FAQ editor + embed widget
Plans: Growth · Pro · Agency (the FAQ editor isn't included on Starter)
Clione lets you write FAQs for a product, variant, category (BigCommerce) / collection (Shopify), brand or page, plus a shared Library of answers you write once and link wherever they apply. Approved FAQs reach your storefront as a visible accordion and as FAQPage structured data for crawlers and AI assistants.
This page covers writing, generating, importing and exporting FAQs, and the embed script. For installing the widget on each platform, see FAQ widget install. For the length and format rules Clione applies to questions and answers, see FAQ authoring standards.
Where it lives
Two places:
- Store sidebar → FAQs — every FAQ in the store. Five tabs:
- Browse — search questions and answers, filter by type and source (AI Generated, Manual, Import, Storefront), star favorites, select and delete, export.
- Library — shared answers you write once and link to many entities.
- CSV Import — bulk upload.
- Embed Script — the guided install of the FAQ widget.
- Advanced — Add FAQ Entry, AI-Generate FAQs for one entity or the whole store, and the manual embed panel.
- The FAQs tab of any product, category, collection or page — that entity's FAQs, with AI Generate, Edit and From library.
↧ Download all FAQs (CSV) at the top of the FAQs page exports the whole store.
Plan availability and enrichment quota
The FAQ editor is included on Growth, Pro and Agency. Generating FAQs with AI uses your monthly enrichment credits:
- One generation run costs one credit, whatever the number of FAQs you ask for. 1 product × 5 FAQs = 1 credit; 1 product × 15 FAQs = 1 credit; 50 products = 50 credits.
- A run that creates nothing is free — for example, when every proposal duplicated an existing question.
- Deleting a FAQ with "Generate a new FAQ to replace this one" ticked is a run, and costs one credit.
- Writing FAQs by hand, importing a CSV and using the Library cost nothing.
Before a run, the dashboard shows its cost and your remaining credits. If none are left, it says so and the run doesn't start. To keep going before the month ends, buy Expand credits from Billing & Plan → Add-ons — see Billing.
What you can attach FAQs to
| Entity type | BigCommerce | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Product | ✓ | ✓ |
| Variant | ✓ | ✓ |
| Category | ✓ | — |
| Collection | — | ✓ |
| Brand | ✓ | ✓ |
| Page | ✓ | ✓ |
| Every product, category, collection or page in a store | ✓ | ✓ — through a Library answer, see below |
Variant and brand FAQs reach your storefront only through the embed script, with data-entity-type and data-entity-id set on the tag.
The two FAQ shapes
The difference is who owns the answer:
| Entity FAQ | Library answer | |
|---|---|---|
| Where you write it | the FAQs tab of one product, category, collection or page | FAQs → Library |
| Who owns it | that one entity | the library — it isn't on any page until you link it |
| Editing it | changes that one page | changes every entity it's linked to, at once |
| The AI | writes, rewrites and tops these up | never rewrites a library answer |
| Use it for | something true of this item alone — a spec, a compatibility note | something true of your whole shop — shipping, returns, warranty |
Both shapes appear in the same accordion and the same FAQPage structured data.
A library answer belongs to the store you wrote it in
An answer written in Store A is offered on Store A and nowhere else. Under Who can use this answer, the default is Only followed by your store's name. If you run several storefronts and one answer is true of all of them, pick Every store in this organization when you create it.
An answer private to one store can't be linked onto another store's pages. Share it, or write the other store its own.
Linking an answer
On an entity's FAQs tab, From library opens the library. Add links an answer to that entity; + All in this store links it to every entity of that type in the store as a single link. It never reaches a sibling store.
From the library, Used in … entities opens Linked entities, where you can Unlink selected or Unlink all. Unlinking from one entity keeps the library entry.
Suggested questions
Add suggested questions adds a set of common questions — shipping, returns, warranty, sizing, payment, contact — to the library unanswered, marked Needs an answer.
Clione never writes those answers. A shipping time or a returns window we invented would be a false claim on your storefront, so a suggested question shows nothing on your pages until you answer it. Answer the ones that apply, reword them to sound like you, and delete the rest.
1. Adding FAQs by hand
On an entity's FAQs tab, click + Add FAQ, write the Question and the Answer, and click Create.
From FAQs → Advanced → Add FAQ Entry:
- Pick the Entity Type — Product, Variant, Category or Collection, Brand, or Page.
- Search for the entity by name.
- Pick the Locale — EN, ES, FR, DE, IT or PT.
- Write the Question and the Answer (the answer editor supports basic formatting).
- Click Create FAQ Entry.
An answer meant for many entities belongs in the Library, not here.
2. Generating FAQs with AI
Two places:
- The entity's FAQs tab → AI Generate. Pick 3, 5, 10 or 15 FAQs (10 by default). Clione uses the entity's content and enrichment to write them.
