Shopify's growth chief on winning AI shopping traffic
"It's more than 2x that conversion rate coming from another referral channel."
AI shopping agents are already sending buyers to Shopify stores, and they convert at double the rate of your other referral traffic. Most merchants have no idea it's happening because the analytics show up as direct traffic. Archie Abrams runs growth at Shopify, and he's spent five and a half years building the infrastructure for exactly this moment: Shop identity, cart sync, and the Shop Product Network.
Archie breaks down why AI traffic lands on product pages instead of your homepage, the five-minute ChatGPT audit that reveals what AI actually understands about your products, and which product categories are winning in agentic search right now. Plus the free growth levers already sitting in your admin, and why the smartest money might still be in direct mail.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Speaker A:
This episode is brought to you in part by Swim. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product and then nothing happens. Swim actually activates that data. When someone wishlists a product, you can trigger price drop or back in stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wishlists for gifts and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in store. And unlike cart abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hand saying, "Hey, I want this, just not right now." Swim's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about 5 minutes. You could try it for free today at getswim.com/kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M.com/kurt. Welcome back to the show. I am excited to have Archie Abrams, who is head of growth at Shopify, joining us. VP of product, who I believe is behind many of the, the platform features I love. I have long said a rising tide lifts all ships. Meaning things that benefit a community of people will benefit everybody. I think Shopify as a platform, their actions speak to that. And most recently, a lot of the things they're building, I think, speak to that. Shop Pay, this, and a lot of the new features, Shop Identity, Shop Catalog. Well, I want to hear from the shop-a-folk. I want to hear from someone at Shopify who can speak to these things. And candidly, this was supposed to be in person, but I did not know that my passport had expired until I went to check into my flight to Toronto last month, which was embarrassing and disappointing. And I'm never going to let my passport expire again for the rest of my life. So putting that behind us, Archie, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker B:
Thank you for having me. And I'm sorry about that passport experience. At least it's good learning.
Speaker A:
100% on me. That's— yeah. Oh, brutal.
Speaker B:
It happens. It happens.
Speaker A:
How, how long have you been at Shopify, man?
Speaker B:
I've been at Shopify for a little over 5 and a half years. Okay. It's been, it's been really fun to build, uh, build products for, for merchants and for commerce. It's been a, it's been a fun ride.
Speaker A:
And in tech and in software, 5 and a half years is an eternity. Recently, or of what you're shipping this year recently, what are you most proud of?
Speaker B:
You know, I think what, what gets me like really excited is what you talked about, which is how do we help, you know, uh, raise the, the tide for all of our merchants together, right? Because that, that is one of the powers of Shopify, is giving independent brands that ability to just be more successful in an incredibly competitive world. And so for me, some of the things that have got me really, really excited is the work we've done around the Shop app and a lot of the work we've done around shop identity. And I'll give an example here of something that cart sync, which we've really improved quite a bit. And cart sync is, for those who know, when a buyer adds something to a cart and they maybe abandon that cart, they can go find that same product in the Shop app. And what we've seen is how much incremental growth that's driving for, for merchants. Because one of the challenging things about a shopper going around the internet is put something in your cart, you forget about it, you close that tab, etc. And then being able to say, hey, actually come back and make that purchase and close that loop within the Shop app using a push notification that we can send on behalf of that merchant right back into the Shop app is one of those great examples, I think, of using the Shopify scale to help buyers and then most importantly, help merchants be even more successful about closing the loop and getting those, that incremental conversion.
Speaker A:
That Shopify cart sync, I had no idea. I, I'm learning about that for the first time now. So hold on. I, I've got a shop. I go in a Shopify store, add the item to cart, start checkout, quit. Because of Shop Pay, the chances are it already, like just by opening the checkout, this thing knows who I am. I leave and, you know, I get like the store itself can send me emails, it can retarget me potentially, but I'm probably already on Shop by default. And if the customer opens it, opens the Shop app, it's gonna surface that product to cart to me.
