How to Configure Importier Settings Before Your First Import

A merchant installs Importier, imports 50 products without opening the importier settings panel, and the AI delivers 50 descriptions. Grammatically sound, structured correctly, professionally worded. The merchant reads them and thinks: these could be from any store selling these products.

That is exactly what happens when you skip the settings panel.

Every option you configure tells the AI something specific about your brand: what vocabulary to use, what tone to adopt, which product structure suits your category, which words to never write. Skip the setup and you get generic. Spend 25 minutes getting it right and every import that follows inherits those preferences automatically.

This guide covers each importier setting in the order you should configure it. Work through the steps once, save a Preset at the end, and your first import will produce content that sounds like your store from batch one.

Step 1: Store Information

The User Type setting is small but consequential. Importier's onboarding flow branches depending on whether you are a Store Owner or an Agency / Developer.

Store Owner means you manage a single Shopify store. Agency / Developer means you manage multiple client stores or build on the Shopify platform.

Select the wrong type and you receive onboarding guidance aimed at a different workflow. The Shopify Store field is pre-filled from your installation. Confirm your User Type and move on.

Step 2: Choosing the Right AI Model in Importier Settings

Most merchants accept the default AI model and never look at this setting again. That is a missed opportunity.

The right model for your product category produces noticeably better output than the default. Importier offers 18+ AI models across four tiers. Plans unlock different tiers, so what is available depends on your subscription.

Recommendations by merchant type:

• General retail, first import: GPT-4o Mini (Growth tier). Fast, reliable, and a sensible default for mixed catalogues.
• High-volume dropshipping: Amazon Nova Micro or Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite (Starter). Speed and throughput over output nuance.
• Premium or luxury products: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or GPT-5.4 (Enterprise). Output quality is noticeably better for products where the description directly drives conversion.
• Technical products such as electronics, tools, and machinery: GPT-4.1 Mini or DeepSeek V3.2 (Scale). Both handle structured technical content more precisely than general-purpose models.

If you are unsure, start with GPT-4o Mini. You can switch models at any time, and save different model preferences per Preset, which is covered in Step 10.

Step 3: Expert Persona and Creativity

A persona is the professional lens the AI writes through. Without one, the AI defaults to a generalised copywriter that writes about a yoga mat the same way it writes about a power drill.

Importier includes 156 expert personas across 43 industries, organised by category in the dropdown. When you select a persona, the AI writes with that professional's vocabulary, structural instincts, and domain-specific credibility signals.

The difference is concrete. A Skincare Formulator writing about a vitamin C serum leads with ingredient efficacy and mentions oxidation stability. A General Copywriter writes about how the serum "brightens your complexion." One of those two descriptions converts with skincare buyers who actually understand what they are buying.

Persona selection by category:

• Skincare and cosmetics: Skincare Formulator or Cosmetic Chemist
• Sports and fitness: Strength Coach or Outdoor Living Designer
• Electronics: Consumer Electronics Specialist or Technical Writer
• Food and beverage: Food Scientist or Culinary Expert
• Hobby and collectibles (trading card games, models, gaming): category-specific specialists appear in the dropdown under Hobby & Collectibles

The Creativity slider (Temperature) runs from 0.0 to 1.0. The default of 0.5 is right for most stores. Push toward 0.3 for technical or compliance-heavy catalogues where precision matters more than variety. Push toward 0.7 for lifestyle, fashion, or luxury products where description variety across a batch has real value.

If you want to see how the AI writes before committing to a persona, "No Persona (General Copywriter)" is the default and works for straightforward products.

Step 4: Importier Settings for Brand Voice

Brand Voice is where the importier settings panel becomes genuinely specific to your store. Even a well-matched persona can produce copy that sounds like any competitor in the same category. Brand Voice is where you close that gap.

Importier's AI-powered description generator generates 500 products in the time a human copywriter writes one. The settings you configure here determine whether those 500 descriptions sound like your brand or like anyone else in your category. Without a configured Brand Voice, editing 200 descriptions to match your store's tone takes 50 to 66 hours. With Excluded Words and Target Keywords set correctly, most descriptions come back needing no tone editing at all.