- FAQs → Advanced → AI-Generate FAQs. Pick the Entity Type, then one entity or Store-wide, a Count of 3, 5 or 10 (10 by default) and the Language (English, Spanish, French or German). Store-wide is one run: it writes general questions about your store and attaches them to the first entity of that type. To cover every entity, generate per entity.
Generated FAQs are saved as approved. Review them on the entity's FAQs tab or in Browse, and edit or delete any you don't want.
3. Bulk import (CSV)
FAQs → CSV Import accepts a CSV with this header:
entityType,entityId,question,answer,locale,sortOrder
product,112,What is the warranty?,2-year manufacturer warranty,en,0
collection,298,When does the sale end?,Sunday at midnight CET,en,0
entityTypeacceptsproduct,variant,category,collection,brand,page.entityIdis the platform's numeric ID for the entity, not its handle or URL.localeis a language tag (en,es,es-ES,fr-FR).sortOrderis a whole number, ascending. Defaults to 0.- The header row is required. Save as UTF-8 (in Excel, "CSV UTF-8").
- There's no store column, on purpose: one file is one store, the one the FAQs page is open on. The panel names it before you import. Imported rows are saved as approved.
A row whose question already exists on that entity in this store is skipped — so re-importing a file changes nothing. To change an answer, edit it.
4. Exporting
- By type — in Browse, click ↓ Export CSV. It exports the FAQs of the selected Entity Type; the search and Source filters don't apply.
- Whole store — ↧ Download all FAQs (CSV) at the top of the FAQs page.
The export adds two leading columns, storeId and storeName, so a file on your disk can be told apart from another store's, and two trailing ones, status and source. None of the four is read back on import; the columns in between are the import's, so exporting and re-importing on the same store creates nothing.
5. The embed script
How FAQs reach your storefront depends on the platform:
- BigCommerce Stencil — the Schema Injector script renders the accordion.
- Shopify Online Store — the Clione FAQ app embed of Clione's Shopify app renders it.
- Headless, WordPress and custom storefronts — the embed script,
embed.js.
On BigCommerce Stencil and Shopify Online Store you don't need the snippet: the Schema Injector or the Clione FAQ app embed already renders the accordion, and adding the snippet as well shows the FAQs twice. Step-by-step for each: FAQ widget install.
The Embed Script tab
FAQs → Embed Script builds the embed snippet in four steps:
- Confirm platform — Clione detects your storefront; change it if it's wrong.
- Create API key — one click creates a read-only key for the widget, locked to your storefront domain. One key serves FAQs of every entity type.
- Style the widget — colors, font, spacing and theme become
data-style-*attributes on the script. Max width, extra CSS classes and custom CSS are applied by the snippet itself. This step is optional. - Install on store — the snippet for your platform, with your key and styles filled in, and where to paste it.
You can also manage keys yourself under Store Settings → API Keys. Give a widget key at least one allowed domain: a key with none accepts requests from any site, and once domains are set every other domain gets 403.
What the script does
<div id="clione-faq"></div>
<script
src="https://api.clione.ai/embed.js"
data-api-key="sk_live_…"
data-platform="generic"
async
></script>
The script works out which entity the page is about — from data-entity-type + data-entity-id if you set them, otherwise from the page's markup and URL — and then:
- renders the visible accordion of that entity's approved FAQs;
- adds Clione's JSON-LD
@graphto the page in the browser, unless the page already carries it from the server.
Because it runs in the browser, crawlers that don't run JavaScript don't see what it adds. Where that matters, render server-side with the FAQ API or the @clione/seo SDK.
"Powered by Clione" badge
The accordion that the embed script renders shows a small Powered by Clione badge. It's on by default; turn it off with Show "Powered by Clione" in the FAQ widget under Store Settings → General → Branding. During a trial it's always shown.
Attribute reference
| Attribute | Required | What it does |
|---|---|---|
data-api-key | Yes | The widget's API key. |
data-platform | No | bigcommerce, shopify or generic. Detected when omitted. |
data-target | No | CSS selector where the accordion renders. Without it, the accordion goes into an element with data-clione-faq, or just before the page footer. |
data-entity-type | No | Override detection: product, variant, category, collection, brand, page. |
data-entity-id | No | Override the entity ID. Use together with data-entity-type. |
data-locale | No | Show FAQs in this language. |
data-heading | No | Custom heading above the accordion. |
data-style-* | No | Look and feel — see Customize the look. |
Troubleshooting
The accordion doesn't appear — The entity has no approved FAQs, or the page was matched to a different entity. Set data-entity-type and data-entity-id explicitly, and check the browser console: the script logs what it detected.
403 Forbidden in the browser console — The page's domain isn't in the key's allowed domains. Add it under Store Settings → API Keys.
The FAQs appear twice — The script is loaded twice, or the embed script was added on top of the Schema Injector (BigCommerce) or the Clione FAQ app embed (Shopify). Keep one.
AI Generate won't run — If the confirmation says you have no credits left, buy Expand credits in Billing & Plan → Add-ons or wait for the monthly reset. If the FAQs tab shows a plan lock, your plan doesn't include the FAQ editor. See Billing.