SPECIAL EPISODE: Shopify Editions Spring 2026. What You Need To Know.

27:19So instead of you frantically hitting publish at midnight before a sale, you can use this feature to schedule it and let it roll it out, which to me, that alone makes this one worth making this list because I see so many people have their employees standing by at midnight, flipping a theme live, which they shouldn't have to be doing that. So you can schedule your Black Friday look in advance, sorry, change themes, really change anything. You can let it flip on automatically and then automatically flip back when it's over. But the better part is of rollouts is experiments. You can now actually run real A, B tests on your themes or your checkout.

28:00So you can show half of your visitors version A and half version B, and then see which one actually makes more money before you commit the whole store to it. So So, you know, no more redesigning everything on a hunch and then launching it, praying and waiting for three months to see results. Meanwhile, you are maybe losing money. Who knows? So here's a concrete one is you've always believed your product pages convert better with the long description up top. For example, your designer swears it's the reviews that should lead. But instead of arguing about it in Slack for a month, just run an experiment half for half one way for two weeks, half the other way, and just let the money settle it.

28:39Then you stop guessing on that question. And, and that's really the whole appeal of this feature is you kind of trade opinions for evidence and you do it without betting the whole entire store and actually betting your real revenue that one of you is right. Just run the test. One caveat with this one, with all of them, there's always one little caveat and it's a real one. It's that the scheduling works on basically every plan, basic and up, but the AB testing, the experiments needs the grow plan or hire. So if you're on the basic plan and you got excited about the testing part, I'm sorry, but if you're on grow or hire, you should have access to that.

29:17And then who should care about this one? I mean, anyone running promotions should care about this because generally when you run a promotion, you change your homepage, you change your collection pages, you put banners up on all your pages, you put timers on sites, you put maybe a bar across the top of your theme. I hope you do. I hope you dress up your store for success or just anyone who's been making design changes based on what I call vibes instead of data, which no judgment, I've done it before and I've watched a redesign. I loved tank conversion. So I think we've all been there. So this, I think everyone should care about this.

29:54As far as the next step, next time you plan a sale or any type of a theme tweak, build it as a scheduled rollout instead of publishing it live just to play with it. I, people are changing themes a lot now because summer's here and people are changing the, their look. So just use the feature to get familiar with it. So you black Friday, isn't the first time you're using it. And of course, if you're on the grow plan or hire, pick something to test, pick something you are debating about internally with yourself or with someone on your team, go ahead and test something simple like the button color or the words on the button or the checkout call to action or the checkout layout or anything and just settle it with an experiment it's fun it's super fun pick something the way your product images are laid out pick anything and you can start having bets and with other people on your team and loser buys dinner whatever have fun with it but but start testing things so you get used to it because it will affect your bottom line too it's not just fun okay number six this is a pretty big one you can now run your store from Claude, ChatGPT, or Perplexity, which this is one of the kind of, it feels a little bit sci-fi.

31:08You connect your store and then you ask the AI that you already use to add products, pull a sales report, check on an order. And it actually does it in Shopify. I saw someone post on, I think it was Twitter. If you've seen the movie Minority Report where Tom Cruise is standing and he can see the screens around and he's telling it, moving stuff with his hand and telling it what to do. I saw someone set up a similar thing using Claude. I think they built some visuals on three different monitors and they are telling it to check my annual sales. Let's run this sale, send the marketing campaign. And it connects into Shopify and it does it all.

31:50It seems crazy, but that might be how we're all managing our stores in a few years. Who knows? So, but honestly, the first time I saw this, I wasn't sure how much I'd use it, of course, versus just doing it all in the admin. But like always, like there is, there is a real case here. And once you start using software this way and getting comfortable with it and speaking to an AI and having to do stuff, it actually feels a little bit archaic to go back to an admin and click around in settings and find something and Google where that setting is. so I do think this is going to take off and be a way that we all manage our stores because once you do it going back feels archaic and to me that's always a sign that okay this is the future I've tasted it now everything else is going to catch up so if you already live in inside one of these AI tools all day which I basically do being able to say add this new product with these three variants create this image change out this image whatever while you're right in mid thought without having to switch tab, it's genuinely faster.

