Lotusa Store Chat for WooCommerce

Lotusa Store Chat for WooCommerce helps shoppers find products and get common support answers directly from live WooCommerce data.

Version 1.1 adds a local smart commerce engine. It builds a private product index inside WordPress using product names, descriptions, SKU values, categories, tags, attributes, variations, prices, and stock. This makes natural-language product searches much more useful without sending customer chat messages or catalog data to an external AI service.

The free plugin works entirely inside your WordPress website. No Lotusa account, API key, external AI subscription, usage quota, or remote analytics service is required.

Smart local product discovery

Customers can ask questions such as:

• “Do you have waterproof jackets under 80 euro?”
• “Show me blue shirts in stock.”
• “Do you have this in XL?”
• “Only show the cheaper ones.”

Lotusa can use product titles, descriptions, SKU values, categories, tags, attributes, variations, prices, and stock. Short follow-up messages can refine the previous product results during the current chat session.

Product-page awareness

On a WooCommerce product page, Lotusa knows which product the customer is viewing. It can answer local questions about the current product’s price, stock, attributes, and available variations without the customer typing the full product name again.

Secure local order status

Customers can ask where their order is. For privacy, Lotusa requires both the order number and the billing email to match before showing order status. It can also read common WooCommerce shipment-tracking metadata when available.

Local knowledge

In addition to the administrator-managed Knowledge Base, store owners can select published WordPress pages such as shipping, returns, sizing, FAQs, or buying guides. Lotusa can use those selected pages as an additional local knowledge source.

Features

• Smart local WooCommerce product index.
• Product search across names, descriptions, SKU, categories, tags, attributes, and variations.
• Price-limit and stock-aware product filtering.
• Short conversational refinements of previous product results.
• Current product-page awareness for price, stock, attributes, and variations.
• Secure WooCommerce order-status lookup using order number + billing email.
• Common shipment-tracking metadata support when available.
• Local FAQ knowledge base with ANY and ALL keyword matching.
• Optional local WordPress knowledge pages.
• Product cards with image, price, stock, and key options.
• Unanswered-question list with one-click “Add answer” workflow.
• Custom welcome message, fallback message, quick questions, colors, and position.
• Optional links to delivery, order tracking, returns, size guide, and contact pages.
• Optional local conversation history, disabled by default.
• Configurable local log retention.
• HPOS compatibility declaration.
• No account, API key, external AI service, usage quota, advertising, or remote tracking.

Product index

Lotusa builds and refreshes its product index in small background batches to avoid loading a large catalog into memory at once. When WooCommerce Action Scheduler is available it is used for the queue, with WP-Cron as a fallback. Product and variation updates also refresh the related product entry automatically. You can manually queue a full rebuild from Store Chat > Overview.

If the index is still being built, Lotusa keeps a basic live WooCommerce search fallback available.

Free and future premium editions

This WordPress.org edition is a complete local sales/support assistant without message limits or an expiry date.

A future premium edition may add genuinely separate functionality such as optional external AI providers, more advanced natural-language reasoning, automatic knowledge ingestion, advanced analytics, lead workflows, revenue attribution, and additional sales/support tools. Premium code is not included or locked inside this free plugin.

Privacy

Lotusa Store Chat for WooCommerce works locally and does not send chat messages, product index data, or order lookup data to an external AI or analytics service.

The administrator may store unanswered questions and may optionally enable conversation history in the local WordPress database. Conversation logging is disabled by default. Logged page URLs have query strings and fragments removed. The retention period is configurable.

Secure order lookup requires an order number and billing email to match before order status is returned. The lookup itself is performed through WooCommerce APIs on the same website. If conversation logging is enabled, customer-entered messages may include information such as an order number or email address, so store owners should account for this in their privacy policy and retention settings.

Store owners should describe enabled local message logging in their privacy policy when required by applicable law.

1. Install and activate WooCommerce.
2. Upload the plugin ZIP through Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin, or install it from WordPress.org.
3. Activate Lotusa Store Chat for WooCommerce.
4. Open Store Chat > Overview. Lotusa queues its local product index automatically.
5. Open Store Chat > Knowledge Base and edit the sample answers.
6. Open Store Chat > Settings to customize the widget, enable order tracking, and optionally select knowledge pages.
7. Test the chat in a private browser window.

Does this plugin use OpenAI or another external AI service?

No. This free version uses a local smart commerce engine, the local knowledge base, selected local WordPress pages, and live WooCommerce data.

Are customer chat messages or product data sent outside my website?

No. This free version does not send chat messages or the local product index to an external Lotusa, AI, analytics, or tracking service.

Can customers search by attributes, variations, price, or stock?

Yes. Version 1.1 indexes WooCommerce product attributes and variation values and can use price and stock filters for product discovery.

Does it understand follow-up questions?

For product discovery, Lotusa keeps a short-lived local session context containing the IDs of the last product results. A short follow-up such as “only blue” or “under 30 euro” can refine those previous results. The context expires automatically.

Can it answer questions about the product currently being viewed?

Yes. On product pages, Lotusa can use the current product context for price, stock, attributes, and variation availability.

Can customers track orders through the chat?

Yes, if Secure order tracking is enabled. Lotusa requires the submitted order number and billing email to match. It returns the WooCommerce order status and, when available, common shipment-tracking data.

Does the plugin store messages?

Unanswered-question logging is enabled by default so the store owner can improve the knowledge base. Full conversation logging is optional and disabled by default. Both are stored only in the local WordPress database.

Short-lived product refinement/order lookup state is stored in WordPress transients and expires automatically.

Can I disable local logging?

Yes. Open Store Chat > Settings and disable unanswered questions and/or conversation history.

Does it have product or message limits?

No. The free local features do not have a message quota or expiry date.

What happens on uninstall?

By default, data is retained to prevent accidental loss. Enable the uninstall cleanup option in Settings before uninstalling to delete the plugin settings, local tables, product index, and scheduled Lotusa events.

1.1.0

• Added a local smart WooCommerce product index for names, descriptions, SKU, categories, tags, attributes, variations, prices, and stock.
• Added price-aware and stock-aware natural-language product discovery.
• Added short conversational refinement of previous product results using expiring local session context.
• Added current product-page awareness for price, stock, attributes, and variation availability.
• Added secure local order-status lookup requiring order number + billing email verification.
• Added support for common WooCommerce shipment-tracking metadata when available.
• Added optional local WordPress knowledge pages for shipping, returns, sizing, FAQs, and buying guides.
• Added stock and option details to product result cards.
• Added automatic product/variation re-indexing and a manual full index rebuild control.
• Kept the free version fully local with no external AI service, account, API key, or usage quota.

1.0.1

• Changed public chat rate limiting to use a server-derived client key.
• Prevented submitted or missing session IDs from creating transient keys or bypassing the request limit.

1.0.0

• Initial WordPress.org release.
• Local FAQ knowledge base.
• WooCommerce product search.
• Optional local unanswered-question and conversation logs.
• No external AI service or remote tracking.