Speaker B:
Exactly. And, and that's a great, you know, it's a great thing for, for merchants and buyers because you're right, like a lot of, you know, we talked to obviously our, you know, merchants are Um, maybe going retargeting on, on Meta and spending all of that money to get that, whereas Shop is— Shop Cart Sync is free. Um, and it's a great opportunity to bring that buyer back in and complete that, that purchase because they're already in the Shop app, or we can send an incremental push that drives someone back to complete that purchase. And that, that's one example of how this identity network into Shop Pay can really raise all the boats, um, for for merchants together.
Speaker A:
So tell me about— all right, Shopify Identity. This, I'm not, not super familiar with. This is what, referring to like the, the login portion of Shop?
Speaker B:
Exactly, exactly. So, you know, there's, um, you know, the purple button to log into, to, to a storefront, um, and or to capture a, uh, you know, that we all love as merchants is to offer a kind of discounts on that first-time buyer experience, right? Offer a discount. In what Shop Identity, that purple button now, buyer can just one-click tap that, they get that discount. The merchant most importantly gets the email address, they can share the phone number as well. Merchant gets that, but because it's so seamless for the buyer with that one-click, higher conversion rate, Merchants get more customer data. Buyer is now able to have that one commerce identity across, across all of the merchant storefronts. So kind of an example of how merchants kind of get more conversions and buyers have a more seamless experience along the way as well.
Speaker A:
No, the thing, the advantage to everyone here is convenience, right?
Speaker B:
Exactly.
Speaker A:
There is nothing more painful than, oh man, I got to type in my, my 16 digits into a checkout on my phone. I'm like, uh, or like, I gotta go with my wallet, or I got— I just don't make me log into anything, right?
Speaker B:
Totally. Especially on mobile device, it's brutal.
Speaker A:
Even just using a password manager on an iPhone could be painful, but that's why it's like shopping on mobile. That's why you see so much, you know, marketplaces and why you see Shop Pay and Shop, you know, because hey, I could just one-click my way through it. So the name of the game there with is convenience. Shop Identity I believe it could do some other things, some more algorithmic things, but like taste profiles, there are neurons firing in my brain telling me 100%.
Speaker B:
I think right now a lot of that taste profile will get reflected back in the, in the Shop app when somebody comes in. Um, but one of the things that we're really excited about is, is using, is helping merchants use those profiles to, um, to personalize their online store and to use some of that to give even a more relevant experience to a buyer that maybe that individual merchant hasn't seen, uh, but they've been in Shop Identity before, they've, they've browsed. And now how do we help that individual merchant personalize better, faster for a new customer to arrive at their site?
Speaker A:
What's that look like on the store? So I'm not, I'm not familiar with this feature set.
Speaker B:
Yeah, this is all kind of, of new stuff, so not nothing out like fully, but you can imagine, um, this is, this is happening a little bit in the product network, um, space. So kind of when merchants are— it's a merchant, you can choose to have, you know, other products listed alongside your products that are relevant, and we can personalize what those products, what those products are. And of course, as a merchant, you collect, uh, you know, commission on that if, if the buyer buys it from the product network. So it's a you know, kind of a form of, of ads there. But you can, um, so that's all getting better and more personalized because of that understanding of a, of a buyer.
Speaker A:
Shop Product Network, the— I like this.
Speaker B:
I—
Speaker A:
Shopify Product Network, I have this on one of our, our client stores, Pins and Aces. If at— on the thank you page, you— it will offer you products from other people's stores And if that purchase happens, the store gets a commission and they don't have to do the fulfillment.
Speaker B:
None of the fulfillment, none of the work, just offer that, drive that traffic and incremental revenue for, um, for both sides, quite frankly, um, which is what makes it so powerful.
Speaker A:
And in their case, I was impressed by the results for a thing that really felt like enable it once and then it's just running in the background and okay, now we just have free additional revenue on top of this. I'd like that. So we're using Shop Product Network to show people more relevant stuff, 'cause we know who they are and potential, like they've already seen these things. Okay, very clever. And then the other thing you could do is you can have it, in our case we do it in the thank you page, like order confirmation, it shows up. You could show it elsewhere, can't you? I believe it's like collection and search results, you can have it inject the stuff.