32:52And it meets you kind of like where you already are with the way you work. So for the more technical folks listening, there's also now a, it's called a Shopify AI toolkit, which just went generally available. And it plugs into your code editor. So cursor, cloud code, VS code, and it gives your AI assistant direct access to Shopify's docs and your live store data. So it stops kind of inventing fake API calls that break and waste your afternoon trying to fix. It just works because it has access to it all. And if you build on Shopify, this is a real time saver. So there's also a rebuilt version of Hydrogen, their headless framework, which is meant to run on any stack.

33:36Just know that this one is still in developer preview. It's not finished yet. So it's a kind of keep an eye on announcement, not a go build your store on this tomorrow. Definitely not. and most stores are not running on on hydrogen at this point so but a lot are but um the reason i'd start read only and i mean this is the same reason you you don't hand a brand new employee the keys to your bank account day one is i would start slowly with this one let it start pulling reports for a week um watch whether it gets your numbers right to be like ai can hallucinate and make up stuff. And depending on your environment in Claude will affect how like your instructions and projects and how that works can affect it too.

34:21So start slowly testing things. Don't just dive all all in fully managing everything in your store. Once it's earned your trust and things are working good, then you let it actually start making changes. Like the tech is impressive, I'll be honest, but it's still software and AI and software does exactly what you tell it, including sometimes the dumb things you didn't mean to ask for, because it is very literal. And if you accidentally say something, change all the prices on my coffee and it thinks something else is coffee because you have something in the collection coffee that shouldn't be in there and it changes the price on that.

34:59So just ease into it. Who should care about this one? I put really everyone, like especially solo operators and smaller teams though, who are using AI, this can potentially make a huge impact to you if you are a smaller team, I think. So next step I would say for this one is just if you've got Claude ChatGPT or Perplexity account, look up Shopify's connector for it and link your store. You can just ask those AI tools how to do it and it'll walk you through it. So you don't, I don't need to give instructions on that here. That's one of the beautiful things about AI is literally ask, how do I connect to Shopify's connector for my store and let it guide you?

35:35And just start by only pulling information. Ask it for last week's revenue, poke around, ask for some reports, get comfortable with it, how it behaves, and then slowly start increasing what you do. So, okay. Number seven. Number seven actually is a pretty big one. If you sell wholesale, this is being available on more plans and it's bigger because of who can now use it. So Shopify took its B2B features, which used to be locked behind plus at around 2300, I believe. Yeah, it's still 2300. Yes, whatever the fees are a month. And now it brought that all the way down to basic grow and advance at no extra cost.

36:13So now on a regular plan, you get company profiles for your wholesale buyers up to three B2B catalogs within their own prices. You get volume and quantity discounts. You get payment terms like net 30 vaulted credit cards. It's a pretty decent wholesale setup that used to cost quite a bit to access that now everyone has access to. There is still more features reserved for plus, but it's a pretty darn good solution for the basic plan. So why should you care about this? Well, here's a number that actually kind of stopped me when I was reading it. Shopify says that merchants using B2B see 4.1 times higher reorder frequency compared to regular direct to consumer orders.

37:00Four times. Wholesale buyers come back. And obviously this makes sense because wholesale buyers, they sign up, they get an account, they keep coming back. But that's the entire point of wholesale. And now you can serve them natively instead of duct taping on, you know, running multiple stores and however you're doing it. And it's something you might want to consider doing if you're not doing wholesale now. Think about how that can be a new channel for you. I talked to brands who sell pet food and pet supplies and they sell wholesale to coffee stores, which makes no sense. But when you think about it, it kind of does.

