See and control how your store sells inside AI
"Being on Shopify means you get access to agentic automatically, out of the box."
Your store is already selling inside ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Shop, whether you've noticed or not. Aaron Glazer, Director of Product at Shopify, joins Kurt to explain Agentic Storefronts, the new Admin experience that finally makes that presence visible and controllable.
The buyer behavior has already shifted. Shoppers now have long conversations with an AI about a whole use case, a camping trip, a problem, a gift, and arrive at your store already sold. Agentic Storefronts shows you the traffic, sales, and conversions from each AI channel, plus the real queries surfacing your products, so you can see where you rank and where you don't.
Aaron and Kurt get into why this is the new SEO, why complete product data is the whole game, how Shopify Catalog structures your catalog for agents, what native checkout in an AI channel actually means, and why you stay the merchant of record with the customer relationship intact. Plus a bonus on Rollouts and SimGem heading into BFCM.
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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.
Kurt • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swym. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swym actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could 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 wish lists for gifts and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this. Just not right now. Swym's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You can try it for free today at getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M. com slash Kurt. What the heck is an agentic storefront? That's what I hope to answer today on the unofficial Shopify podcast. I'm Kurt Elster, and I'm confused as to what we mean by agentic and agentic storefronts But I have an idea. I think I I know where this is going, right? We've we've talked about this, but I've got someone here who knows better than I do, Aaron Glazer, Director of Product at Shopify. Aaron, thank you for joining me.
Aaron • 01:36.060
Thanks for having me.
Kurt • 01:37.260
Yeah. We've been going, you know, we're doing this the series on additions, uh, addition spring twenty twenty six, the new features at Shopify. And yeah, our theme everywhere, as I have now put together, really refers to increased surface area online, right? You know, showing my my products, my brand beyond my storefront. You know, can I get this into AI. Can I get it recommended? That's what I I think the vision is here. Am I on the right path?
Aaron • 02:05.759
Absolutely. Um There's no denying that AI is becoming part of ev of many of our daily lives. I know it's certainly becoming a big part of my daily life. And that Commerce and shopping is really no exception to AI. And so as buyer behavior and as the capabilities of different AI and agentic channels are increasing. It's a place where merchants not only want to be, but they need to be. It's a big part of uh potentially the future of farmer.
Kurt • 02:38.200
And all right, I want to go, let's let's start with buyer behavior because I think if you don't understand that part, the rest doesn't necessarily make sense to you. Buyer behavior, you what are the it feels to me like you are preparing for a shift in buyer behavior in the near future. That is my feeling. Tell me about that buyer behavior.
Aaron • 03:00.959
Sure, it's one that works like we're all seeing it. And I certainly know that as I'm going in and I'm even shopping myself using different Agentic channels. We went from a world where you started out with an idea, whether it was something you needed to purchase, something you were researching, something you were interested in. And so many of those early or so many of those shopping patterns would start in Google. You'd search for something, you'd find a set of links, you'd find the ones that fit. Maybe as a couple. You went in there and then you went to the merchant storefront. You researched it when you were uh comfortable with whatever it was that you were looking for, you would buy it. Agentic has changed that. So in agentic, we're seeing that buyers, and you know, I I'm speaking from my own conversations here as well. are having longer conversations with the agents, not just about a specific product, but about a use case. You know, maybe I need something for a camping trip I'm going on. And so I'll talk with an agent about not just about the camping trip, but maybe about who's coming on the trip, where I'm going, and work with the agent to figure out what it is that I need for that camping trip. And so that that process of figuring out and understanding the products and the use cases for it and how I'm going to use it and how they're going to be part of what I need and even Getting me over the hump from I think it's something I'm interested into, I definitely need this, is actually happening with the agents. And so by the time a buyer hits uh merchant storefront, They're typically way more bought into that product than they would have been otherwise just coming organically from search. And so in Agentic, there's there's There's different flavors of it. They all typically start out with agent conversations. And then a buyer, there's buyer may end up on a merchant storefront. and finish the conversion there, or a buyer may transact natively in a channel such as uh Google Gemini or AI mode.
Kurt • 04:56.660
It's true. I used to, you know, I would I would do a lot of Google searches, right? I would try and find like listicle articles. You know, you you try and find uh a review source like a trusted review source like consumer reports or the wire cutter. And then suddenly my behavior became, well, I'm going to use an AI overview search like perplexity or ask chat JPT to do the research for me. And then, but once it had made a recommendation, you're right, by the time that site saw me the visitor for the first time, I am so much more likely to convert than I was before because I'm further down the funnel, even though they're seeing me for the first time. potentially, right? That research phase has already concluded. And so now I'm like, all right, I'm getting ready to decide between like my final picks. And so um uh di a definition here. When we we're saying we say AI, we say agentic, And we say agent, agent and agentic are referring to like AI is the technology, agentic is the embodiment, is the chatbot.