Speaker B:
Exactly. So if merchant, if you, you know, if you want to have it in collections, if you wanna have it in search, Those are things you can, you can turn on, obviously full control and offering more controls around what products show up there, but giving you that opportunity to put it on collection search or thank you page. And then we can help personalize what products are shown based on our, our understanding of buyers in their behavior.
Speaker A:
So opting into it, what was that? Where do I find that in my admin?
Speaker B:
You can go, go right into kind of Product Network. Uh, it's a, it's a, an app and kind of in the settings there you can toggle it on, off and, and set some restrictions around what products show up. Um, and then we'll go to work surfacing those, those relevant products. Okay.
Speaker A:
The, with Product Network, that's how I get my products, or I, I list these additional products from other stores and now I'm potentially getting like bonus revenue here. If I want to have my products appear on other people's stores? What's— what happens?
Speaker B:
You can go into, to shop campaigns and kind of enable it, uh, as part of, uh, shop campaigns, which then you can choose to have it— your products be sold, um, on other folks' websites, or ads within the shop app, or we'll go out and advertise on your behalf on Google, Meta, etc., and you'll only pay for sales that, that we make, um, for you. So kind of purely aligned monetization there. So if you want to have your products appear other places, Shop Campaigns, you want to turn it on, Product Network. Um, and then yeah, as part of that, if you also want to get distribution and just do a one-to-one partnership, like really want to work with another brand to say, hey, I really want these specific products to be merchandised alongside mine. You can go to Collective, Shopify Collective, and choose products from other merchants and say, hey, I really want, uh, these great towels to go along with my bathing suits and put the very specific product right next to your, your bathing suit collection or what have you.
Speaker A:
You know, we have a, a couple clients will have like a portfolio of stores and I don't know if it's an appropriate use or not, but we will use Shopify Collective to make those stores list each other's items. Like, that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And it works fine. We install supplier and what's the other side?
Speaker B:
And retailer.
Speaker A:
Retailer. Yeah. We install, you install both sides on every store and then link them together. And then now suddenly they all sync each other's catalogs. It for, you know, a site where especially like a PE firm or like we have a portfolio of brands that need to help each other. That's the, that's the unstated use case that I love for Collective. But otherwise, I mean, Collective's great. We're getting into, you know, catalog product. Tell me about Shopify Catalog. Yes. Right.
Speaker B:
Um, you know, I think one of the, the really interesting, uh, trends that we're seeing is that inagentic in, in any of these platforms, uh, doing so much better with, with really well-structured data, right? And that's really the, the genesis of how, you know, ChatGPT or Gemini needs really good product-level data.
Speaker A:
Uh, metadata about the— okay, like good structured data. Just gimme an example of good versus bad to help illustrate it for people.
Speaker B:
100%. Um, so the most basic is updates on inventory and, and pricing, right? Like if it's, if you're ChatGPT is trying to scrape all of that, or OpenAI, it's very tough to get that, that right. So just on the most basic, as a consumer, you wanna know that this thing's in stock. And you want to make sure both as a merchant and as a consumer you're getting the right price. So that's like the most basic, um, pieces. But then everything from, are the descriptions complete, title tags well structured in there, is it descriptive, concrete with what this product is, specifications, sizing, all of that needs to be put in a very well-structured format for these agents to be able to take it. And often if you're, you know, not doing a great job with that, if it's kind of in a CMS and then getting injected via JavaScript, that it can't be scraped very well, etc., and then the, the agents really struggle to understand what these products are. And then when a, when a buyer is actually asking for those products, you're very unlikely to, to show up as a result.
