I’m joined by Carla Penn-Kahn from Profit Peak and Cande Rybecky from SHERO Commerce. Between them they cover big growth brands and the small guys running on tight budgets, across Australia and the US.

We get into:

• Why your discount should depend on when you started acquiring customers
• Bundles vs sitewide discounts, and what kills your margin
• How to plan for the Q1 slump now
• Why ChatGPT shoppers are spending more per order
• Carla’s warning for Aussie brands: learn TikTok Shop now, or get smashed when it lands here

If you’re running a Shopify store, listen before you lock in your BFCM plan. Seriously.

Sponsors

Thanks to SHERO Commerce for supporting the Global Compass Series. We’ve been chatting to some of the best ecommerce brains from all over the world, and you can check out the other episodes wherever you’re listening to this.

This episode is also brought to you by Fish Wishlist by Native App Co. It’s the wishlist app that doesn’t feel like an app, because it blends right into your theme. It’s not too late to add it to your store for peak season. Head to fishwishlist.com.

YouTube Chapters

00:00 - Profit vs revenue: why when you acquire customers matters
01:40 - Missed July? Balancing CAC and discount depth
02:34 - Bundles, gift with purchase, store credit: picking the right promo
04:05 - Building your list and creative before November
05:29 - When to ramp up ad budgets
06:21 - Retention after BFCM and the 12-month stock-up problem
08:23 - Planning for the Q1 lull, and January product drops
10:05 - Segmentation that actually changes what you sell
12:23 - The fastest growing Shopify categories (hello, caravans)
13:42 - Interest rates, consumer sentiment and zip code targeting
15:21 - Australia vs US: going from big fish to small fish
17:14 - Localised creative and the Eurosummer mistake
19:00 - Finding influencers in your own customer list
21:45 - ChatGPT as an ad channel, and why AOV is higher
25:01 - Carla's TikTok Shop warning for Aussie brands
26:37 - Google Ads then vs now
27:05 - Wrapping up

We get into Meta’s new Muse agent and whether it’s the future of agentic shopping, why Layers hit pause on building chatbots to go all in on MCP, and why being platform agnostic is now a disadvantage. Jake explains how a metaobject-based integration took half an hour instead of months, why he refuses to hog attribution, and how one brand turned six weeks of product data work into four days with AI.

Then the boring-but-critical stuff: what merchants are doing to get ready for Black Friday, from hyper-niche segments to accessibility audits, buying flow tests and hunting down zombie landing pages leaking stacked discounts.

If you’re heading into BFCM wondering what actually matters, this one’s for you. And check out our Black Friday series with SHERO Commerce for more quick wins this peak season. Like, subscribe, share - you know the drill.

Shero Commerce - a Shopify Premier agency helping mid-market and enterprise brands migrate to, optimise and scale on Shopify. In the lead up to BFCM they've been helping me bring conversations with the people who can help your store have a successful campaign.

The Support Heroes - This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they’re doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

Product Pelican - Better product data makes everything better: search, merch, Google Shopping and agentic feeds. Product Pelican is the native PIM for Shopify, built to manage and audit your catalogue at scale, right inside Shopify. Get your catalogue BFCM-ready.

In this episode:

• Meta’s Muse agent and the fight to own the customer
• Why Layers paused its chatbots to go all in on MCP
• Native integrations in half an hour vs months of API work
• Proving ROI without vanity metrics or attribution hogging
• How AI-enabled teams are building hyper-niche BFCM segments
• The daily BFCM checklist: accessibility, core web vitals, buying flows and zombie discounts

00:00 - Back to our roots: a deep chat with Jake Casto
01:34 - Meta's Muse: future of agentic shopping or another fad?
05:32 - Amazon goes its own way
09:02 - Layers and the 4G to 5G upgrade
11:36 - Chatbots are so last year
12:23 - Why Layers paused its agents to go all in on MCP
16:41 - Slack agents that need an MCP to buy
19:24 - Why platform agnostic is now a disadvantage
20:01 - A half hour integration via metaobjects
22:44 - No vanity metrics: proving ROI honestly
24:23 - Attribution hogging and the image search example
27:27 - Founder vision and never saying "we can't"
28:24 - 6 weeks of product data work done in 4 days
30:38 - BFCM prep: hyper-niche customer segments
33:56 - A custom GPT trained on 3 years of Black Friday data
35:25 - The daily checklist: accessibility lawsuits and Claude Code
37:38 - Core web vitals and impatient bots
38:55 - Test your buying flows (and kill the hidden mini carts)
40:15 - Zombie landing pages and stacked discounts
41:31 - Happy surprises in old pages
42:13 - Has anyone actually bought through an agent?
45:44 - Wrapping up

Over 450 Shopify apps have been pulled from the App Store, and plenty of them are reputable apps. Hackers found ways to inject code that sent shoppers to a fake checkout, right in the lead up to BFCM. Dylan Pierce from Very Bad Panda has been writing about Shopify security long before it became topical, and his site has become the go-to guide for what’s going on.

We get into how the attack actually works (unprotected metafields and endpoints that let JavaScript run on the storefront), why vibe coding a replacement app can be worse than waiting it out, and why code is a liability, not a one and done. We also cover how merchants should choose apps now, why SOC 2 isn’t realistic for a $10/month app, and how AI has flipped the security pyramid so Shopify stores are now worth targeting.

If you’re a merchant with apps in limbo, an app dev getting your house in order, or an agency fielding nervous clients, this one’s for you.

Links

• Very Bad Panda: https://verybadpanda.dev/
• Shopify - Securing your app, together: https://community.shopify.dev/t/securing-your-app-together/38752
• List of delisted apps: https://heyapps.dev/apps/delisted?sort=reviews

In this episode:

• How the fake checkout hack works
• Should you switch apps fast, vibe code a replacement, or sit tight?
• Testing your store with apps and JavaScript turned off
• What to look for when choosing apps now
• SOC 2, small app shops and why incident response matters
• The inverted security pyramid and the next wave: AI agents holding your keys

YouTube Chapters

00:00 - The Shopify App-ocalypse: 450 apps down
00:40 - How the hack works: unprotected metafields and endpoints
01:33 - What it means for store owners
02:12 - Why vibe coding a replacement can be worse
03:23 - Switch apps fast or sit tight?
04:52 - Turn off your apps and JavaScript: test your critical path
05:39 - Why merchants need better checkout testing tools
06:35 - How to choose apps now
07:55 - SOC 2, small app shops and incident response
09:24 - The silver lining for the app ecosystem
10:36 - The inverted security pyramid: AI and phishing
12:15 - Back to basics: passwords, API keys, dodgy emails
12:43 - The next wave: AI agents holding your keys
13:32 - Wrapping up

Shopify just gave AI agents a credit card. Shop MD lets ChatGPT, Claude or any agent search Shopify’s catalogue, build a cart and check out with Shop Pay, without ever touching a store’s website. Martin Cox put it through a crash test by getting Claude to buy his next pair of running shoes.

He covers the setup, the vague prompt that went nowhere, the specific one that found his exact shoe on sale in seconds, and how much better results have got since he tested agent shopping a few months back. Plus what merchants lose in this flow (checkout upsells) and what they keep (the customer and the data).

If you’re feeling buried by Shopify announcements before Black Friday, this one’s for you.

Agents can only sell what they understand. Product Pelican is the native PIM for Shopify. Manage and audit your catalogue at scale so your products are ready for every channel, AI agents included.

In this episode:

• What Shop MD is and how it works
• Setting it up in Claude (2FA and all)
• Vague prompts vs specific prompts
• How much agent search results have improved
• Why merchants shouldn’t panic
• What to do before Black Friday

The next few months is when we'll see some real numbers on what is working and where to invest. But one thing that's certain, is there's opportunities for businesses of all sizes to cash in on new sales channels.

In this conversation, I chat with Carla Penn-Kahn from ProfitPeak, and Cande Rybecky, CMO or Shero Commerce, discussing strategies for e-commerce merchants to get the most out of platforms like ChatGPT and TikTok Shop this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

This chat is part of the Global Compass Series, presented by Shero Commerce and Native App Co. Bringing actionable insights for Shopify merchants as we head into peak season.

Now is the time to be running the tests and optimizing your store for the busiest ecommerce trading period of the year.

It's not the season for think pieces. Merchants just want to make more money. That's why we built the Global Compass series: short, sharp chats with the best of the Shopify ecosystem, from all over the world.

Episode 3: making your store perform when it counts. Blake Waldron, founder of Checkout Components, joins from Melbourne, Australia. Georgi Petrov, co-founder of Uxify, joins from Sofia, Bulgaria.

We cover what to A/B test right now, why mobile is more important than ever, how 404s and rage clicks kill conversions and why store credit is beating discounts.

The countdown to BFCM is on.

Sponsors

The Global Compass Series is brought to you by:

Shero Commerce - a Shopify Premier agency helping mid-market and enterprise brands migrate to, optimise and scale on Shopify. Since 2010 they've built e-commerce experiences across platforms, with expertise spanning migration, B2B, D2C, SEO, AEO and growth marketing. Their approach is simple: understand the challenge, build the right solution, and help brands grow for the long term.

Native App Co - Blake made the case for store credit over further discounting in this one, and it's exactly why we built Stork Credit. Stork turns native Shopify store credit into cashback, loyalty and rewards automation. Cash, not points, and no theme edits. 