37:33The trendy boutique coffee stores, they have little kiosks with your trendy dog food. Because people who go to boutique coffee stores often have little boutique dogs, I guess. I don't know, but it can become a significant channel if you plan it out properly. So I'll put the one thing though, the net terms in plain language for anyone who's only done direct to consumer, because this is probably the biggest unlock here is a wholesale buyer who doesn't want to pay the second they place the order. This is where they get the next term. So if they want to receive the goods, sell them in their shop and pay you in 30 days, that's what you call net 30.

38:16So that used to mean invoices that you would manage somewhere else and spreadsheets and chasing people for money. But now your store can offer those terms, keep the card on file, and then handle it all natively. So that one feature is often the whole difference between a buyer saying yes and a buyer saying, think about it because who you're selling to, they no longer have to tie up their cash. So if you're selling wholesale, they can have access to your inventory, put it in their store, sell it, make the margin and then pay for it. And as a retailer, that's exactly what you want. You, it's all about cashflow.

38:57So you're protecting their cashflow and you'll be able to close more deals because of being able to offer net 30. So now though, there are a couple catches on this one that three catalog the so you can have three different price catalogs it's it's a real cap so if you have want to have more than three different price levels uh that's reserved for plus and if you price differently for lots of different accounts like which a lot of people do they kind of give custom prices for one store or another store gets a different custom price, you'll hit that limit fast. But three will still allow you to have like a wholesale price for everyone.

39:38You can't say to someone, I'm going to give you 17.1 % discount, another person 22.9, depending on how much they buy, which is how wholesalers really actually operate. They have many different price levels, but this will at least get you in the game. And then two things people miss is it's not on automatically. Okay. So this is a big one. You have to go and activate it. And on the lower plans, those B2B catalogs, they won't work in your POS yet. So just a note on that. So, you know, and I just, I know who should care about this one. I, I just wrote, you know, any brand that keeps getting, Hey, can I buy a case of this?

40:16If people are asking that, then this is for you. Or if you've ever thought about doing wholesale, now's the time to give it a try because it's available on your plan. So, uh, next step is if you've ever turn down or manually try to wrangle a bulk order in some other way or use some other tool for managing those invoices, go into your admin, activate B2B and set up one catalog for your most common wholesale ask. And then just stop quoting stuff over email like it's 2015. Okay. Next one, three more to go. We're on number eight. This one's pretty big. If it's the Shopify markets upgrades. If you sell internationally, there's a whole set of Shopify markets upgrades.

40:58So the useful ones are you can now control which product variants publish to which sales channels and which market without a whole bunch of ugly workarounds, which is pretty big because you want to sell different. Just think about shoes. For example, you might have different sizes or the way that sizes are labeled because in the UK, they're different than in America. They have different numbering systems or liters versus gallons. So you can have different variants showing in different markets. You can also run discounts targeted by market as well. And managed markets where Shopify handles all the duties, taxes, and compliance, all those cross-border headaches has now expanded to the UK and Canada.

41:47It was primarily US anchored before, but now in the UK and Canada, you have access to all that as well too. So it also does adaptive pricing by adjusting your prices for local markets automatically. So a shopper in another country isn't seeing numbers that make no sense for them. Why care about this? Well, like honestly, cross border is where most stores are leaking money. They just kind of say, well, yeah, I'm not capturing or my shipping isn't right, or I'm not charging right in that country. I'll just eat the cost. All the surprise duties you might have to pay, that can go away now. These updates, they close a lot of those gaps.

42:30So just one quick example of that trust piece, a local customer in Germany buys from your US store. If they see one price at checkout and then get ambushed by a surprise duty bill from the courier when they're picking it up, they may never buy from you again. So the price they see when they're checking out should be the price that they pay all in. And even worse, they're not buying from, they're probably leaving a negative review too. So managed markets and duty inclusive pricing exist to kill that exact moment. The shopper sees the real all in price upfront and there's no nasty surprise waiting for them at their door.

