An AI assistant for small business websites
An AI assistant for small business websites should repeat what you wrote and nothing else. How a digital twin works for a cafe, a gym or a shop.
If you run a small place, you know the questions. When do you open? Is there oat milk? Can I bring the dog? You answer them all day, at the counter, on the phone and in messages. An AI assistant for small business websites sounds like the fix, and it can be, as long as it sticks to what you told it. That is the idea behind a digital twin for a business. Here is how it works, with three made-up examples.
What a business twin is
It is a page with its own link, such as itwin.co/nook, in your colours and with your logo. You answer ten questions written for a business: what it is and who it is for, where it is and when you are open, how people reach you and how prices work. They also ask what is new, what people ask you most, what you don’t do, and the one thing every visitor should know. A few more follow for your kind of place. Then you list what you offer: a name, a line about it and a price, up to forty items.
A business twin lives on its own account, made by someone who runs the place or may speak for it.
To be clear about one thing: the twin lives on its own page. Today it isn’t a chat box that sits inside your website. You put a link to it on your site, in your bio or on your menu, and people open it from there.
A cafe, a gym and a shop
Nook Coffee is a made-up cafe in Kadıköy, and you can try its demo twin. Someone writes: “are you open on monday? and is oat milk extra?” The twin answers from what Nook wrote: “Nook is closed on Mondays. It’s open Tuesday to Sunday, eight to eight. Oat milk costs the same.” Then: “can you hold a table for eight on saturday?” It says it can’t book anything, that Nook doesn’t take table reservations, and that for more than six people Nook asks you to message the number on the door first.
Kerem’s Gym is invented too. Before a first visit, people ask the same things. Can I try a class? Are there showers? What should I bring? Kerem writes that down once. When someone asks what two memberships would cost together, the twin quotes the price as written, doesn’t add anything up, and says the gym can confirm the rest. When someone wants a place in tonight’s class, it can’t hold one, so it says how the gym takes bookings.
Selin’s Books, one more invented place, gets asked about returns and whether a title is in stock. The twin gives the returns policy as Selin wrote it. It can’t see the shelves, so it never says a book is there. It says what Selin listed and how to ask her.
Why an AI assistant for small business websites should stay small
The promise of AI is that it can do everything. For a small business, that is the danger. If an assistant invents a discount, or says a dish is nut-free when nobody wrote that, you are the one facing the customer.
So a business twin has hard limits. It repeats prices, hours and contact details exactly as you wrote them. It never adds up a bill, invents a discount, takes an order, makes a booking or takes a payment. It never promises that something is available or in stock. It doesn’t guess at allergens. A clinic’s twin gives no medical advice. If something isn’t written down, it says: “Nook didn’t write that down, so I don’t know. Ask Nook.”
It also never pretends to be staff, and it doesn’t say “we”. Before the first message, the page tells every visitor that it is an AI built from what the business wrote, that it is not the staff, and that it can be wrong.
When someone wants something it can’t do, it points them to the way of reaching you that you wrote down. A booking still ends with a person, which is where it should end.
What you get out of it
You can read every chat your twin has for 30 days, and visitors are told that first. Someone who isn’t signed in shows up as “Visitor”. You also get a list of what people asked that the twin couldn’t answer. For a small business, that may be the most useful part: a plain list of what your customers wanted to know and couldn’t find out. Write the answer once and the next person gets it.
The catch is that the twin only knows what is written. If you close early next Tuesday, it won’t know until you change it. That is why the “what’s new” question asks you to put a date on things.
People look up a small place because they want to know what it is like, and whether it is their kind of place, not only when it opens. Your twin can tell them in your words.
Making a business twin is free right now. Start here and pick “A business’s” when it asks whose twin this is. The questions page has more, and if you are wondering who reads what, see is a digital twin safe.