In this episode:

• What to A/B test now, from trust badges to upsells
• Mobile is hundreds of devices, not one
• Why ChatGPT shoppers need brand content at checkout
• 404s, dead ends and rage clicks: the silent conversion killers
• Store credit as the answer to "we don't want to discount further"
• Shopify Canvas: Squarespace-ification or the start of something big?

00:00 - Why CRO matters for peak season
00:34 - What to A/B test right now
01:48 - Testing the whole journey: devices and friction
02:52 - Mobile isn't one device
04:02 - Multiple Shopify checkouts live at once (and foldable phones)
05:08 - Different content for mobile vs desktop
05:59 - Checkout content for shoppers arriving from ChatGPT
07:06 - Broken links, 404s and rage clicks
08:57 - Does code freeze actually exist?
11:25 - Sponsor: Shero Commerce
11:54 - Store credit instead of deeper discounts
14:11 - Uxify's revenue-per-visitor program
15:30 - Automation vs hands on the wheel
16:51 - Shopify Canvas: first thoughts
19:37 - Who Canvas is really for
22:35 - Wrapping up

On The Shopify App Show Global Compass Series we talk to the smartest people in the Shopify ecosystem to get real insights for how you can win this peak season.

Guests:

• Kirl Climson, co-founder of Order Editing and joins us from Toronto.
• Nicole Christopher, commercial manager of Order Editing, joins us from Sydney.

Sponsors:

The Global Compass Series is brought to you by:

Shero Commerce - a Shopify Premier agency helping mid-market and enterprise brands migrate to, optimise and scale on Shopify. Their approach is simple: understand the challenge, build the right solution, and help brands grow for the long term.

The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify app support, keeping apps covered all over the world this peak season.

Native App Co- Sammy brought up store credit in this one, and it's exactly why we built Stork Credit. Stork turns native Shopify store credit into cashback, loyalty and rewards automation. Cash, not points, no theme edits.

In this episode:

• "One brand's 'least valuable' customers, the ones who came in on a November discount, turned out to have the highest lifetime value of anyone."
• "Running your A/B test on the night of Black Friday? It's too late."
• "Stop trying to beat last year's revenue. That's not a strategy, it's a scoreboard."
• "We built a waiting room for order edits. Turns out people don't mind waiting if you're honest about it."
• "Free express shipping at $100 converts better than a lot of physical 'free gifts' ever did."
• "Show one offer at a time. Four upsells fighting for attention converts worse than one."
• "The most important flow this peak season isn't the sale. It's what happens after."

On The Shopify App Show Global Compass Series we talk to the smartest people in the Shopify ecosystem to get real insights for how you can win this peak season.

Guests:

• Sammy Isseyegh, co-founder of Discount Kit, joins us from London. Since he was last on the show he's picked up a Shopify Build Award.
• Gulnaz Khusainova, founder of EasySize, joins us from Copenhagen. Her app helps fashion stores recommend the right size to customers, which is huge for conversion and returns when trade is busy.
  

Sponsors:

The Global Compass Series is brought to you by:

Shero Commerce - a Shopify Premier agency helping mid-market and enterprise brands migrate to, optimise and scale on Shopify. Their approach is simple: understand the challenge, build the right solution, and help brands grow for the long term.

The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify app support, keeping apps covered all over the world this peak season.

Native App Co- Sammy brought up store credit in this one, and it's exactly why we built Stork Credit. Stork turns native Shopify store credit into cashback, loyalty and rewards automation. Cash, not points, no theme edits.

In this episode:

• Why precise beats deep when it comes to discounts
• Gift with purchase thresholds, and where store credit fits
• Why wrong size is the number one cause of fashion returns
• Cutting friction on the product page without overwhelming shoppers
• Personalisation done right: how many questions is too many?
• Is the discount code dead? Plus agentic shopping and what to ignore this Black Friday

00:00 - Welcome to the Global Compass Series: meet Sammy and Gulnaz
01:22 - Discounts: go precise, not deep
02:57 - Gift with purchase, and where store credit fits
03:44 - Peak season is a one to two month campaign
04:22 - Why wrong size is the number one fashion return
05:56 - Cutting friction on the product page
07:29 - Automating peak prep without losing personalisation
08:12 - Automatic discounts vs a personal customer journey
09:30 - How many questions is too many?
10:52 - Will AI ever just pick your size?
12:59 - Is the discount code dead?
14:32 - Agentic shopping: ignore it this Black Friday
15:45 - Wrapping up

At the end of the day, every Shopify store has the same shitty numbers. A hundred people land on your site, maybe three make it to the checkout. The rest just vanish, and we all get stuck trying to work out how to solve it.

Georgi Petrov is the kind of guy who makes the rest of us feel like mere mortals. In the last 15 years, he has built iSenseLabs into the number one OpenCart plugin vendor, then carved out three companies from it: SMSBump, which sold to Yotpo, NitroPack, which sold to WP Engine, and he's involved in Consentmo too, which we featured on the podcast in a couple of other episodes with Elena Tsacheva.

His newest venture, UXify, is AI agents that watch real shoppers, catch the exact moment they get frustrated, and fix it without spending time and money on A/B tests. So I got Georgi to share his story and I had to grill him about what UXify's AI agents actually do. We get into some juicy topics like why shoppers coming from ChatGPT convert 10 times better than everyone else, and a new tool that's basically TikTok for rage clicks.

Sponsors

The Support Heroes provide support for app developers all over the world. If your app business is drowning in support tickets, head to thesupportheroes.com.

Native App Co, building apps that don't feel like apps, including Stork Credit, Fish Wishlist, Product Pelican & Omnibus Owl. Check us out at nativeappco.com.

In this episode

• Georgi's path from iSenseLabs (the number one OpenCart plugin vendor) to spinning out SMSBump, NitroPack and Consentmo
• What UXify's AI agents actually do: watching real shopper behaviour to find friction and fix it live
• Real numbers: one agent driving $200K/month in extra revenue, another lifting re-engagement by 30%
• Why ChatGPT-referred traffic converts at 10x the rate of regular traffic
• Talking to your data instead of drowning in dashboards, and unifying every AI tool under MCP
• Reals: a "TikTok for rage clicks" feed showing the last 10 seconds before shoppers bail
• Why layout shift (CLS) matters even more now that AI shopping agents are browsing sites themselves
• How much traffic you need before UXify is actually useful

YouTube Chapters

00:00 - Intro
02:15 - From iSenseLabs to SMSBump, NitroPack and Consentmo
05:10 - What UXify's AI agents actually do
07:45 - Real wins: $200K/month and 30% re-engagement
08:56 - Winning back abandoned tabs
10:58 - Why ChatGPT traffic converts 10x better
13:07 - Ditching dashboards for an AI-first chat interface
14:52 - Correlation vs causation: weather, World Cup and email timing
15:50 - Unifying every tool under MCP
17:39 - What's next: Chrome extension and new agents
19:20 - Reals: TikTok for rage clicks
21:35 - Making layout shift (CLS) visible
22:40 - CLS as an agentic Core Web Vitals problem
24:12 - Real user monitoring vs synthetic testing
26:23 - How to get started and the traffic threshold that matters
28:16 - Wrapping up

But this episode might change the way you think about that. I sat down with Mark from Tagalys, who specialise in search and merch for fashion. We talk about one of my favourite technical terms: shit in, shit out. If your data's a mess, it doesn't matter how good your AI, your merch tool, or anything else on your store is.

We spent some time breaking down what good actually looks like. Mark name drops brands like Sheike and Represent in the UK, who balance brand storytelling with trade performance. I'm a big believer that if you get the stuff under the hood right, that gives brand, marketing and e-commerce teams the power to do good marketing that's creative and interesting - which is what fashion should be all about in the first place.

Given the time of year, we also talk about how you need to be trading differently heading into peak season versus the rest of the year, and what you should be doing there. We talk about what the future looks like too - Shopify Sidekick, and whether that's the UX merchandising teams actually want, or whether we're moving to a world where you've got a Tinder swipe for merchandising instead.

Mark's spent time on the agency side at MindArc and running e-commerce for the likes of Incu, Hype DC and Glue Store before landing at Tagalys, so he's seen the "get your data in order" problem from every angle.

We get into what separates the merchants who nail merchandising from the ones drowning in spreadsheets, why the data problem people should have fixed five years ago still isn't fixed, how to restructure your collections for peak trade without torching your brand identity, the benchmarks you should be watching daily once peak hits, and why Mark thinks the next merchandising UX looks less like a chatbot and more like Tinder.

Sponsor Reads

The Support Heroes: dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. If your drowning in support tickets for your app heading into peak season, head to thesupportheroes.com.

Product Pelican: If today's episode hit a nerve, it's probably because your product data isn't in the shape it needs to be. Product Pelican is a native PIM for Shopify - it helps you manage and audit your catalogue at scale so your merch tools, your AI, and your search actually have something good to work with. Shit in, shit out, remember. Check it out at apps.shopify.com/product-pelican.