43:10So who should care about this one? I wrote, you know, for sure anyone already selling internationally, or if you're seriously thinking about it, you absolutely should care about this one. And I think for probably 80 % of the stores I talk to, international expansion is their biggest opportunity. It used to be that people just avoided it because it was hard and it wasn't worth the effort. That's not the case anymore. it is Shopify has closed a lot of those effort gaps and there's a massive world out there other than your own country. And of course, since I'm Canadian and up here in Canada, letting all my fellow Canadians know Shopify tax also went live in Canada this edition.

43:50So if you're up here with me, definitely have a look at it. I know there'll be a lot of Canadians excited about that. As far as the next step, if you sell abroad, go check whether managed markets is available in your region right now, especially the UK and Canada crowd, go check. It just opened up. I believe it's live as of today for everybody. And just do a full audit of your markets so you're not advertising products to countries that you can't ship to. Only show the products that you're shipping there. And it's a really small fix that saves real refunds and angry emails. Okay, number nine. Two more to go here.

44:24Number nine, this is a plus only one. So if you're not on plus you can fast forward 60 seconds but maybe you want to know this anyway because maybe you plan on moving to plus one day but it's worth knowing it exists because if you're growing fast you'll end up on plus okay this is called multi-entity and it lets you run multiple legal businesses out of a single shopify store so different companies even in the same country under one roof with payments, card readers, and payouts that respect the different entities. So before this, that meant running completely separate stores and a whole bunch of different accounting pain to reconcile it all.

45:10So if you're a bit of a bigger operation that's required, you know, or a couple brands, or if you've got separate legal entities for your different brands you manage for tax reasons, this is genuinely annoying. And this has been, is a problem that is now being solved. So for example, say you built a skincare brand and then you acquire a little soap company. I saw this recently happening. I'm using this example. Now it's its own legal entity. Now, before this, you either, you're, you're either jamming it into your existing store where it doesn't quite belong because it's its own brand, or you're running a whole second store and reconciling two sets of books at the same time.

45:52But this let's both lived under one roof roof with the legal and payment separation intact. So it's a quiet feature, but for the people that it's built for, it's, it will remove a lot of headache. If this applies to you, it's a little bit niche, but it, if it applies to you, definitely check this out. And I wanted to make you aware of it. And just one kind of limit to know about the multi-currency payout piece only covers a few countries right now, the US, Hong Kong and Singapore. And they said France is coming soon. So depending on where you are and sorry, where you're depending where your entities sit, not where you are, the money side might not all be there yet.

46:36But and obviously who should care about this? I just wrote plus merchants with more than one legal entity. I know that's a very specific group, but if it's you, your shoulders should kind of drop a little bit. You just heard this. And then next step, you know, if you, if this is your setup and you do have multiple entities, I would start a conversation with your Shopify rep on this one. It's not a do it yourself toggle. You flip, bring it to them and have them walk you through how it maps to your entities. So this one is one you would want to reach out to your rep. Okay. Number 10. This one is for anyone selling in person or selling through POS.

47:14It is POS version 11 and all the retail updates around it. And I would say the main headline with this is speed. That is the theme word for this one. Shopify says the new checkout saves over one minute per transaction, which seems very high, but that's what they're saying. I guess across average, right? Across all the stores. I don't know, but it's their number, but I, but it, even if it only saves 20 seconds, that's still huge. So if you've ever watched a line build at a busy market while you're waiting and you see the people's faces who are waiting while someone's fumbling, waiting for the POS to load or spin, you know, that a minute is huge.

48:00Even 10 seconds per customer adds up. Um, and it can be the difference between kind of an angry customer, like that bad checkout experience or someone walking away happy. So checkout speed is it's real money when it comes to retail. So the change I actually love is that returns and exchanges and a new sale can all happen in one cart. Now you don't have to go close the cart and open a new one. So it can all happen at the same time. So if someone returns a shirt, grabs a different size, and let's say buys a hat on the way out, that used to be three different transactions, but now it's all one. Okay.

