Shopify Unlocks ‘big Picture’ Design Control With New Conversational Ai Tool

• Shopify has launched a new tool for editing websites
• Canvas lets you view and edit your entire website from one workspace
• It is rolling out to users over the coming days

Shopify has launched Canvas, a new tool that lets users move across every page of their online store, zoom into detail, and use conversational AI to turn ideas into real, on-page changes.

Canvas lets users ‘zoom out’ from individual pages, turning their full site into a workspace for creativity and collaboration with Shopify’s dedicated AI assistant, Sidekick. This means merchants can see every page laid out together on one screen, helping give a feel for the store as a whole, identify branding inconsistencies, then zoom in to work on them in detail.

“When I built Kotn 12 years ago, I knew how to code, and it still took me two weeks to get a rough store working,” says Ben Sehl, Director of Product at Shopify. “Today, an entrepreneur on Shopify can build a fully custom store in twenty minutes that’s head and shoulders above what I built then. That’s what we’re enabling with Canvas: helping more entrepreneurs get closer to the version of their store that exists in their head.”

What is Canvas all about?

Here is what you can do with Canvas:

• Store-wide visualisation: You can see every page of your online store laid out in one single canvas
• Real-time code rendering: Change your store by rendering actual code; make real edits from one central workspace
• Talk your ideas into existence: Edit by telling Sidekick what you want in plain-English terms, or you can edit manually
• Improve AI outputs: Sidekick will take screenshots of its work and validate the code in a feedback loop before handing you back the design
• Save time with store design decisions: Sidekick carries design decisions across sessions to maintain consistency without the need to constantly re-explain

Early stages

According to a press release shared with TechRadar Pro earlier this week, Canvas is still in the early stages of rollout and will be available to users over the coming days. For now, it will exist alongside the current theme editor, offering a hybrid approach to website editing.