00:00 - Why fashion merchandising is harder than it looks
02:04 - Why Tagalys exists: the physical store analogy
04:16 - What actually makes Tagalys different
05:39 - The merchants nailing it: Sheike and Represent
07:04 - The data mistake almost everyone's still making
09:05 - Shit in, shit out
12:14 - Peak trade prep: what to do right now
14:44 - Structuring collections for peak vs business as usual
16:13 - Day to day merchandising once peak hits
18:02 - Automating rules instead of manual pinning
19:07 - Getting the whole team reading the same data
20:45 - Feeding merchandising data into Sidekick, Klaviyo, MCP
21:44 - Has Tagalys built a Sidekick extension yet?
23:19 - The Tinder swipe future of merchandising
24:41 - What keeps Mark excited about e-commerce
32:12 - Wrapping up

• 87% of all US e-commerce transactions are B2B
• B2B orders run roughly four times bigger than B2C
• Only 2-10% of Shopify stores actually do B2B

That's why this episode is an important one. B2B is one of my specialities on Shopify, so it was a pleasure to sit down with Josiah Hubbard, who's been at Helium Dev for eleven years. Helium's flagship app, Customer Fields, took off in 2018-2019 as merchants kept bending it sideways to hack together B2B registration flows. That misuse is what led them to build Onboard B2B, a dedicated app for vetting and approving business customer applications.

We get into why B2B on Shopify used to mean tagging customers and duct-taping discount codes together, what changed when Shopify opened B2B to all plans (not just Plus) earlier this year, and how Josiah decides when to say no to a feature request even when a merchant's convinced it's a no-brainer.

If you've ever talked yourself out of trying B2B because you don't have a "proper" wholesale operation, or you're an app developer wondering where the next opportunity is, this one's worth your time.

Sponsor reads

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

Speaking of B2B, this episode's brought to you by Fish Wishlist. Fish works natively with Shopify B2B, pulling in your B2B price lists by default, and lets customers turn their wishlists straight into quotes that land in Shopify as draft orders. If you're running B2B, it's built for exactly this. Check it out on the Shopify App Store.

In this episode:

• The stats nobody's talking about: 87% of US e-commerce is B2B, but hardly any Shopify stores touch it
• How Helium's Customer Fields app accidentally became the backbone of DIY B2B setups (and why merchants abused it into spaghetti flows)
• Why Onboard B2B exists: Shopify authentication first, then a proper vetting and revision process for business applicants
• What changed when Shopify opened B2B to every plan, not just Plus, and the pricing pivot that followed
• How Josiah decides what to build when two merchants want a feature versus fifty
• Building outside Shopify: Scale Headshots, the corporate headshot SaaS used by H&R Block and FIFA
• What's next for Onboard B2B: global tax ID validation and storefront application forms

YouTube Chapters

00:00 — Why B2B is Shopify's most under-tapped opportunity
02:00 — Helium's eleven years and the birth of Customer Fields
06:11 — How merchants hacked B2B together with tags and abused flows
08:21 — The problem with building for a workflow with infinite branches
10:51 — Deciding what to build: two requests vs fifty
16:01 — Shopify B2B goes to all plans - what actually changed
20:26 — Where merchants get stuck starting B2B
25:10 — Building outside Shopify: Scale Headshots and Snap Bar
31:18 — What's next: tax ID validation and storefront forms
33:38 — Wrapping up

This episode I'm speaking to someone who's done all of the above: Sylvie Wilson, one of the founders of Unicorn Cart, which started as an app on her own Shopify store.

She ended up selling that business and going all in on building Unicorn Cart and creating great upsells for merchants. And we've come into the time of year where upsells matter more than anything - so I picked Sylvie's brain about what makes a good upsell, how to drive higher AOV this Black Friday, and everything else that matters to merchants right now.

If you're running a Shopify store and you've been "set and forget" with your cart, this one's for you. It's August - this is your last real window to test offers before Q4 traffic lands. Get it wrong now while it's cheap, not in the middle of Black Friday.

Sponsor Reads

Thanks to The Support Heroes for supporting this and every episode of the show and helping me bring stories like this to you - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

If you're looking for new ways to incentivise your customers this Black Friday, check out Stork Credit - the app I built to help you automate your store credit, so your customers get rewarded on their next purchase, not the one they're currently making. Hint: it also pairs nicely with cart upsells. storkcredit.com

In this episode:

• How Sylvie and her husband James built Unicorn Cart to solve their own Black Friday gift-with-purchase problem on their fashion brand
• Building a personal, founder-led brand on LinkedIn and Instagram to earn trust in a market of 103 App Store pages for "upsell"
• What actually differentiates Unicorn Cart: deep customisation, native theme integration, and "revenue per visit" as the North Star metric
• The real data behind a free-gift threshold A/B test that lifted one merchant's AOV by 64%
• Whether agentic checkout spells the end of the cart, and what's next on Unicorn Cart's roadmap

YouTube Chapters

00:00 — Why upsells matter right now
01:27 — There are 103 App Store pages for "upsell"
01:48 — Born from her own Black Friday problem: how Unicorn Cart started
04:00 — Staying close to merchants as the product evolves
05:55 — Why app ads flopped and word of mouth won instead
07:18 — Knocking on doors in Byron Bay with bags of chocolate
09:10 — Building a personal brand on LinkedIn and Instagram
12:29 — Inside Unicorn Cart: upsells, cross-sells, GWP, and "revenue per visit"
14:39 — Cart real estate: balancing AOV vs conversion rate
17:05 — Personalising offers by customer journey and buyer intent
17:31 — The A/B test that lifted AOV 64% by lowering the free-gift threshold
20:17 — Why "set and forget" carts are costing you sales - test now, before Q4
21:44 — Beyond gift-with-purchase: prize draws and other offer trends
22:40 — Will agentic checkout kill the cart?
26:53 — What's next for Unicorn Cart
28:12 — Wrapping up

We get into why Gavin doesn't trust app store reviews anymore, the one thing that gets an app instantly deleted from his test store (hint: it's about metafields), the build vs buy fight happening inside every agency dev team right now, and Yash's take on why AI-generated influencer content still can't fake real trust. Also a properly funny bit at the end about the best way to bribe an agency person.

Video's rough as usual but the panel's razor sharp. If you're pitching apps to agencies or wondering how influencer marketing actually plays for B2B, this one's for you.

Sponsor Reads

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing, and the team who helped make this Toronto live show happen. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

And from us at Native App Co, a plug for Product Pelican, the native PIM for Shopify. Gavin's entire "if it's not using metafields and metaobjects, it's uninstalled" rant is basically our whole product philosophy said out loud. apps.shopify.com/product-pelican.

In this episode:

• Gavin on why app store reviews don't cut it anymore for agency evaluation
• The instant red flag: any app that doesn't feel native gets uninstalled on sight
• The build vs buy fight playing out inside agency dev teams right now
• Yash on SARAL, influencer marketing as a numbers game, and why B2B and AI companies are jumping in
• Why AI-generated influencer content still can't replace real trust
• SATHI's quiet, waitlist-only launch and its 100% trial-to-upgrade rate
• Closing bit: what's the best way to win over an agency person

00:27 — Meet Gavin and Yash
01:39 — The state of the app ecosystem from inside an agency
03:40 — What signals Gavin actually looks for in a new app
05:17 — The instant red flag: apps that don't feel native
06:16 — The build vs buy fight inside every agency
09:14 — Meet Yash and SARAL: influencer marketing as a numbers game
11:04 — Why AI-generated influencer content still can't fake trust
13:05 — SARAL's go to market and agency partnerships
13:55 — SATHI's quiet launch and 100% trial-to-upgrade rate
14:48 — Building partnerships as an indie vs enterprise app
16:56 — Yash's strategy for his first Toronto trip
17:38 — Closer: how to actually win over an agency person
19:24 — Wrapping up

We get into what it actually takes to keep an app relevant a decade in, why Sidekick extensions are exciting and terrifying in equal measure, the "too many MCPs" problem everyone's quietly dealing with, and how AI has let Daniel's team ship six years worth of PRs in six months. Elena also gets real about why compliance apps have to be the most cautious ones in the room when it comes to AI.

If you've ever wondered how the app store's veterans stay sharp while chasing every new Shopify release, this one's for you.

Sponsors

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing, and the crew who backed us putting this whole live show on in Toronto. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

And a word from Product Pelican - the native PIM for Shopify. If you're managing product data at any real scale, this panel is basically a live case study in why native beats bolted-on every time. Check it out at apps.shopify.com/product-pelican.

In this episode:

• Matt on what keeps Mechanic and Locksmith fresh a decade into the game
• Why Matt's holding off on Sidekick extensions until the OAuth migration is sorted
• Elena on preserving your voice (literally) and surviving conference week
• Consentmo's approach to AI: careful, cautious, compliance-first
• The "nobody wants fifteen MCPs" problem and why Sidekick might be the answer
• Daniel on building Altera as the modern alternative to Matrixify, and using AI to run overnight test suites

00:27 — Kicking off the live show
03:48 — Meet Matt: the OG apps, Mechanic and Locksmith
04:16 — Meet Daniel, fresh off a flight from Spain
04:23 — Meet Elena, and her missing luggage
05:27 — Conference survival tips: save your voice
07:23 — What keeps Mechanic and Locksmith fresh
09:22 — Sidekick extensions and the OAuth migration headache
11:24 — Consentmo's cautious approach to AI and compliance
12:46 — Shipping six years of PRs in six months
13:13 — Daniel on building Altera vs Matrixify
15:38 — How merchants are handling their data differently
17:37 — Sidekick adoption: high uptake, low stickiness
18:04 — The "too many MCPs" problem
19:39 — Why native, embedded apps win
20:28 — Wrapping up

We get into the terrifying leap from charging agency day rates to supporting someone for ten bucks a month, how Gabbie rode the Cart Transform API wave to build native bundles, Adam's brutally honest take on running an agency and an app business at the same time, and why neither of them sees other apps in their space as the enemy.