48:43And you know what? Now that I think about it, I see that that could for sure save over a minute because having to do the return, do the swap exchange and then running the sale for the new one. Yes. Okay. Shopify. You're right on this minute estimate. I hear you. I was thinking of just like a simple transaction. But yes, I mean, because this is huge. You can do this all now in one transaction. And your staff will love this feature. So make sure they know it, right? A lot of this is education. They need to know it's now available. So bottom line is every second customer stand at your counter is a second that three people behind them are deciding whether the wait is worth it or they should just leave.

49:24And I've actually done that. I've been in lines and I, I have to get somewhere to pick up my kid from school and I don't want him waiting outside alone. So I've just abandoned my line. It happens. It's abandoned. We got, you got abandoned checkout on the web. You got abandoned lines in real life. Speed at the till isn't just like a nice to have. It's conversion really the same way page load is conversion when you're shopping online. So we don't just, we just don't talk about it the same way, but it really, it is. So a few of the operator grade pieces like cash management with a full audit trail, in-person pickup orders, receiving transfers are all on POS Pro, which is the paid tier.

50:03So just know that going in, but there is some serious improvements added and some serious functionality on POS Pro. but the core speed and the unified cart, that's an everyday win for everyone on every plan. And I just wrote here, who should care? Anyone with a physical location, pop-up, market, anyone selling through POS. Just as far as next step on this one, if you run retail, just make sure you update your POS app because you do have to update it and have your staff actually practice the new returns, new sale exchange all in one flow before your next busy day Cause it's kind of like muscle memory.

50:44Like they're not, don't make them figure it out. Have everyone practice it one time. Okay. Last one. We were going to end at number 10, but I added 11 because it's, I think a good one. Call it our honorable mention. Um, well, sorry, I do have a couple on a quick honorable mentions after this one. Number two, but number 11 is the shop app getting smarter about discovery. And I think this is worth everyone knowing the shop app now has conversational search. And if you don't, you should buy with a shop app on a regular basis. So you see the experience your customers are having, but shoppers can now describe what they want in plain English.

51:22Instead of guessing at keywords, you can actually say, I am looking for dinnerware for an Italian themed dinner party. I'm hosting with my kids, anything like that. It'll, you don't have to say Italian dinnerware. There's also posts, which is a content feed that you can show up in to browsers. And there's also demand indicators that hint at what's selling. It's all aimed at getting your store found by these millions of people who are already browsing and shopping inside shop app. So why care? This is free distribution to an audience that's already in buying mode. They downloaded a shopping app.

52:06They're not there by accident. they are buying. So it's a very good audience. And if you're not paying attention to it, you're missing out. And conversational search is quietly the same story as feature one, which we talked about. People are starting to search by describing what they want instead of typing keywords, going back to what we talked about the beginning of this episode. And shop app is an AI assistant in that sense. Something like I want a gift for my mom who likes gardening and hates clutter. That's how people are searching. So the stores that win that search are the ones whose products, sorry, whose product data actually describes the product the way a human would, which is why I think it was number one, Shopify catalog was so important.

52:55Like do that first. So this works down here on number 10. I know you're going to hear me hammer this and hammer this probably on future episodes too, because it's like the theme of the next year. Clean product data is the thread that is running through this entire Shopify edition, but it's the theme that every store should be thinking about for the next 12 months. Clean product data. Who should care? I wrote here, this one's mostly for direct to consumer brands, not necessarily the B2B stores that we were just talking to a few points about. This is if you're on if you're primarily B2B, this one's maybe not for you, but direct to consumer brands.

53:38This is huge. OK, now I just wanted to say three kind of quick honorable mentions here before I wrap up. They're super quick. One for the bigger teams listening, Shopify added better governance. You can now see a log of what your installed apps are actually doing and set more granular staff permissions, including who's allowed to touch payments and many more. So go in and look at your staff permissions. There's a whole bunch more in there. And just a note is when Shopify adds staff permissions, they're always off by default. So you might have some staff messaging you if you're the owner of your store saying, hey, I can't access this.