“The Excluded Words list is the highest-impact input in the settings panel. Ten words eliminates the most common off-brand phrases before a single description is generated.

There are five inputs in the Brand Voice section.

Tone determines the overall register. The five options are Professional, Casual & Friendly, Persuasive, Luxurious, and Technical. A running shoe store targeting recreational athletes writes differently to a bespoke furniture studio targeting interior designers. The tone you pick should match how you would speak to your average customer at the point of purchase.

Language controls the language the AI writes descriptions in. This is not just a spelling variant: it determines the entire output language. If your primary market is German-speaking, the AI writes in German. Useful for international stores or stores where the customer base is non-English.

Spelling Variant is often overlooked and it causes real trust issues when it is wrong. Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian stores should select UK spelling: colour, organise, catalogue, behaviour, centre. Descriptions that use US spelling on an Australian store read as imports, not locals. Buyers notice it.

Target Keywords are words or phrases you want woven naturally into descriptions across your catalogue. Use 3 to 5 terms: "handmade", "small-batch", "Australian-made", or whatever your brand genuinely stands for. The AI uses these where they fit. It will not force them into sentences where they sound awkward.

Excluded Words deserves more attention than most merchants give it. This field tells the AI which words it must never write. Good excluded words include overused hype words ("amazing", "incredible", "world-class"), words that are off-brand for a premium store ("cheap", "bargain"), and any competitor names. Start with at least ten words. You will add more after your first batch when you see which patterns the AI falls back on.

For a deeper walkthrough of each input, read the Brand Voice configuration guide.

Step 5: Content Formatting

Description Style determines the structure of every AI-generated description. The seven styles are designed for different product categories, and choosing the right one for your catalogue is worth the two minutes it takes to think about.

The seven styles and when to use each:

Standard is the right starting point for most new merchants. It covers key product information in a logical order and works across general retail categories.

Technical Gadget front-loads a scannable feature list before any narrative copy. Use this for electronics, tools, or machinery where buyers scan specifications before they read.

Emotional Storytelling leads with narrative and sensation. Use this for beauty, fragrance, food, and gift products where the emotional experience of the product is the selling point.

Benefits-First opens with what the product does for the buyer before explaining what it is. This works for supplements, wellness products, and skincare, where the outcome matters more than the ingredients list.

Sensory-Rich uses heavy sensory language throughout. Use this for fashion, premium homewares, fragrance, and food products where how something feels, smells, or looks drives the purchase.

Ingredient Spotlight structures the description around the ingredients themselves. Use this for skincare and supplements where the formulation is the product.

Custom lets you define up to 10 section headings in any order. If none of the six fixed styles match how your customers consume product information, Custom gives you full control. For more on designing a custom template, read how to apply a consistent description template across your catalogue.

Most new merchants should start with Standard. Change only if your product category has a clear fit with another style.

Step 6: SEO and Compliance

Enable all three options in this section. There is no reason to leave any of them off.

Auto-Generate SEO Title generates a keyword-rich page title under 60 characters for every product. Without this, Shopify uses your product title as the SEO title, which is often too long, badly structured, or missing relevant search terms.

Generate Meta Description generates a 150 to 160 character snippet for every product. Without this, Google picks something from your description body, which is rarely optimised for click-through.

Google Shopping Compliance formats descriptions to follow Google Merchant Centre policy. If you advertise on Google Shopping or sync your catalogue via the Google channel app, enabling this is mandatory.

These three toggles cost nothing additional and their impact compounds over months as Google indexes your products.

Step 7: Tax and Compliance

This section applies specifically to merchants selling across international borders. If you sell domestically only, skip it now and return when you expand markets.

Importier stores your tax registration numbers for display in product delivery sections. It does not configure tax calculation at checkout. That is handled in Shopify Admin under Settings > Taxes and duties.

The available fields cover:

• EU IOSS number: required if you ship to EU customers and want to pre-collect VAT at checkout. Format: IM followed by ten digits.
• UK VAT number: required if your annual UK sales exceed £85,000. Format: GB followed by nine digits.
• Norway VOEC number: required if you ship to Norwegian consumers. Format: seven digits.
• Australia ABN / GST: required if you are registered for GST with an annual turnover above AU$75,000.

