10 SEO and Store Questions for AI Website Builders
Ten questions to ask any AI website builder before launching an online store — with the answer that should worry you and the answer you actually want.
Sales pages are written to survive skimming. These ten questions are written to break them. Each has a bad answer that sounds fine, which is exactly why you should ask it out loud before you commit a catalogue to any platform.
Quick answer: Ask about platform fee versus processing fee, what SEO is true at publish, structured data, product editing speed, whether the store is generated or configured, which plan gates commerce, abandoned carts, local SEO, AI search visibility, and whether you can export and leave. Ten minutes of asking saves a month of migrating.
1. "What's your platform fee, and what's the processing fee?"
Why it's first: It's the question that costs the most money and gets the vaguest answers.
The answer that should worry you: "We're 0% fees!" with no further detail. There are two fees and no platform eliminates both.
The answer you want: Both numbers, separately. Platform fee is the builder's cut — 0% on InMinutes Pro, 0% on Wix commerce plans, 0% on Squarespace Core and above, 2% on Squarespace Basic, and 0.6–2% on Shopify unless you use Shopify Payments. Processing is what Stripe, PayPal, or Shopify Payments takes: about 2.9% + 30¢ per US transaction, everywhere, always.
Follow up with: "0% under what conditions?" Shopify's 0% requires their processor. Squarespace's requires leaving the cheap tier.
2. "What SEO is already correct the moment I publish?"
The answer that should worry you: "We have full SEO tools." Capability isn't configuration. A settings panel you haven't opened does nothing.
The answer you want: A specific list of what's generated automatically. Meta titles and descriptions per page, structured data, OG images, a sitemap. On InMinutes all of that is applied at publish; on most platforms it's manual per page or per product.
3. "Do you generate Product and LocalBusiness structured data?"
Why it matters: Structured data is how search engines understand that a page is a product with a price and availability, or that you're a business with hours and a location. It's what powers rich results, and for anyone with a physical location, LocalBusiness markup drives more revenue than product-page polish.
The answer that should worry you: "You can add that with an app" or "our themes support it."
The answer you want: Automatic, on every relevant page, with no theme dependency.
4. "How long does it take me to change a product price?"
Why it matters more than it sounds: Setup pain is a one-off you'll push through. Editing pain recurs forever, and it's what makes stores go stale — wrong prices, items listed that sold out months ago.
The answer that should worry you: A demo of an admin panel with several nested screens.
The answer you want: Under a minute, without documentation, six months from now. On InMinutes it's a sentence: "change the blue mug to $24," "mark medium out of stock."
5. "Is the store generated, or do I configure it?"
The answer that should worry you: "You get full control over every field!" — which is a description of empty forms.
The answer you want: A starting structure produced from your business description that you then correct. Correcting is several times faster than authoring, and dramatically less likely to be abandoned at product number ten.
6. "Which plan gates commerce, and what else is gated with it?"
Why it matters: Store access is frequently bundled with the things you also need, or sold at a tier above where the marketing implies.
The answer you want: Specifics. On InMinutes, the AI Store is on Pro at $49/mo ($39 annual) together with booking, invoicing, and Audience CRM — Starter at $19/mo publishes a site with SEO and a blog but no store. Business at $99/mo adds only double AI capacity, which most small stores don't need.
Follow up with: "What's the cheapest plan where I can legally take money?"
7. "Is abandoned cart recovery included or an app?"
Why it's on the list: It's the highest-ROI automation in ecommerce and one of the most commonly sold separately. A majority of carts get abandoned — the exact share varies hugely by sector, so distrust any single confident number — and a timed reminder recovers a meaningful slice.
The answer you want: Included, with editable copy. If it's an app, add its monthly cost to the plan price before comparing.
8. "What do you do for local SEO specifically?"
Why it matters: If you have a location or a service area, "near me" searches likely outrank your product pages as a revenue source.
The answer that should worry you: A generic answer about keywords.
The answer you want: Hours, service area, map, click-to-call, and LocalBusiness structured data — ideally pulled from your Google Business Profile rather than typed by you. InMinutes generates these in the same pass as the store.
9. "Do you support AI search visibility?"
Why it's newly relevant: Buyers increasingly ask AI assistants for recommendations instead of scrolling search results. Being parseable by those systems is becoming its own channel.
The answer you want: Concretely, an llms.txt file describing your site for AI systems — included on InMinutes Pro. Most platforms don't offer this yet.
Stay sceptical, though: this is early and its impact isn't well established. It's cheap to have and worth having; it isn't a strategy, and anyone selling it as one is ahead of the evidence.
10. "Can I export my products and leave?"
Why it's last and matters most: It's the question that makes every other answer safe to accept. A wrong platform choice you can reverse is an inconvenience; one you can't is a trap.
The answer that should worry you: Hesitation, or a domain registered in the platform's name rather than yours.
The answer you want: A product export, your customer list, and your domain under your own control. Platforms confident in their value don't need to lock you in.
Scoring the answers
Question | Deal-breaker if… |
|---|---|
Fee structure | They won't separate platform from processing |
SEO at publish | Everything is "available" but nothing is done |
Structured data | Theme- or app-dependent |
Time to edit a price | More than a couple of minutes |
Generated vs configured | You start from empty forms |
Commerce plan gate | Costs more than you budgeted |
Abandoned cart | Paid app you weren't told about |
Local SEO | No LocalBusiness markup and you have a location |
AI search | Nothing, and you sell in a competitive niche |
Export | You can't leave |
What honest answers sound like
Worth noting that Shopify would answer questions 1, 5, 7, and 10 well and questions 2, 3, and 8 with "configurable" — which is accurate, and appropriate for a platform built for catalogue commerce rather than local discovery. That's a genuine fit judgment, not a failure.
Our own honest answers to the awkward ones: our design ceiling is below Squarespace's, our catalogue ceiling is below Shopify's, we have no app marketplace, and automatic SEO defaults are a technical floor rather than a ranking promise. If those rule us out, better to know now.
Further reading: 8 questions to ask before picking an AI website builder, AI website builders for ecommerce and SEO, and 9 SEO features to look for.
FAQ
The bottom line
Choosing an AI website builder for a store is an interrogation, not a feature comparison. Insist on both fee numbers, on what's true at publish rather than what's possible, on how fast you can change a price next year, and on your ability to leave. Ten questions, ten minutes, and a much shorter shortlist. Check our answers free →