54:16Hey, I can't access this. Because if that, if an area just became a new permission, it's off by default, which makes sense. That is the proper way to do it. but it can be a little bit annoying if a new area becomes a permission and now you have to make sure it's enabled for everyone so if you've got a team and you care about security go check that out you might want to tighten it up or make sure that other people have access to these new new permissions that they need to now get to on your store you know it's it's that unsexy stuff but it might save you on a bad day one disgruntled employee goes rogue so uh that was honorable mention number one, two, you can finally stack multiple discounts on the same product in one order.

54:55This kind of rolled out a little while ago, but they announced it in this edition. So if you want to do a percentage off and a fixed amount together, you can do that. And merchants have been asking for this forever. So I have one discount that gives$10 off, but there's a storewide discount of 20 % off. And now that can be stacked. Honorable mention number three, like I said, Shopify tax in Canada. That one is big for us Canadians. Okay. Just regarding the store app one here. I just want to give one next step. I wrote down if go make sure your store is set up and that your product and brands and content are actually filled in.

55:34There is some settings you have to configure for this. Most people think it's just in there, but there is like hero images, logo description. You kind of have your store has a little profile and shop app. go look at it make sure it's set up take 15 minutes and make sure it looks good and then try posting to the feed it will show up to potential shoppers treat it like a channel you've been ignoring because most of the merchants they are ignoring it which is why there's big opportunity so spend some time on that one today for sure okay so i mean there was 150 updates these are the ones that i would spend my attention on i'm by no means saying they're the most important, but these are the ones that I think are worth looking at and probably turning on, or at least like investigating for your store.

56:20If you read through the additions announcements and that feeling of overwhelm, that great more stuff I'm supposed to do feeling, I'll just make this easy for you. Forget 10 of them. And here's your one job that you have to do. Yeah. Let's call it the 1%. Tonight's job. Open your Shopify admin, go to sales channels, then agentic and look what's already turned on. Then open your three bestselling products, read the descriptions out loud, slowly, like you're a machine that has never read them before. You could even copy and paste them and ask an AI agent to tell you everything they know about your product.

57:03I love doing this. Take your product URL, paste it in Claude, chat GPT, and just ask it. Say, based off of this product description, tell me everything you know about this product. Tell me what you think it's about, what it does. And then fix those questions that are missing. Fix the most vague ones. Add some FAQs. That's it. If there's one thing you do out of all these, that should be the one you do. Because everything in this edition points at the same thing. Your customers are starting to shop by having a conversation with AI and that AI reads your product data, not your beautiful homepages or your images.

57:37And the brands that clean up their product data now are the ones that show up in those answers later. It takes time, but the ones that do it now will win. The ones that wait are going to wonder where their traffic went in a few months. So I've been selling online since 1998. I've watched the thing that drives traffic change a dozen times, search engines, social, Facebook, Twitter, paid, TikTok, influencers. And every single time the merchants who move early, while it's still felt a little bit weird and small and maybe unproven, they always got rewarded for it. The ones who waited until it was obvious, they just end up paying a lot more to catch up.

58:22And I'll tell you, this feels like one of those moments to me a hundred percent. Now I'm not totally certain how fast all of this lands. Some of these features are early and some of them will change over the shape a little bit. Some of them are rolling out in the next few weeks, but the direction isn't the question. And the work of having clean, clear, honest product data will pay off no matter which way the AI stuff all rolls out. I promise you. That's it. If this was useful, can you do me a favor? Can you hit follow on the show, hit subscribe. If there's anything in here that you got that was useful, become a follower.

59:00So you get notified every time a new episode goes out. And if you could leave a five-star review, I would be eternally grateful. That would mean so much wherever you're listening, Spotify. If you're an Apple, leave a comment and just say, Hey, I loved your edition about Shopify additions. So I know you listen to it. I read every single comment and all the reviews. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey and for listening to our show. I'll see you on the next episode. Now go fix one product right now. If that's all you do, I'll talk to you on the next episode.