Video's a bit shaky again but if you've ever wondered whether it's worth ditching agency life to build your own thing, this one's for you.

Sponsor Reads

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing, and the crew behind us getting this live show off the ground in Toronto. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

And a shout to Product Pelican, the native PIM for Shopify, from us here at Native App Co. If Adam and Gabbie's story about building something merchants are actively hunting for resonates, that's exactly the gap Pelican fills for product data. apps.shopify.com/product-pelican.

In this episode:

• Adam on why POS Cafe exists: solving Shopify POS's modifier limitations for cafes and restaurants
• How POS Cafe grew almost entirely through organic word of mouth and Shopify's retail sales team
• Gabbie's leap from agency developer to founder, and the Cart Transform API moment that made bundles possible
• The gut punch of going from agency hourly rates to ten-dollar-a-month customers
• Adam on the rollercoaster of running an app business and an agency side by side to keep cash flowing
• Why neither of them sees other apps in their category as competition

00:27 — Welcome to the Aussie panel
02:22 — What is POS Cafe, actually
04:10 — Growing organically through the Shopify community
05:32 — Gabbie's leap from Overdose to founder
07:22 — Cart Transform API: the catalyst for native bundles
08:19 — How they decide what to build next
10:31 — From agency day rates to ten dollars a month
11:27 — The rollercoaster of running an app and an agency at once
13:20 — Why more apps in your space isn't a bad thing
14:58 — Getting ROI out of a week like this
16:33 — Nothing beats in-person relationships
17:40 — Wrapping up

Today, I'm going rogue. We've got a guy who threw a legitimate frat party, in a real frat house, in Toronto at DotDev recently. We're both agency guys from a long way back, and I've been wanting to do an episode on where agencies fit into the Shopify ecosystem.

Why? Alongside app developers, agencies and consultants make up a huge part of the Shopify ecosystem.

For those of us building apps, we all know that an agency that advocates for us is so valuable. But building those relationships isn't as easy as offering some kickbacks or taking them to lunch.

For merchants, there's so much expertise living in app developers and agencies, and leveraging both is how great ecommerce businesses perform.

So that's what this conversation is about.

Matt Humphreys is the perfect person to talk to for this conversation. He has scaled large agency teams in the past and worked with retailers of all shapes and sizes. Now he runs a boutique agency, Urban Folk, out of Toronto.

Sponsors

Thanks to The Support Heroes for sponsoring the show and supporting app developers all over the world. thesupportheroes.com

And a plug for my own app, Product Pelican, our native PIM for Shopify. It's just launched a bunch of new AI features, including the ability to analyse product images to build rich product content.

In this episode:

• Matt's 25 years on the agency side, from scaling Diff to running his own shop, Urban Folk
• Why fractional expertise beats hiring internally for mid market merchants
• Vibe coding and AI collapsing delivery from days to hours (and the client who asked him to slow down)
• The one question Matt asks before ever recommending an app
• Why the best app market research is talking to agencies, not merchants
• The story behind the DotDev Toronto frat party, and why IRL beats another pull up banner

00:00 — Cold open: "Do we need an app for this?"
00:07 — Going rogue: the agency episode
01:37 — Matt's 25 years in agency, from Diff to Urban Folk
03:11 — How Shopify deal sizes and expertise shifted over 13 years
05:14 — The mid market sweet spot: fractional expertise over big agency
07:48 — Vibe coding and AI: from days to hours
09:39 — Vetting client ideas against the roadmap, not chasing every trend
12:34 — The first question before recommending any app
14:54 — The feedback loop that makes apps better
15:57 — Build custom or use an app? How Matt decides
18:48 — Advice for app developers: talk to the agencies, not the merchants
22:41 — Product market fit hasn't changed, just the tools
24:36 — Inside the DotDev frat party: why IRL beats another banner
30:52 — Wrapping up

Every episode we cover a different part of the ecosystem. We’ve talked bundles, subscriptions, point of sale and lots more.

But what’s more important than any of these? Customers!

Customer data is your biggest asset. If you don't own it, or it's scattered across a dozen platforms, someone else can take it away from you whenever they like. 

Danny Phillips has spent his career proving that on the customer side. He co-founded Omneo, a platform that helps omnichannel retail brands own, control and actually use their customer data properly, and he was building zero-party data tools before "zero-party data" was even a term anyone used.

We get into what owned data actually means beyond the buzzword (Danny's zero-party data framework), why the humble newsletter pop-up is dying and what Omneo's QR-code Profile Portal replaces it with, the "red napkin theory" for turning one-off buyers into repeat customers, and why most loyalty programs are boring because they only offer stuff instead of status, access and power. Plus Danny's line of the episode - data is oil, but it's also toxic waste - and why that means you should be deleting more of it, not hoarding all of it.

Links

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com. 

You can learn more about Omneo and how it helps you grow sales and retain your best customers at omneo.io. 

Check out my apps, including Fish Wishlist, Product Pelican and Stork Credit at nativeappco.com. Apps that don’t feel like apps.

In this episode:

• What "owned data" and zero-party data actually mean, and why Danny built Omneo around them
• The Profile Portal QR code that's replacing the newsletter pop-up in physical stores
• Why "pick up where you left off" experiences matter more than AI recommendation engines
• The red napkin theory: how to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers
• Why points-based loyalty is stale, and what status, access and power look like instead
• Danny's take on Black Friday, and the four weeks after it that most brands waste

00:00 — Owned data: why it matters

01:09 — Sunny Torquay and the shiny topic of data

01:24 — What "owned data" actually means

04:30 — The payoff: a "receipt for their time" for every shopper

06:51 — Product data and customer data: two sides of the same coin

10:02 — Profile Portal: swapping the newsletter pop-up for a QR code

12:30 — Uniqlo, login with Shop and the "80% brand, 20% me" homepage

14:31 — Buy it again: the win that doesn't need an algorithm

16:55 — Winning the one-and-done customer with the red napkin theory

21:29 — Stop burning margin on first-purchase discounts

22:38 — Clean data starts on day one

25:53 — "Data is oil, but it's also toxic waste" (the headline moment)

26:06 — Status, access and power: fixing stale loyalty programs

30:26 — Why surprise loyalty credit annoys customers more than it delights them

31:00 — When loyalty turns into a retail media program in disguise

33:45 — Black Friday: the race to the bottom nobody wants to run

35:33 — The four weeks after Black Friday nobody uses properly

37:21 — Wrapping up

Obviously I said yes, and then I had to find someone to talk to. So I thought I should have some fun with it and do it my way, but wasn't quite sure who to have as a guest.

Then, I got chatting to this bloke after a DotDev session on AI Product Discovery, and it turns out we're both product data nerds. It turns out "this bloke" is Jay El-Kaake. Three time founder. Co-founded Smile back when it was Sweet Tooth, built and exited Fera.ai, and now he's running Osello, getting Shopify stores onto Nordstrom and Macy's.

We covered two main topics:
• Why 90% of "agentic optimisation" is stuff you should already be doing with your product data and content, and the value of taste when you're letting AI write your content.

• What it's like to be a founder in 2026. Jay is obviously a pro, I'm just starting out, so we shared our different perspectives.

This episode's brought to you by The Support Heroes, who support Shopify Apps all over the world.

And I would be remiss not to plug my own app, Product Pelican, which is helping stores enrich their product data for this new AI world.

This was the second Episode we recorded at DotDev, you can also catch our episode where we chat with Shopify's Head of Product Jonathan Zazove wherever you're listening to this.

YouTube Chapters

00:00 - Live from Dot Dev (definitely not a Toronto love story)
01:19 - From a refugee family's retail shop to falling for computers
02:44 - Osello: getting merchants onto Nordstrom, Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Target
03:05 - Why every marketplace "AI" claim didn't add up
04:22 - Where Product Pelican and Osello's pipelines meet
05:18 - Cleaning your data and building the pipe are two different jobs
06:16 - The Dot Dev talk on AI enrichment
07:42 - Buzzwords fade, fundamentals don't
08:27 - Why 90% of agentic optimisation is stuff you should already be doing
09:24 - The Hailey Bieber quote and the value of taste
09:57 - Why AI wants to feel human too
11:21 - Choosing a lane matters more than ever
12:25 - Hyper-niche apps, and why enterprise pricing doesn't scare people anymore
14:54 - Toronto's deep bench of founders
15:55 - Distribution is still the hardest part
16:45 - Your first customers should basically be your best friends
17:57 - Authentic video reviews over polished social proof
19:17 - Wrapping up

Shopify's Director of Product, Jonathan Zazove, and an OG app founder, Mike Rossi of Smile (fresh off a Shopify Build Award) caught up with me to chat all things Sidekick, the future of Shopify apps and what is being done to make life better for app developers.

If you weren't able to make it to Toronto, or want to head back there, tune in!

Sponsors

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

It's also brought to you by my company, Native App Co - apps that don't feel like apps. That's Product Pelican, Stork Credit, Fish Wishlist and Omnibus Owl. Check them out at apps.nativeappco.com.