Speaker A:
Wrong address, wrong size, add one more. The same 3 emails every single day, and every one is a ticket your team handles by hand. Read it, verify it, fix it in Shopify, email the customer back. Do that a few hundred times a month and you're paying salaries to be a manual order editing tool. Our sponsor, Cleverific, has been thinking about this for years. They've run order editing on Shopify since before it was a category. Now your shoppers can fix their own orders right on the order status page. Address, size, quantity, add-ons. No ticket, no back and forth, and everything writes straight back through Shopify. And here's what's new: order upsells that build themselves. Cleverific reads your store's order history, generates post-purchase offers based on what your customers actually buy, and it works with the flows you already run. This summer, they'll even do the whole thing for you. Mention the Unofficial Shopify Podcast and Cleverific will handle the complete setup, order editing, post-purchase upsells, all of it done for you, plus a $500 upsell credit to get you started. So stop editing orders for your customers. Let them do it themselves and let it pay for itself. Cleverific Order Editing on the Shopify App Store. So I asked ChatGPT for a recommendation on whatever, and then it goes out In this example, it goes out, it searches the web, finds listings, goes to read through them. It has to read through the source code. There is so much garbage in there, it doesn't know what it's looking at and gets very easily confused versus what you're saying, clean data, structured data. That's like JSON format data that the Shopify theme store requires themes support this and has for some time, but it has like a block of like, hey, this is very clearly, this is the price, this is the stat, like, you know, In stock status, in stock, it gives you everything in there and just like this clean, plain block that it could just read. Okay, so I fill out my listing, I make sure I've got my structured data. I'm now in a better position to have the robot read it. Where are we going from here?
Speaker B:
Yeah, I think the, the next piece for, for, for merchants is making sure that You know, the— I think what you're seeing in a lot of the prompt data is people are using much longer, um, longer prompts to find things, right? So instead of just writing, you know, black t-shirts, it's, you know, I was just doing a search today for a hoodie that's good for walking around in San Francisco on a windy day in the summer, right? So you're getting much longer prompts, and we see that— what we see back when, um, from the data that we see, and we just see it out there a lot talking to our partners. And so for, for a merchant, you know, my— always my recommendation is make sure you're really clear about how you differentiate in the unique features of your product. Because in the old world of search, that might be— that was still important to have some of that unique content. It becomes even more important to be very clear. The way I think about it is like very clear about why someone should care about your product very specifically. And the more kind of richness, the more texture you can add to your descriptions, um, into your re— how you can collect reviews, the more likely you are to come out in much more of these more nuanced and longer prompts that we see happening, uh, on the platform.
Speaker A:
Interesting. This did not occur to me, but yeah, it's like, it's building essentially, you know, once it has, it's, it has to go find the items.
Speaker B:
Mm-hmm.
Speaker A:
Once it has them, it needs a way to compare them and make the recommendation. Exactly. But it's not, you know, it's not thinking the same way you are. It's doing, you know, this like structured research. And so it's probably like in the background building a table and comparing features. And if you never explained all that, you know, it's not gonna have that data. Okay.
Speaker B:
Yeah. Interesting. One of the things I, you know, recommend to merchants all the time is go do, I just ask ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude, Um, how would— what data would you provide to you, to, to the bot, so you would understand what this product is about? And just feed it a URL that'd be your product, and then just go back and forth with it. What's missing? Do you— does this capture, um, kind of the way I think about my product? And it's very fun to just go back and forth, try some different models on it, and understand what's missing and what's there, and then use that to refine your own descriptions, uh, and kind of going back and forth with the LLM to make sure it really does it. Does it really understand your product? Yes or no? Because it might surprise you by how little it understands based on what it's, what it's seeing on the page.
Speaker A:
Yeah. Well, I imagine like a lot of descriptions end up feeling thin, especially to an LLM that's looking at it in this like very narrow view and potentially not like bothering to go through photos. Like you don't know necessarily what it's going to put the effort into. Um, interesting. Okay. I have not attempted this. I will try this. This is a good tip.
