How E-commerce Businesses Can Make Useful ChatGPT Prompts

ChatGPT has become an indispensable tool in e‑commerce. So, how can retailers really use the app in a meaningful way? In this article, we'll tell you how to use this tool and how to create good ChatGPT prompts that will get you the results you want.

Contents:

What uses does ChatGPT have in e‑commerce?
Which ChatGPT version should you use?
What is a prompt on ChatGPT?
What counts as a good ChatGPT prompt?
How do you construct a good ChatGPT prompt?
How do you give even more context to ChatGPT prompts with “Custom instructions”?

What uses does ChatGPT have in e‑commerce?

ChatGPT is no longer just for students who want to do their homework quickly. In e‑commerce, this A.I. (artificial intelligence) tool can help you with a number of tasks. Here is a general overview of what is possible:

Create summaries (e.g. to shorten product texts)
Produce translations (e.g. to internationalise website pages)
Create content for online marketing (e.g. social media posts)
Develop strategies (e.g. for marketing a product)
Brainstorming (e.g. for marketing measures)
Optimise customer service (e.g. by creating email templates)

Some simple tasks can be solved without much prior knowledge, but for special tasks, a good prompt is necessary in order to get a usable result. Before we get to the tips on prompt creation, let's first have a look at the different versions of ChatGPT because this can influence the quality of the results.

Which ChatGPT version should you use?

The free version of ChatGPT is GPT-3.5. Upgrading to GPT-4 costs $20 per month. Payment is only possible by credit card and the account is valid for one person.

The free version is ideal for getting started and you can easily carry out tasks such as research or text creation with it. However, the quality of the results may be lower than in the paid version.

Besides quality, another advantage of GPT-4 is the DALL-E feature it contains, which creates AI-generated images using text inputs. The paid version also gives you access to other useful plug-ins, such as VoxScript to read websites, AskYourPDF to evaluate PDFs, or Visla to produce videos with text input.

Depending on your intended use cases, the free version (GPT-3.5) may be enough for you, but the paid version (GPT-4) could also be worth the investment.

What is a prompt on ChatGPT?

A prompt is a task that you give to ChatGPT. The task is entered as text in the chat window. The quality of the result (which you will also receive back in text form) depends on the quality of the prompt, which is why creating a good prompt is so important.

When creating prompts, also known as “prompting”, there are a few basic rules to keep in mind:

What counts as a good ChatGPT prompt?

Here are some basic tips on how to write a prompt for ChatGPT that will achieve your desired results:

Use short sentences: Convoluted sentences or complicated formulations will not get you to your goal. Keep in mind that ChatGPT currently only speaks English, which means if you enter other languages (e.g. German), your input and output will be translated back and forth. A lot gets lost with complex sentence structures. Even if you communicate with the application in English, it is important to use language that is as clear as possible.
Set a clear task: Make sure to always formulate a precise question or task. ChatGPT needs to know exactly what you want from it.
Ask questions: Often, you won't get the desired result straight away, even with a well-formulated prompt (especially in the free version). Ask specific questions and support the machine learning of the software. Occasionally, several questions/instructions are necessary, so don't give up!
Provide context: Give your task some meaningful context by providing background information. Describe, for example, your target group or provide facts about your company.
Provide examples: Provide one or more examples to help ChatGPT understand the direction the answer should take. In technical jargon, this method is called “Zero-shot, one-shot and few-shot prompting”. In other words, these are prompts where you give no examples, one example, or several ones.
Describe the result you're looking for: Make it clear in what form you want the result. For example, tell ChatGPT how long the text should be and what format or tonality it should have.

How do you construct a good ChatGPT prompt?

Here is an example of how a few simple prompts can get you the result you need:

Describe the task:
"Create a product description for laptop XYZ.”
Provide context:
“The target group is working people between 20 and 50 for whom the following three criteria are important: …”
Provide background information:
“Our company specialises in business electronics in the area of…”
Describe what the result should look like:
“The product description should have a maximum length of 600 characters including spaces.”

Although you could use the examples above as a kind of template, there are countless methods and models for creating good prompts.

Ever since ChatGPT was released to the public, a veritable science has emerged around the topic of “prompt engineering” (i.e. how a task/prompt is given to artificial intelligence). If you would like to delve deeper into the topic because your requirements for ChatGPT are very complex, you can find many seminars on the internet.

How do you give even more context to ChatGPT prompts with “Custom instructions”?

shutterstock/Juicy FOTO

Since context is the key to good results, ChatGPT has an option to permanently store background information with the “Custom instructions” feature. Custom instructions form the information basis that ChatGPT considers for every new prompt. This way, you don't have to provide this information every time you create a new prompt.

How to create the Custom instructions in ChatGPT

Click your account username at the bottom left (depending on your view). A small drop-down menu opens. From there, click on “Custom instructions”.
In the Custom instructions menu, enter the background information in the upper field as well as the technical details that you think are relevant in the lower field (e.g. text length, tonality, etc.).
Save the information by clicking on “Save”. These are now permanently stored and influence every new prompt you create.

Since the custom instructions are stored permanently, they are particularly suitable for recurring tasks (e.g. if you want to create regular mailings for the same online shop and the same target group).

In the free version (GPT-3.5), you can only store custom instructions once. If you want to change these from task to task, all you have to do is save your instructions in a separate document and manually copy them into the fields every time they need to be changed.

Even in the paid version (GPT-4), you can only store custom instructions once, but you have the option of researching plug-ins that make it possible to store multiple profiles permanently.

Conclusion: A lot is possible, routine is necessary

ChatGPT offers you countless options to complete tasks conveniently. A certain amount of experience is required so that you don't get lost in the jungle of options. Get familiar with the tool and try different strategies until you get the results you want.

Additionally, ChatGPT is a “living” tool that is being continuously developed at a rapid pace by OpenAI. It is therefore worth taking a regular look at the release notes so you don't miss any new features.

Extra tip: Would you like to answer the many customer reviews your online shop receives with the help of ChatGPT? This is possible, but it can certainly be cumbersome. Special AI tools that have been developed precisely for this task are better suited for this purpose. Trusted Shops has developed exactly such a tool called the Smart Review Assistant, which can help you create unique and relevant responses to your customer feedback with the click of a mouse.