In This Episode

• Shopify's new penalty for incentivized reviews: apps lose the reviews outright, not just the listing
• The push to stop copycat apps trading on real brands' names
• Why Built for Shopify became more important, not less, as Smile moved upmarket
• Admin UI extensions, admin actions, and how apps stopped being "second class citizens" in the admin
• Sidekick app extensions explained: data access plus the "action experience" that fills in forms for you
• Smile's real-world Sidekick build: turning it into an AI loyalty program manager
• Why Jonathan modeled Sidekick extensions on MCP, and why most of Smile's users won't touch MCP directly
• The shift in loyalty from cheap acquisition to proving lifetime value, plus the POS/retail expansion play
• Josh Bitossi and POS Cafe as proof that niche, unsexy problems can be a whole business
• Where to actually start an app business today: agency-first, or go hunting for niche enterprise problems

Chapters

00:00 - Shopify App Show Live in Toronto
01:23 - Building Trust in the Shopify App Store
06:33 - Building Native Shopify App Experiences
10:39 - Sidekick, UI, and Merchant Workflows
14:15 - MCP and AI Integrations for Apps
15:57 - Proving Loyalty Program Value
17:47 - Loyalty Innovation and Retail Growth
20:03 - Where to Find App Opportunities
25:52 - What Apps Would They Build Next?
27:24 - Why B2B Is Still Underserved

Michael is the founder and CEO of Preezie, the guided-selling and agentic commerce platform working with brands like Puma, Lorna Jane and Arc'teryx. He started on the sales floor at The Good Guys, clocked that 30% of in-store visitors bought something against barely 1% online, and has spent the best part of a decade trying to close that gap.

We get into why Michael thinks a chat box bolted onto your store isn't the future, and why agentic commerce is. Plus how you stop an AI assistant confidently making things up, why feeding it your old human chat transcripts can make it worse not better, and the out-of-stock feature that's worth 20-30% of the whole tool's value on its own. We also get into why Michael flatly refuses to build products that try to change shopper behaviour.

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

Also brought to you by Product Pelican (https://apps.shopify.com/product-pelican), the native PIM for Shopify. Michael's whole point is that good AI starts with good data - Product Pelican keeps your catalogue clean and consistent at scale, so whatever you bolt on top of it, agentic or not, has something solid to work with. Install it from the Shopify App Store.

In this episode:

• From throwing-water-on-your-face mornings to The Good Guys sales floor: the 30% vs 1% insight that started everything
• Why Preezie pivoted from e-commerce quizzes to a full agentic shopping platform after one day with Microsoft
• The case against conversational commerce: why agentic beats a chatbot box
• Keeping AI honest: onboarding it like a new hire, and why your old human chat logs can make it worse
• The out-of-stock play worth 20-30% of the tool's value on its own
• Why it still matters to let shoppers scroll through 10 pages of products
• Turning real shopper questions into user-generated FAQs for SEO and GEO
• Why Michael refuses to build products that try to change shopper behaviour
• The roadmap: an "e-commerce brain" built natively for the AI era

YouTube chapters:

00:00 — Cold open: agentic shopping is already here
01:51 — From bricklayer's son to The Good Guys sales floor at 14
03:19 — The 30% vs 1% conversion gap that started the obsession
04:44 — Quizzes first, then Microsoft's tap on the shoulder about AI
07:04 — Spotting Preezie live on Arc'teryx before anyone else had it
07:48 — Sit and wait, or do something: why agentic beats conversational
10:30 — The out-of-stock feature worth 20-30% of the tool alone
13:40 — Training AI like a new hire, and performance reviewing it
16:56 — Killing support tickets with a mini AI on the contact form
18:12 — How much instruction is too much (it depends on the brand)
20:37 — Turning shopper questions into content: transcripts, FAQs, SEO and GEO
23:59 — Why the paradox of choice means discovery isn't going anywhere
28:17 — Don't try to change shopper behaviour: the electric car test
31:19 — The roadmap: building an e-commerce brain for the AI era
32:01 — Wrapping up

When they approached me to sponsor the show, I couldn't have thought of a better fit. The Shopify App Show is all about showcasing independent apps, founder-led businesses who have built their business from the ground up. And for those who are successful enough to hit scale, maintaining a customer support team who can deliver as good a service as the founders of the business is nearly impossible.

That's where The Support Heroes come in.

So I thought it was worth catching up with Anggy from The Support Heroes to talk about how they work, where they fit in and what they do for Shopify app developers all over the world.

It's a bit of a different format to our usual episodes, but if you're an app founder, this one is for you.

Emili's the real deal: Zapiet invented store pickup and local delivery on Shopify! She now runs six apps including Zapiet Eats (you guessed it, basically Uber Eats for Shopify).

We get into what Editions actually means for developers - why Sidekick makes good UX more important, not less, the gap between cool catalogue-API demos and genuinely useful experiences, and the glaring silence around the online store and themes.

Then we go deep on Zapiet Eats: how it lets restaurants ditch the brutal Uber/DoorDash margins for their own loyal customers, why one app became six, the new Shopify billing API and per-order pricing, and the Zapietosaurus - the dragon-meets-T-Rex mascot Emili designed that kids now drag everywhere.

If you build apps and you're trying to work out where to actually point your energy after Editions - and after the Mantle news - this one's for you.

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

In this episode:

• Editions three hours in - Sidekick, the catalogue API, and why "everywhere" is the whole point
• The Sidekick paradox: why AI-driven setup makes clean UX and consistent terminology more critical
• What Editions left out - nothing for the online store or the theme ecosystem that's still most merchants' lifeblood
• The Mantle wind-down, the scramble to replace it, and rebuilding reporting in-house with AI
• The new billing API - per-order vs percentage, and why Zapiet won't take a cut of every order
• How one app became six, and why merchants need a bike, not a rocket ship
• Zapiet Eats: restaurant ordering on Shopify, ditching aggregator fees, and pulling Wendy's onto the platform
• The Zapietosaurus - and why a dragon-T-Rex mascot matters more than you'd think

YouTube Chapters

00:00 — Editions drops: early takes, and why we recorded three hours later
02:17 — Emili joins: 150+ updates and what excites a developer
04:47 — Inventory, catalogues and metafields: faster data processing
06:23 — The Sidekick paradox: why UX and terminology matter more, not less
09:30 — Getting app data into Shopify reports (so Sidekick can find it)
10:48 — The Mantle wind-down and what app developers do now
14:43 — Mantle, the dev dashboard, and rebuilding reporting in-house
15:40 — The new billing API: per-order vs percentage pricing
18:43 — Why Zapiet won't take a percentage of every order
20:31 — Zapiet's origins: pioneering pickup and delivery on Shopify
23:07 — One app becomes six: giving merchants a bike, not a rocket ship
26:03 — Zapiet Eats: restaurant ordering and ditching aggregator fees
30:55 — The real cost of Uber Eats fees for restaurants and diners
33:54 — The Shop app, Shop Minis and untapped potential
36:00 — Token bills, vibe coding and racing your co-founder
36:26 — The Zapietosaurus: designing a dragon-T-Rex mascot
39:38 — A 300-year-old store, kids, and a mascot that took on a life of its own
41:27 — Wrapping up

Ole's also just launched Kairos Protect — bot detection and checkout protection that keeps card testers and price scrapers out of your store and out of your analytics.

If you've ever fought with a 30,000-product catalog, managed product data in a spreadsheet you're scared to open, or wondered how the merchandising teams at big stores actually do it — this one's for you.

We've put together a playbook to go with this episode: Your Shopify Products Are Being Read By Machines. Find it on Substack, and if you're not subscribed yet — do the thing.

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes — dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

And if you're talking product data, you should be managing yours properly. Product Pelican is a native PIM for Shopify — manage and audit your entire catalog at scale, with missing data, broken images and SEO gaps flagged before your customers find them. Install it from the Shopify App Store.

In this episode:

• Building Accentuate in 2016, when metafields were strings and not much else
• Growing to 20,000+ merchants and the Shop Circle exit
• How Live Metafields works (and the lesson about not over-engineering)
• Conversion and merchandising use cases merchants love
• Metafields as the trigger for Shopify Flow automations
• Inventory, ERPs, PIMs and getting data into the right shape
• AI, MCPs and where apps still win
• Kairos Protect: bots, card testing and checkout protection

Chapters:

00:00 — Why product data is the plankton of ecommerce
02:27 — Building Accentuate in 2016: strings, booleans and stringified JSON
07:12 — 20,000 merchants and the Shop Circle exit
07:59 — Live Metafields: data that updates itself
11:37 — Use cases: bestseller collections, conversion data, review filtering
14:21 — Metafields as Shopify Flow's biggest unlock
16:38 — Warehouse stock vs store stock: the inventory puzzle
18:37 — The Omnibus directive: boring stuff, solved for you
20:05 — ERPs, PIMs and 30,000-product catalogs
22:09 — Shopify's Claude and ChatGPT apps: threat or opportunity?
24:35 — A crowded App Store and why service wins
30:02 — Kairos Protect: bots, card testing and checkout protection
33:00 — Wrapping up

• the Digital Omnibus directive
• why compliance and AI are increasingly at odds with each other
• why the future of consent might not involve cookie banners at all.

Outside the product, we hear about running team brainstorms in a toddler café, dressing for Paris Fashion Week at an e-commerce conference, and getting surprised with a birthday cake by the Zapier team in the middle of the Wide event.

We've put together a Compliance Playbook to go with this episode. Search for The Shopify App Show on Substack. And if you're not already subscribed, do the thing — like, subscribe, share, all of it.

This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes — dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

Checkout Consentmo for your privacy compliance needs, and for Price Tracking compliance, check out one of my apps, Omnibus Owl.

And most importantly, we featured my daughter's cookie business, Sophies Cookies, on this episode.