Speaker B:
I think the other fun thing about what's happening in some of the data and is certain categories are seeing a lot more prominence within Agentic right now. So particularly things that are more, um, almost spec-based in comparisons, those are the categories that are seeing could the most growth. Um, so if you're in one of those categories, you can think about this as like sort of electronics, home goods, things that require a lot of detail research. Those are the categories where we're seeing the most growth in Agentic. Um, maybe less growth, still growth, but in things like apparel, um, where it's a little more visual, and I don't think anyone's quite yet cracked how do I show really good visual results where you want to just see a bunch of photos of shirts and and the like. So those categories that are a little more comparison-based, that's how people are using a lot of these agentic platforms as those comparison, those spec-based categories.
Speaker A:
It just, it feels anecdotally right to me because if I've got, yeah, like anything that's like visual, taste-based, subjective, the LLMs struggle with that. And, but things that are, you know, much more quantitative and comparative, that it could do well. So if I am buying a new TV for the family room, all right, that is the thing that it is going to excel at. And for sure I am getting, you know, my chatbot involved to go do my research on TVs. If I'm just trying to find a new pair of sneakers, that is a much— what's funny is that like is a much more difficult task to give it. For it. Yeah, not a person.
Speaker B:
Exactly. Those are some of the interesting things that, that's evolved.
Speaker A:
Huh. Okay. As long as we're on the topic of catalog, the other thing I played with and had a lot of fun with was Catalog API and UCP, Universal Commerce Protocol. Tell me about, tell me about these features.
Speaker B:
Yeah, so I think where, um, we, we wanna make sure is that we help every merchant that's, uh, part of, part of Shopify or, or in the catalog in, in general. get discovered by all the different interfaces that are going to be created in the future. We just talked about, like, nobody's really cracked how do you search for— how do you use Agentic to find a great sneaker? Um, yeah, right. Nobody— but somebody will uncover that. It might not be ChatGPT, Gemini. Maybe we hope it's going to be Shop, but there's gonna be some other folks out there. And so what the goal of Catalog and then the Catalog API on top of that is, how do you enable Anyone who's trying to come up with the next great idea for consumer shopping, how do you make sure that they go right to Shopify as the first choice to find all of the amazing products that, that, you know, Shopify merchants have and need to be discovered? So the bet really there is we wanna make sure every merchant is immediately positioned to be part of the next big commerce platform because so there's no question there's gonna be. Another set of platforms that are developed over the coming years that are gonna change how people help people shop. And the goal of Catalog and then the Catalog API specifically is to make sure when any developer reaches for a new platform, they reach for, for Shopify and the products within it. So that's really the goal, the goal there.
Speaker A:
And so it's another, another rising tide lifts all ships feature. Exactly. But the idea is give anyone who wants it an easy way to search all of the products on Shopify. All this, as far as I know, stores get default, get defaulted, opted into this. So their products are there and you know, why other than a handful of scenarios, why wouldn't you want it or just mark those products unlisted? And so now I build a, you know, I could build a tool, I could build an app, I could do whatever and it can just go send a query to Shopify and get back a list of products.
Speaker B:
Exactly. Um, which is— and you think about how hard that was even 2 years ago. If you were saying, hey, I want to reinvent how people search for, uh, sneakerheads, right? Really build this amazing community around finding sneakers. If you were that developer, it would be incredibly difficult to find a great catalog of, of sneakers, um, to even start with. Now, if you're that developer who really knows how people discover and shop for sneakers, you can just plug right into that Shopify catalog API and pull in the amazing set of, uh, merchants that, that are within that catalog and get started right away. And for a merchant, you want to be part of that. Uh, all these folks are gonna experiment with new ways of building shopping experiences, and that's really the benefit for, for everyone with this.
Speaker A:
And I think the thing to take away, like I have, we haven't seen a breakaway success yet. It is brand new, but we've seen a lot of people tinker with it. What's encouraging about that is it means it is accessible and easy. I built two of them already.
Speaker B:
Um, I love it.
Speaker A:
Yeah. One that finds Barbies. My wife is a Barbie collector.
