in the account area.
Before you go live
- The origin the page is served from has to be on the allowlist for that assistant, or nothing renders and the browser console says which origin was refused. An apex domain and its www are two different origins to a browser, so list both, along with any staging or preview host you want it to work on.
- Open the site as a visitor would, on the pages a fashion retailer visitor actually lands on, and ask it something only your own material could answer. A widget that renders is not the same as a widget that has read anything.
Questions
- Should we hide it on My Account?
- Both answers are reasonable and the wrong one is not choosing. Hiding it stops customers assuming it can see their order. Leaving it on lets it explain the returns process at the exact moment somebody is trying to use it, which is worth having if you have published that process.
- Our size guide comes from a plugin modal. Does it get read?
- No. A table the plugin renders when somebody clicks was never in the page that was crawled, and a table stored in the plugin's own screens has no address to crawl in the first place. Republish the same numbers as a page and keep the plugin for shoppers.
- Can it start a return for somebody?
- It does not write into anything. It explains what to do and where, and when the person wants a human it takes a name, an email and a message and emails that to you. On a store where returns run through a plugin behind a login, explaining the steps clearly is most of the value anyway.
Keep reading
- Installing on WooCommerceHook the script into wp_footer so it survives theme updates, keep it out of the parent theme, and stop a caching plugin from mangling it.
- Everything for a fashion retailerFit is both the most asked pre-purchase question and the biggest cause of returns. Here is what a clothing retailer can safely automate.
- Ten years of seasonal advice, all of it still liveTen years of dated advice posts are still live, the consent banner holds the script back, and April ends up answering a November question.
- Lead times, spec sheets and the form that replaced the checkoutLead times hide in a custom field, spec sheets are PDFs in your uploads folder, and the checkout is often an enquiry form instead.
- Fit questions on a store where the sizes are a dropdownSizes are a dropdown and the size chart is a modal, so the answer to the only question that matters never reaches the crawler as words.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.