YouTube Chapters:

00:00 — Introduction

01:29 — Making compliance content people actually watch

03:12 — What ConsentMo actually does (it's a lot)

06:56 — What drives the roadmap — and what gets a hard no

10:02 — Saying no: the art of not shipping everything

13:34 — Will merchants just vibe code their own cookie banner?

16:19 — Why hasn't Shopify just built all of this?

20:35 — Why human support still matters (especially in compliance)

21:32 — What's next: Germany's cancel law and the Digital Omnibus

25:16 — Will cookie banners eventually disappear?

27:00 — Martin's daughter's cookie website makes an appearance

27:38 — The Wide Paris event: fashion week for e-commerce

31:12 — Wrapping up

Gavin Ballard has spent 15 years tackling the hardest problems in the Shopify ecosystem, founded Disco Labs, and now runs Submarine — the platform powering subscriptions, memberships and pre-orders for some of the most complex Shopify brands out there.

This chat's timely - Gavin just got back from Sub Summit in Kansas City (the only conference dedicated entirely to subscription commerce), and Recharge just aquired Skio for $100M, a massive deal in thhe Shopify Subscriptions space.

We get into why slapping a "subscribe" button next to "add to cart" doesn't work anymore, what AI is actually unlocking (A/B testing your cancellation flows in real time, infinite personalisation segments that used to be impossible), and why you're not just competing with other Shopify subs — you're competing with Netflix, Spotify and every other line on your customer's recurring bill.

If you run a store, build apps, or you're an agency talking to merchants about retention — this one's loaded. Bonus: The Shopify Subscriptions Playbook goes with this episode.

Sponsor: The Support Heroes — trained Shopify support specialists who plug into your help desk, learn your brand voice, and handle your tickets like they actually give a shit. Tell them I sent you.

And one from me — Product Pelican. Audits your whole product catalog, finds the gaps — missing alt text, weak descriptions, uncategorised products, FAQ generation — and helps you fix them in bulk. Free to try or HMU for a demo!

In this episode

• What Gavin learned at Sub Summit in Kansas City
• Why "add subscribe button" isn't a subscription strategy
• You're competing with Netflix, not just other Shopify stores
• AI unlocking infinite personalisation segments
• A/B testing your cancellation flows in real time
• The Recharge–Skio deal and what it means
• Build vs buy your own subscription platform
• Memberships — the Qantas and Costco model
• How to actually get a subscription program off the roadmap

Chapters

0:00 Intro
1:37 Recap of SubSummit Kansas City
4:34 Why merchants get subscriptions wrong
6:39 You're competing with Netflix, not other stores
8:04 AI in the subscription space
8:57 The personalisation segments AI unlocks
12:01 A/B testing your cancellation flows
13:39 Sponsor — The Support Heroes
13:59 The Recharge–Skio acquisition
15:49 Where Submarine sits in the new landscape
18:36 Build vs buy your subscription platform
21:29 Where AI actually adds value — connectors and custom logic
23:23 Membership programs vs subscriptions
24:03 The Costco & Qantas models
26:13 What makes a membership program actually work
27:55 How to get started if it's been on your roadmap for years
30:34 Wrap up
31:46 Product Pelican Promo

• How an agency side hustle became a Shopify POS app
• The cafe gap nobody was filling
• Why "do one thing well" didn't work for POS Cafe
• Modifiers, KDS, print servers and online ordering
• Building the "Shopify way" — metafields, metaobjects, draft orders
• Why POS apps have to be stable 100% of the time
• The POS APIs they're still waiting on
• Where Shopify POS caps out (and why they think it doesn't)
• The other niche POS devs worth knowing

Chapters

0:00 Intro
1:05 From custom furniture to Shopify — Adam's origin story
3:40 The cafe request that started it all
4:22 What a food service business actually needs
5:00 Launching POS Cafe and 18 months of feedback
6:13 What POS Cafe does that Shopify POS can't
6:57 Modifiers done properly
7:26 KDS, print servers and receipt printing
8:30 Native discounts and online ordering
9:33 Why "do one thing well" broke down
10:58 Sponsor — The Support Heroes
11:27 Product Pelican
12:07 Why good service is what makes the product
13:08 Building for scale and stability
14:30 The "Shopify way" — metafields, metaobjects, draft orders
16:07 What's still hard to do on Shopify POS
18:42 Bringing merchants into the feedback loop
20:00 Where does Shopify POS cap out?
21:14 POS as the front door to Shopify
22:04 Other niche POS devs worth knowing
23:54 The Shopify dev community
25:08 Marketing a product from remote Queensland
25:25 Building trust from the other side of the world
27:17 Why passion cuts through
28:26 Wrap up

We get into what makes a good checkout (hint: stop assuming every customer wants to see the same thing), why an always-on upsell isn't distracting — it's table stakes, and the body shop trick that lifted sale conversions instantly.

Plus we cover ShopPay rendering gotchas, Australia's at 50% ShopPay adoption and what that means for your extensions, and the OpenAI backflip that confirmed checkout is now the only guaranteed touchpoint.

We also get into the basics everyone's ignoring — clean product data, accurate prices, Shopify's product taxonomy — and why getting those right matters more than chasing the agentic commerce hype.

If you run a store, build apps, or you're an agency still treating checkout as "set and forget" — this one's worth your time. Bonus: I've put together a Checkout Playbook to go with this episode.

Sponsor The Support Heroes — trained Shopify support specialists who plug into your help desk, learn your brand voice, and handle your tickets like they actually give a shit. Tell them I sent you.

And one from me — Stork Credit. Dead simple, native-built Shopify app for issuing store credit instead of discount codes. Free to install.

In this episode

• What actually makes a good checkout
• Why an always-on upsell is table stakes
• The ShopPay rendering toggle most people miss
• The Body Shop sale-banner trick
• Honest analytics vs vanity attribution
• Why product taxonomy is the real agentic commerce prep
• What Blake saw at Shop Talk in Vegas
• Where Checkout Components is heading next

Chapters

0:00 Intro
0:57 What makes a good Shopify checkout
2:48 The always-on upsell (and 10,000 pairs of socks)
3:43 Why replatformers don't touch checkout — and why they should
5:33 Upsells without overwhelming the form
7:31 ShopPay — the toggle most extensions miss
8:54 ~50% ShopPay adoption in Australia
10:50 Sponsor — The Support Heroes
11:35 Stork Credit
12:00 Agentic commerce and the OpenAI backflip
13:43 Checkout as the only guaranteed touchpoint
14:38 The body shop sale-banner trick
17:00 Honest revenue attribution vs double-dipping
19:35 Building an analytics system that actually works
21:13 Product data, taxonomy, and the low-effort high-impact win
24:28 Plug — Product Pelican for bulk catalog cleanup
25:48 Inventory and prices — the boring stuff that matters most
27:25 Two takeaways: get your data right, get your checkout right
27:42 Shop Talk Vegas — what's happening in North America
30:27 Translation, Europe, and 600+ installs
33:19 What's next for Checkout Components
37:03 Wrap up

We get into what it took to make Sidekick build working workflows without hallucinating itself into oblivion (fact: 40% of new Flows are now created with Sidekick), why Flow has out-shipped Zapier for Shopify use cases, and the apps doing the most interesting things with Flow connectors.

Plus: scheduled jobs vs product update triggers, why Flow doesn't do Git integration (yet), Flow vs custom middleware, and what's coming at Editions and Dotdev.

If you build apps, run a store, or you're an agency still telling clients "Flow can't do that" — this one's going to change your mind.

Bonus: I've put together a Shopify Flow Playbook to go with this episode. Link below.

Sponsor

The Support Heroes — trained Shopify support specialists who plug into your help desk, learn your brand voice, and handle your tickets like they actually give a shit. Tell them I sent you.

And one from me — Stork Credit. Dead simple, native-built Shopify app for issuing store credit instead of discount codes. Free to install.

In this episode

• Teaching Sidekick to build working workflows
• 40% of new Flows are built with Sidekick
• Using Flow templates
• The product update trigger problem (and the workaround)
• Flow as middleware — when it makes sense
• Why there's no Git integration (yet)
• App connectors — who's doing it right
• What's coming at Editions and Partner Conference

Chapters

0:00 Intro
1:08 Welcome Paul + recent Flow updates
1:34 Top-down editor, testing, Sidekick
3:26 New queries and closing API gaps
4:38 Has Flow out-shipped Zapier?
5:08 Sidekick — how big a lift was it
6:06 Teaching Sidekick to build workflow JSON
7:19 Why testing was non-negotiable
7:31 The drill-down problem Sidekick killed
8:30 Order confirmation emails + run code
10:06 40% of new Flows built with Sidekick
10:55 Sponsor — The Support Heroes
11:35 Stork Credit
12:14 Templates and the blank-canvas problem
13:10 Why describing what you want is the bottleneck
14:03 The gnarliest workflows Paul has seen
15:08 Metafields — Flow's most underrated unlock
15:25 The product update trigger problem
17:03 App-built triggers and infinite loops
18:15 Flow as middleware vs Boomi
21:09 Version control and managing Flows across stores
25:25 Why editing a .flow file outside Flow is risky
27:30 Copy to another store
28:00 App connectors — who's doing it right
30:14 Why most app-to-app integrations should use Flow
32:16 Advice for app devs building connectors
34:18 Get involved in the dev community
35:05 What's coming at Editions and Partner Conference
37:03 Wrap up

Want to put this into practice?
Read The Store Credit Playbook — 10 specific campaigns you can run this week.

Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by The Support Heroes — dedicated support agents who understand the Shopify ecosystem, plugged directly into your help desk. Stop being your own support rep. Head to thesupportheroes.com.

Links

• Stork Credit
• The Store Credit Playbook
• Gift Card Factory
• Omnibus Owl
• The Support Heroes

Chapters

0:00   Intro
1:30   Why did Shopify wait 10 years to ship store credit?
2:30   What's broken with discount codes, gift cards and points
3:40   Store credit works natively with Markets and B2B
5:00   What Stork Credit adds on top of native
6:30   One-click cashback templates
7:30   Gift Card Factory — faking store credit
9:10   Shopify Flow as a superpower
10:30  Keep your flows simple
12:30  Flow connectors = the test of a good Shopify app
14:15  Sponsor — The Support Heroes
14:45  Why the EU Shopify market is a growth opportunity
17:55  The EU Omnibus price tracking law
21:30  Polish developers to watch
23:30  From Melbourne backpackers to Shopify app founder
25:30  Wrap up

But if your inventory isn’t right, it all goes down the toilet and you start flushing money away.

That’s why people like Jordan Finneran, from Pimsical, are some of the most important people in the Shopify ecosystem.

If you care about saving time, money and delivering the best experience for customers, everything we cover in this episode is relevant.

Jordan is on a mission to optimise your operations and streamline your business backend.

In this episode we talk stocktake, omnichannel, POS, warehouses and everything that makes them talk to each other.

We also talk about what Core Web Vitals would look like in a physical store, and why a Garmin integration for Shopify POS could provide some important metrics, so we have a bit of fun too!

Sponsor

Thanks as always to The Support Heroes for sponsoring this episode and for supporting over 100 apps across the world by managing their customer support.

0:00 - Inventory is Cash 💰

1:05 - Meet Jordan Finneran, Operations Optimiser 🛠️

1:20 - Listening to Merchants: Building Back-of-House Heroes

2:29 - Success is Saving Time and Getting Accurate Stock ⏱️

4:36 - The End of Stocky: Pimsicle is Here to Help!

6:25 - Shopify POS: The Best Foundation for Success

7:32 - Playing Catch-Up: Staying Ahead of Shopify's APIs

9:41 - AD: The Support Heroes - Stop Answering Tickets!

10:12 - Retail OS: Bridging the Gap for Larger Merchants 🛍️

16:34 - Optimization & Stairs: Retail's Core Web Vitals 🏃💨

18:18 - A Garmin Integration in Retail OS? ⌚

18:37 - The Future of Retail: Better Forecasting & App Integrations 🔮

21:11 - The Messiness of Integrating Multiple Retail Metrics

23:02 - Sticking with Shopify as You Scale: Beyond ERPs 🚀

27:18 - A Bit of Self-Indulgence: Jordan's Shopify Build Award 🏆

29:34 - Wrap Up: Save Money, Make Money with Better Operations

Links

• Pimsical
• The Support Heroes
• The Shopify App Show

• Why vibe-coded apps are clogging the Shopify App Store review queue
• Where page builders still win over AI-generated sections
• The 10% off popup problem — and what to focus on instead
• Why metafields are the #1 thing that makes an app integrate well with themes
• The landing page playbook that still works in 2026 (it's boring, and it's right)
• What a good quarterly self-audit of your store actually looks like
• Where Design Packs is headed — design systems, templates, and modularity
  
  Links
• Design Packs
• The Support Heroes
  

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro
1:12 The "eliminate all your apps" trend — is it legit?
3:12 Vibe-coded apps flooding the Shopify App Store
3:43 How Design Packs stays relevant as the market floods
5:27 Sections Everywhere changed everything
6:25 Where page builders beat native theme building
7:08 AI section generators — useful or a mess?
8:27 Should Design Packs have a chatbot or MCP interface?
9:18 The "service as a software" model
9:51 How to handle feature requests without wrecking your product
11:10 What merchants are actually buying in 2026 
12:26 What makes a good landing page in 2026?
13:24 The basics still win — FAQs, schema, real descriptions
15:19 Product data and GEO — same rules apply
16:07 What apps work best alongside Design Packs?
17:32 Metafields are the #1 integration unlock
18:35 Shop Critiques — common storefront mistakes
19:17 The 10% off popup pet peeve
21:14 What to do instead of the popup
22:28 Stop blocking conversions — focus on the product page
23:07 Where is Shopify theme development headed?
25:19 Design Packs' modular design system for 2026
26:19 Wrap up

This episode is brought to you by The Support Heroes — dedicated support agents who understand the Shopify ecosystem, plugged directly into your help desk. Stop being your own support rep. Head to thesupportheroes.com today.

In this episode

• How to build your "ideal creator persona" before touching any platform
• The investment barbell strategy for your influencer roster
• The SARAL lookalikes feature — find the affordable version of Snoop Dogg
• Why AI influencers aren't actually influencers
• The attribution problem — why your influencer program gets less credit than it deserves
• How to talk to your CFO about influencer ROI
  

Links

• SARAL — Influencer OS for consumer brands
• How to Prove ROI of Influencer Marketing to Your CFO
• AI Influencer Budget Calculator
• The Support Heroes
  

Chapters

0:00 Intro
0:56 What verticals use influencer marketing?
3:31 How to get started
5:54 Where SARAL fits in the stack
6:50 Sponsor — The Support Heroes
7:56 Micro vs macro influencers
10:06 Finding influencers who drive buying decisions
12:37 The investment barbell strategy
15:39 The Snoop Dogg lookalike hack
16:17 Why AI companies use real influencers
20:08 Measuring ROI and proving value to your CFO
21:35 The Google Ads attribution trap
25:02 Affiliate codes only tell 20-25% of the story
26:21 Brands with great influencer programs to learn from
27:33 Wrap up + how to find SARAL

In today’s episode of the Shopify App Show, I chat with Jason Zigelbaum, the solopreneur behind ZigPoll—a leading customer survey app for Shopify.

We dive deep into the psychology of why customers actually want to give feedback, the magic of the post-purchase touchpoint, and how even the most "boring" brands can build highly engaging surveys.

Jason also shares behind-the-scenes insights on bootstrapping a SaaS product as a solo developer, how user feedback shaped ZigPoll's UX, and how AI is revolutionizing data analysis and referral attribution.

Whether you're struggling to understand your store's drop-off rates or want to know exactly who is buying your products, this episode is your crash course in collecting and leveraging zero-party data.

⏱️ Chapter Breakdown

• [00:00] Introduction: Meet Jason Zigelbaum and discover ZigPoll, the Shopify app designed to capture feedback at every stage of the customer journey.
• [00:33] Overcoming Survey Fatigue: Why do people actually fill out surveys? Jason explains why context and timing are the ultimate keys to high engagement.
• [01:59] The Magic Touchpoints: Beyond the post-purchase survey—leveraging Exit Intent and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) surveys based on scroll depth and time on site.
• [03:03] Surveys for "Boring" Brands: Tactics for increasing engagement when you sell unglamorous products, including strategic incentives and psychological question-ordering.
• [05:06] Designing for High Completion Rates: How ZigPoll balances complex backend analytics with a frictionless, one-question-at-a-time frontend experience.
• [07:15] The 3 Pillars of E-commerce Surveys: Jason’s straightforward, no-overwhelm framework for merchants setting up surveys for the first time.
• [09:01] Sponsor Break: A quick word from our sponsor, The Support Heroes.
• [09:50] Fixed Choice vs. Open-Ended Questions: The strategic balance of getting customers to commit with checkboxes before unlocking the goldmine of open-ended feedback.
• [11:52] Sticking to the E-commerce Niche: Why Jason prefers focusing purely on e-commerce rather than branching out into SaaS templates.
• [13:51] Managing SaaS Churn: The reality of seasonal app usage in e-commerce and why starting and stopping data collection is a valid merchant strategy.
• [16:36] The Future of AI in Surveys: Using MCP servers and AI agents to distill thousands of natural language responses into actionable trends.
• [18:39] Changing E-commerce Attribution: How the rise of AI chatbots (like ChatGPT and Claude) is changing how brands track where their customers come from.
• [20:09] The Solopreneur Journey: Jason shares his experience building and scaling ZigPoll as a team of one, and how AI tools have boosted his developer velocity.

🔗 Mentioned in this Episode

• App: ZigPoll
• Sponsor: The Support Heroes

I’m lucky enough to be joined by Sandesh Kulai from Stoq. He lives and breathes the topic, and has built not just the toolset but pre-defined game plans for Shopify stores to drive more sales through pre-orders.

Like all the great founders we’ve talked to on this show, Sandesh hasn’t just built a set and forget product, he is working with his customers every day to help make his product better for them.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for pre-orders. It’s obvious that pre-orders can make a big impact on an ecommerce business, but they need all parts of the business, from warehouse & supply chain to marketing & customer support to all be aligned.

If you want to learn from the guru of pre-orders, you’ve come to the right place.