Speaker B:
I love it.
Speaker A:
And that was kind of fun. That was fun to do. And then I did another one for retro video games that I did a publishing. but that was for me, you know, and what they both worked and they were both really easy to set up. Um, and then it just became a matter of like, okay, you know, how do you make this useful? How do you build filters, et cetera? But I, in building these tools, especially like Catalog API, UCP, what has surprised you about this?
Speaker B:
I, I think probably the, the range of creativity that you see from, from developers. Starting to, you just, you just mentioned two great use cases that, that you built, uh, yourself. And that's what gives me the most excitement is you have, so we see right now so many people tinkering and playing with all of this. Um, I don't know if it was like totally surprising, but it's, it's really great validation that if you create this catalog, there's going to be a lot of excitement around it. And it's been so, it's great to see nothing's broken out yet, but it's only a matter of time before some folks really break out, um, in this. So just the, the pent-up demand, and I think just in general right now, the amount of building that's going on, um, out in, in the world, uh, and people exploring, building new products, businesses, different ways of experiencing is just an unbelievable explosion. And to see that energy be applied here is, is really cool.
Speaker A:
I agree. It's been, yeah, it's fun to see. Well, fun to see like builders online that previously had not played with, you know, Shopify as a space doing it.
Speaker B:
Correct.
Speaker A:
For the first time. And it's because of UCP.
Speaker B:
Yeah, 100%.
Speaker A:
Yeah, that's been fun. So, okay, one interesting stat we found. I suspect that these, these LLM referrals, once the person has like, hey, you know, found the thing that they want, the LLM succeeded. And it produced a thing I want to buy based on a question I asked, I think the conversion intent there is massive.
Speaker B:
Massive.
Speaker A:
What do you have stats around this?
Speaker B:
Yeah, it's, uh, if you compare it, it's, it's more than 2x that conversion rate coming from, um, another referral channel. So it is, um, and a lot more of it, I think also interesting for for everyone to know is more of the traffic as on a relative basis gets directed to PDPs, product pages versus homepage.
Speaker A:
Yes.
Speaker B:
And I think that's, you're just thinking about kind of the flow of your site as well as a merchant. A lot more entry points will happen via PDP because you're coming in from a referral, you kind of, or ChatGPT, you did a lot of research, now you're ready to go. You click, you land on that PDP. How do you either convert it right there? Obviously the conversion intent's really high, or if it's not quite right for whatever reason, how do you make sure you have the right category kind of expansions, upsells, cross-sells to get people to understand the wider assortment of products that you have? And so I think just thinking about with these new channels, how does it change how you even conceptualize the flows within your site? Um, because you're gonna have a lot less people coming straight in via that homepage, seeing the branding and merchandising, and then going out. A lot more PDP convert. And then how do you tell the story of your broader brand? I think it's gonna be one of the very interesting flow changes that's— that we're seeing is gonna happen, um, over the coming years.
Speaker A:
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Speaker B:
Yeah, the, the trend is, you know, 2, 3, 4x, you know, year over year, certainly depending on the category and type, but it's, it's growing really fast. Still a small base, right? Like it's still a very small base. Um, but it's growing very, very fast. Um, and so I think, and I think one of the things that's often even, uh, not fully understood, and there's nobody who has great data around this is a lot of what we can see is people click through, right? So that, that's growing really fast and made that purchase. Um, but there's likely a lot more research that's happening within these platforms.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
And then people just branded search Google in. And so your direct traffic is also likely kind of somewhat correlated with how well your, your visibility is in the AI channel. So it's growing really fast on a direct basis. I think it's likely growing even more on an indirect kind of influenced, um, perspective. You just don't see the click coming to the site directly, but it's coming back in via maybe just traditional branded search or navigational query within Google.