Note the EU regulatory change effective 1 July 2026: the €150 customs duty exemption is removed and a €3 flat-rate duty applies per consignment. If you sell to EU customers, review your pricing before that date.

For a full walkthrough of each scheme and how compliance language appears in product descriptions, read the guide on setting up tax compliance for international Shopify stores.

Step 8: Data Sources

Most supplier CSVs arrive incomplete. Fields like weight, product type, barcodes, and country of origin are either missing or formatted in ways that require manual cleanup. The Data Sources section lets Importier fill those gaps automatically during every import.

1. 01
   Analyse Product Images With AI

   Turn this on. During import, the AI examines each product image and extracts details like colour, material, visible text, and condition. This adds one to two seconds per product and recovers significant detail from catalogues with sparse data fields.
2. 02
   Look Up Product Barcodes

   Turn this on. When a product has a UPC, EAN, ISBN, or GTIN, Importier queries a global barcode database and returns the brand name, model, weight, dimensions, country of origin, category, and often additional product images. This is the most impactful enrichment option available, especially for dropshippers and importers whose supplier files contain barcodes but nothing else.
3. 03
   Enable Variant Detection

   Turn this on. Importier uses 150+ regex patterns across 15+ industries to detect when multiple rows in a supplier file are variants of the same product. Without this, three colour variants of one jacket arrive as three separate Shopify products.
4. 04
   Set Shopify Weight Unit

   Set this to the unit your warehouse uses. A mismatch between the unit stored in Importier and your actual product weights produces incorrect shipping rate calculations on every order.

Enable all three enrichment options and confirm your weight unit before your first import.

Step 9: Importier Settings for Category Metafields and Industry Packs

Category metafields connect your products to structured data: on-site filtered search, Google Shopping feed attributes, and accurate tax classification by product type. Without them, products exist in your store but they are invisible to any system that depends on structured product data.

Toggle Category Attributes on. This is the master switch. When it is on, every imported product gets matched to Shopify's Standard Product Taxonomy and assigned the relevant metafields for that category.

Industry Packs install the Shopify metaobject definitions that make those metafields available in your store. There are 22 packs covering 3,758 attributes across 43 industries. For a full explanation of what Shopify category metafields are and why they matter, read the dedicated guide.

Install only the packs that match what you sell. Installing all 22 clutters your Shopify admin with metaobject definitions for categories you will never use. If you sell apparel and accessories, install those two packs. If you sell electronics and tools, install those. Keep it specific to your catalogue.

Step 10: Save as a Preset

The last step in the importier settings workflow is the one most merchants skip. Presets save your entire current configuration as a named profile you can reload in one click before any import.

What a Preset saves: AI model, persona, creativity setting, tone, language, spelling variant, target keywords, excluded words, description style, section order, SEO toggles, data source settings, and category metafields toggle.

What a Preset deliberately does not save: Store Information (user type), tax registration numbers, and Industry Packs installed. These are store-wide settings, not per-import configurations.

To save: configure all settings as you want them, scroll to the Presets section, select "Save as Preset", and name it. "Default" works for most merchants on their first run.

For merchants selling across multiple product categories, a Default Preset is the starting point. After your first import, create a second Preset for a different category with a different AI model, persona, and tone, then switch between them in one click.

For agencies: build one Preset per client. Bake in their brand voice, persona, and description style. Switching between clients before an import takes one click. Without Presets, that configuration lives in your head.

Your Importier Settings Are Ready

The full first-time setup takes 25 to 30 minutes. After that, every import, every Store Scanner run, and every scheduled import inherits these settings automatically.

If you sell across multiple product categories, return after your first import and build a second Preset. Five minutes at the configuration stage eliminates hours of editing after the fact.

The next step: run your first import with your settings in place. To understand exactly how the AI generates descriptions from your settings, the complete guide covers every stage of the generation pipeline.

Try Importier free at importier.app.