Chapter Outline

• [00:00] Introduction: Martin introduces Sandesh from Stoq and the "guru" status of his pre-order expertise.
• [01:42] The "Evergreen" Pre-Order: Case study of a truck parts store using pre-orders to manage thousands of SKUs without holding inventory.
• [03:00] Pre-Orders for Startups: Using pre-orders as a "validation engine" for new brands to gauge demand before manufacturing.
• [06:17] Building for the Shopify Ecosystem: The philosophy of building native apps that grow with the merchant.
• [08:49] The Power of Shopify Flow: Using custom automations and "Sidekick" to create bespoke merchant workflows.
• [11:09] The Human Element in Support: Why complex apps like Stoq require 24/7 human experts alongside AI.
• [14:27] Sponsor Break: The Support Heroes: A word from our sponsor on how to scale your app's support without drowning in tickets.
• [15:10] The "Built for Shopify" Standard: Sandesh’s experience being named one of the top 25 apps on the platform.
• [19:54] Navigating Inventory & Logistics: Solving the "Negative Inventory" headache and downstream fulfillment challenges.
• [24:19] UX and Customer Trust: Ensuring customers know they are pre-ordering at every step of the journey to reduce support tickets.

Thanks as always to The Support Heroes for supporting this episode, just like they support over 100 of the top Shopify Apps. If you're an app developer and want time back in your day, reach out to The Support Heroes to take over your customer support tickets with their dedicated service.

Resources & Links:

• Stoq on the Shopify App Store
• The Support Heroes (sponsor)

Key Topics:

• The shift from discount codes to automated, frictionless discounts
• How Shopify Functions enable powerful, developer-friendly promotions
• The role of metafields and storefront sync for customization and UX
• The significance of building apps that integrate seamlessly into the platform
• Opportunities around multi-market, location-specific discounts, and B2B
• The impact of Shopify's new AI and agentic commerce features on apps and merchants
• Best practices for balancing complexity with simplicity in promotion design

Timestamps: 

00:00 - Introduction to Shopify discount evolution and Sammy I’s background

01:02 - Are discount codes becoming obsolete? The debate

01:53 - The evolution of Shopify from Scripts to Functions and the developer challenge

02:18 - How Discount Kit fits the platform's expansion 

04:15 - Using Discount Kit as a cheat sheet for rapid experimentation

06:21 - The importance of Shopify-native data storage in app development

06:45 - Support Heroes’ role in enabling global customer support for apps like Discount Kit (plug for our Sponsor, The Support Heroes)

09:15 - Complex scenarios merchants face beyond standard discounting

10:07 - The challenge of explaining advanced discounts to customers

11:34 - Creative use cases and surprising implementations of Discount Kit

14:01 - The importance of storefront UX and dynamic promotional displays

15:12 - Innovations with Discount Kit Live for storefront data sync

17:27 - Putting discount data into Shopify metafields for flexibility

19:13 - Building better integrations with Shopify Flow and app ecosystems

21:50 - The significance of app data being accessible platform-wide

24:29 - How some developers reduce onboarding costs with flexible integrations

26:20 - B2B, markets, and multi-location discounts

28:50 - Customization challenges for geographically diverse stores

30:41 - Final thoughts: the importance of balancing technical power with UX and simplicity

Resources & Links:

• Discount Kit
• The Support Heroes (sponsor)

Connect with Sammy I:

• LinkedIn | Twitter

Enjoy this episode for a strategic look at how apps like Discount Kit are driving Shopify toward a more flexible, automated discount future—balancing technical wizardry with great user experience.

In this episode, Prakhar from FoxSell Bundles shares his experience on the evolution of bundling technology in Shopify, operational challenges, and the exciting future shaped by AI and agent commerce. Whether you're a developer, ecommerce manager, or business owner, his perspective offers clarity on how to harness bundles for growth and innovation.

manager, or business owner, his perspective offers clarity on how to harness bundles for growth and innovation.

Main insights:

• Effective bundle strategies vary significantly by industry, with food, cosmetics, and fashion each requiring different approaches to maximize conversions.
• Starting with fixed, preset bundles based on customer reports and gradually evolving based on operational insights helps businesses adopt bundling without overwhelming them.
• Scaling bundles involves operational challenges like inventory management, preventing double discounts, and handling rapid sell-outs—solutions often require process adjustments.
• The future of bundling is intertwined with AI-driven agent commerce, emphasizing knowledge sharing between products and cross-store recommendations rather than UI complexity.
• AI's rapid evolution will make personalized, cross-store bundles more accessible, but brands need to adapt their processes and data integration.
• Shopify's ongoing improvements are crucial, such as native bundle reporting and component display on storefronts.
• The community in the bundle space remains collaborative, with competitors recognizing the value of shared knowledge and a large, growing market.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction: The importance of customization in e-commerce bundles
02:03 - Why FoxSell focused on native Shopify bundling APIs
03:11 - The difference between early app development and today's native tools
04:56 - FoxSell's value proposition: flexible, developer-focused bundling engine
06:39 - Communicating complex bundle features to merchants
07:26 - Strategies for onboarding and supporting agencies and developers
09:39 - What makes an effective bundle across different industries
12:55 - Overcoming operational challenges in scaling bundles
15:02 - The role of support teams like Support Heroes for app success
20:05 - The future of agent commerce and AI-driven bundling experiences
23:31 - How AI will shift from merchant-centric to shopper-centric bundling
26:19 - The evolution of FoxSell and staying relevant amidst platform changes
28:35 - Next features and improvements needed from Shopify
30:14 - Collaboration and competition within the bundle app ecosystem
31:33 - Final thoughts: The importance of community and innovation

Resources & Links:

• FoxSell – Official website
• Shopify API Documentation – Native bundling APIs and functions
• Support Heroes – Customer support for Shopify apps (proud sponsors of The Shopify App Show)
• Erika’s – Example of a successful bundle app brand

Connect with Prakhar:

• LinkedIn

• Twitter

Is the search bar now a chat box? Is it AI, curated, or algorithmic? Does the traditional "Results Page" even exist anymore?

The answers are changing daily. But one thing is clear: a new wave of apps is rewriting the rules of discovery.

My guest today is Sebastian Hooker, an ex-Google & Microsoft engineer who left the land of tech giants to build Nimstrata.

Nimstrata’s proposition is simple: it puts Google’s enterprise-grade search algorithms directly onto your Shopify store, powered by Google Cloud Vertex AI.

I learn something new every time I talk to Sebastian—and I’m sure you will too.

Every week, the Shopify App Show showcases the independent apps that are changing ecommerce.

Takeaways

• The search landscape in e-commerce is rapidly evolving, influenced by AI and changes to user behaviour.
• Nimstrata aims to democratize access to Google's search algorithms for Shopify stores rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
• On-site search experience is crucial for converting visitors into customers, but not all stores need an enterprise tool to achieve this. A streamlined tech stack with essential apps can create a more powerful customer experience.
• Users are increasingly using conversational queries in search, changing how merchants should optimize their content.
• Data quality is foundational for effective search and merchandising in e-commerce. The future of UCP will require merchants to adapt their data structures and practices.
• Merchants need to be aware of the paradox of choice when presenting products to customers.
• It's essential to balance user needs with the fast-paced changes in technology.
  

Chapters

00:00 From Google to Nimstrata: Meet Sebastian Hooker

07:02 Nimstrata's Role in E-commerce Search

12:00 Personalization in Search: Enhancing User Experience

14:58 The Evolution of Search Queries

19:20 Conversational Commerce: Redefining User Interaction

22:36 The Paradox of Choice in E-commerce

26:14 Data Quality: The Foundation of Effective Search

27:12 The Future of Data Quality in E-commerce

33:32 Navigating Product Roadmaps in a Rapidly Changing Landscape

36:29 Innovations and Challenges in E-commerce Tools

43:06 Optimizing Your E-commerce Tech Stack

They have struck a formula to envy - a simple product with a failsafe value proposition. They're led by a couple of savvy founders who have grown their brand in public with that perfect balance of youth, authenticity and most importantly results.

Kiril is the tech guy behind the product, but he is just as comfortable behind the microphone. Surprisingly this is his first ever podcast but you wouldn't know it.

This is a must listen for anyone building digital products or apps, whether you're working agency side, client side or independently. Kiril is super generous with sharing his story and learnings as he evolved from being a designer to a CTO.

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction to Kiril Climson and Order Editing
• 03:39 Evolution of Order Editing: Features and Growth
• 05:40 Expanding Beyond Order Editing by understanding Customer Needs
• 07:47 Scaling Development: Balancing Speed and Quality
• 10:05 Leveraging AI and Automation in App Development
• 12:34 Integration Challenges and Solutions
• 16:44 Innovating Address Validation for E-commerce
• 20:54 The Importance of Scoping Projects Effectively
• 23:35 Building no-bullshit analytics for apps

30:44 Future of AI in E-commerce and Shopify's Role

Takeaways

• The evolution of Order Editing reflects the growth of Shopify's API capabilities.
• Customer feedback is crucial for feature development and app improvement.
• Scaling a remote team requires trust and effective communication.
• Innovative features like address validation can enhance customer experience if delivered properly.
• Effective project scoping is essential to avoid wasted time and resources.
• Analytics in e-commerce is complex and requires careful planning.
• AI integration should be approached cautiously, considering Shopify's advancements. There's no point building stuff that is going to become outdated almost straight away, or become part of the platform.

Every episode the Shopify App Show chats with indie app developers who are breaking new ground across the Shopify ecosystem. Whether you are a business already using Shopify POS, you're considering a move to Shopify POS or are building stuff for POS yourself, Josh's insights are worth a million bucks. We discuss the challenges and limitations of Shopify POS, the importance of indie developers in driving innovation, and the future of scanning technology. This is not a product demo show!