Speaker A:
Uh, so both those— I agree with the premise. I think this is true. I do. I think it's like, it is just a thing that is difficult to track. And for whatever reason, that's self-inflicted other than, you know, people going back and Googling a brand name or a term. And I think it's absolutely— it's growing. And, you know, at the start we were like, hey, you know, what's the advantage of Shop Identity? Shop Pay is convenience. Well, I mean, what does— if I'm not sure which item to buy and I need to buy it and I don't want to blow $100 figuring it out, well, you know, I can— I have a tool that will just go do that research for me. So why wouldn't I? So I think like conceptually there is no reason to think this is not going to happen. It's just a question. I think the question is like when, not if.
Speaker B:
Correct. And then everyone being, you know, I think what we want to help, you know, everyone merchants do is just be prepared. 'Cause that shift is, it's happening, it's changing, it's still a small base, but growing really fast. And then how do you position yourself as a merchant to be unbelievably successful? Um, as those, those tides continue to rise.
Speaker A:
All right, so you've got, you have insider info. How, what is the trick, right? What, what do we do to prepare?
Speaker B:
I mean, I think it goes back to, I mean, I think the, the good news is, I think, you know, a little biased here, but be on Shopify, be part of catalog, all of those things is, is very important. But, but then really thinking through, you know, as we talked about, um, getting your product descriptions, getting all the information about your brand really well structured. And really comprehensive in ways that people are going to search and, and think about and prompt for, for your product. So again, just have that conversation with the AI agents, all the different models. How are you discovering this? How are you not? And use that to, to come back. And then I think also think about your flows, right? If you have more people coming in via PDP, we talked about how that can change how you on-ramp, but then things like CRM and email and messaging become even more important to help people educate after that purchase through a PDP. To create loyalty to your brand so they come back to you on the next time.
Speaker A:
Is there any way for me as the merchant to see what the Shop Network knows about my customers, or are we too soon here? Too soon. Darn. Yeah, because there's potential there to do like really cool, like, demographic data identity graphs.
Speaker B:
It's something that we're considering. I don't know if it's like a whole set of things, but yeah, there, there's a lot of cool stuff there. I agree.
Speaker A:
Yeah. I mean, just, there's so many directions to go, right? How do you know which is the right way to go? Yes.
Speaker B:
Yes.
Speaker A:
The other thing, you know, with something like Catalog API or UCP, it, a query goes in and then Shopify decides what products it's going to return. Are— is there preference given to products that have, or like, bigger brands versus smaller brands, or are we agnostic about the size of the store?
Speaker B:
Yeah, I think, you know, in general, agnostic. And the models themselves, the providers, we're returning, you know, come in with a series of effectively queries, we'll return a, a big list of, of brands, and then a lot of the final ranking will happen on the on the side of the partner. Uh, right. And I think what we're seeing is actually though, what's, what's amazing is that, um, in general, not just within Shopify Brands, I think all brands are based on relevance doing very well within Shopify. I think what we're seeing is that Shopify Brands versus non-Shopify Brands do extremely well within these agentic channels, in part because Shopify merchants have some of the most unique and best inventory and products in the world. And so when you have people searching for, you know, great sweatshirts to walk around in San Francisco, that is likely gonna be a Shopify brand who has a sweatshirt just for that use case versus one of the big box brands who might dominate on Google for just typing in, you know, good hoodie. But ChatGPT is gonna be able to return something much, much more specific. And that's where Shopify brands and merchants thrive because of the amazing, uh, products that, that are there.
Speaker A:
Is there a feature that you think, you know, shipped recently that you're like, man, I really wish people would pay attention to this? Because sometimes you ship so much stuff, it is easy to miss things.
Speaker B:
So one thing that I think is really under the radar a little bit is we brought I know you, uh, had Samir on a while ago talking about B2B. In B2B moving down market. So B2B within Shopify used to be restricted just to Plus merchants. And now B2B is available to, to any merchant on any plan. And I always advocate to merchants, start selling like wholesale and B2B is a huge growth lever that is often underappreciated the size of that and using Shopify B2B. Using Collective, reselling to other merchants or other businesses is often a, a growth opportunity that, uh, I think sometimes is missed. And so I encourage like merchants to go look at that B2B. It's making a lot of progress there. It's coming down to all plans so anyone can use it. Um, and in a world of Vagentik, that is obviously where that is, but there's these other big, big pools of, of growth. For merchants that can tap into and have a lot of success.
Speaker A:
And we've had— I've set up so many wholesale programs and B2B programs over the years. I was so excited to see B2B expand to all plans because I know its usefulness to a business. Yeah. So pretty thrilled with that. And, you know, makes it easier to— for some people like that was the holdup to get them to migrate to Shopify. So it's definitely a nice value add. Across the board. Um, but like between that and Collective, it makes it very easy, you know, and retailers can make good customers if you give them a chance.
Speaker B:
100%.
Speaker A:
Uh, so let's do some predictions. What do you think, uh, 3 years, 5 years out, are we going to have websites or is everything just like purely voice interface? Are we back to that?
Speaker B:
I may be old school and maybe I think what will happen is in the same way that, um, there is still direct mail is actually still one, still an amazing channel. I think websites won't be quite direct mail, but I think websites will be still very important 5 years from now. I think both merchants are going to want to have a place to merchandise. And I think consumers are still going to want a great place to browse and really understand the brand and a story. I think there's no question websites will become, I think, a relatively smaller portion of the pie, but I think they'll, they'll still serve a purpose and still be, be actually an incredibly important part of the, of the mix, um, for, for merchants.
Speaker A:
Any, any other predictions?
Speaker B:
I, the thing I always tell is like, you know, as excited as I am about Agentic, I actually think what, where things get scarce is often in things that are, uh, kind of under, uh, not looked at. And so I think offline advertising, audio, TV, direct mail, I just mentioned, I think some of these channels in a world that is much more digital, uh, I think it's often underlooked how big some of those opportunities still are. And certainly in-person retail's there. So I would just, we're very excited about digital. You're gonna have all these new interfaces. I think you'll see, continue to see actually a lot of alpha and upside in going kind of counterintuitive into offline marketing channels. B2B, which is still just a little bit old school in some parts of it, and then in-person retail are actually going to be places where I would encourage merchants to take a little bit of a look there. Prepare for the future on the, on the AI side, but don't overlook, um, things that have just persisted for long, long periods of time.
Speaker A:
Yeah. No, that's really good advice. The new stuff, the shiny toys, the novel things are always fun and you want to stay ahead of the curve on that. But the tried and true, the things that have been around for decades, there's a reason.
Speaker B:
There's a reason.
Speaker A:
Yeah. Direct mail, which I mean, that was the thesis to why we invested in Postpilot, which does direct mail. Right? Let's see, do I have it? And Uh, I'm fascinated by connected TV ads. I think there's like a lot of opportunity there, you know, especially like it was Pluto or Pluto or Tubi is recently is like just huge. I discovered, right? I use it now. Um, love it. But yeah, you could tell like based on the ads that show up there, I'm like, oh man, these are just like odd, very specific targeted YouTube ads. It's funny.
Speaker B:
Totally. Um, and they're really good and really effective for, uh, for merchants to play with.
Speaker A:
So, all right, give us, uh, give us one takeaway. I'm in my Shopify admin, what am I doing?
Speaker B:
So I think my biggest focus would be go check out the Agentic channels and go figure out how to make sure your metadata, your descriptions are really on point for both Google search, like traditional, but then also really to get, get noticed and picked up by all of the AI engines. I think it'll be a very good use of time to spend really optimizing those, that information, that metadata.
Speaker A:
And it's kind of fun. It is. It is fun.
Speaker B:
It's fun.
Speaker A:
I had fun doing it.
Speaker B:
Yes.
Speaker A:
Yeah. If for no other reason, just give it a shot.
Speaker B:
Exactly.
Speaker A:
But okay. Archie Abrams, Head of Growth at Shopify. Thank you so much.
Speaker B:
Thank you. That was fun.
Speaker A:
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