Aaron • 05:54.740
Essentially, it's that conversation, uh, you can think about it. It is that back and forth ability for you to interact with the AI system to work on whatever it is that you're trying to do.
Kurt • 06:07.780
And it I've I'm a developer, I'm a power user. I've I've gone so far as to my current iteration is a clawed code project that is essentially a really overkill personal shopper where I'm like, this is what I need, this is why, and you're gonna email me a dossier on this later today. does it. But you know, again, same deal. It's like certainly then by the time the top choice sees me for the first time, I just showed up and bought. And they're like, what is this? And so that's like part of what I want to get into here is You know, those type of visits, you really may not have, like unless you're looking for it, you may not have any analytics or insight into, you know, what happened there with that customer and their conversation, how they found me. And so there's um the agentic admin in Shopify. That's new. And I've been having fun poking at it in in different stores at verticals and and seeing uh what what these agentic uh surfaces are doing. Tell me about agentic admin.
Aaron • 07:06.460
Yeah, so it's a new admin experience called Agenc Storefronts, and what it it does is it gives merchants out of the box access to major AI channels that they're showing up on, such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google AI Mode, and Gemini. And merchants As with everywhere in Shopify, merchants are in control in terms of whether or not they want to appear for native checkout or they want to appear within those agentic channels uh for for direct purchase. as well as access into insights on how their products are showing up in Agentic channels. And we do that via information from the Shopify catalog. And so what the Shopify catalog does is it takes all the messy info about products and it cleans all the product info so that it's really digestible and understandable for agents. So when you're having that conversation or I'm having that conversation about camping gear or going camping, the agents can very easily and quickly reach for the information that they need to have that conversation with me. me and say, hey, you know what? That tent you have, it's probably not going to work. But here are a few other options of tents that you might be interested in looking at.
Kurt • 08:15.040
So when I give like you know I'm my personal shopper prompt, I'm like, hey, you gotta go find me whatever. Assuming I give that to you know something like ChatGPT, it can query Shopify's catalog, can't it?
Aaron • 08:27.919
Yeah.
Kurt • 08:29.020
And that's you know that's this uh UCP Universal Commerce Protocol. That's a big part of this. But that's you know, if I'm not a developer, I don't necessarily care about that. Shopify's handling it for me. You know, if I'm the Shopify merchant, how do I opt into this? Like what are the conditions I meet and then now I am a part of, you know, my products can potentially get served to ChatGPT by Shopify via Universal Commerce Protocol.
Aaron • 08:54.960
So the great thing is you don't need to do anything. So being on Shopify means you get access to AgenTech automatically out of the box. Within your AgenTec storefronts, you can see which channels you're eligible for. and manage whether or not you want to allow direct purchasing integration with eligible channels or not or just stick to referral sources where those channels, if they get surface your content, would just refer that Refer a link to your storefront. And then you get these very knowledgeable buyers coming into your storefront. Under the hood, it does leverage UCP or the Universal Commerce Protocol in many cases. So that The agents, if they're doing direct native transactions, can transact natively on those services, such as with Google, AI mode, and Gemini But these are things that a merchant doesn't have to worry about. Merchant can just decide, hey, you know what? This makes total sense for my business and my customers. And my customers are here researching my products. I want to be there too. And then they get it all for free out of the box from Shopify.
Kurt • 09:50.660
All right, so I'm opted in by default. But let's just say, you know, trust but verify. In my store, where do I go to confirm what you say is true that I've just I'm opted into this by default.
Aaron • 10:01.620
So you'll see on your agentics storefront's page. you'll see analytics as well and you'll be able to see the data that's coming directly from those channels so that you can understand not just what channels are you appearing in, but what is the traffic and what are the sales you're actually generating as a result of appearing in those channels. And it's awesome. For any merchant that hasn't spent time in there, I think it's magical to see the amount of traffic that you're getting coming in from it, as well as the differences in conversion rates when you get these buyers that have already started the purchasing process. on an agentic channel and what happens when they land on your surface.
Kurt • 10:36.700
It even am I right in interpreting where it says like recent searches where your products appeared? Are those real?
Aaron • 10:42.839
So they are. So we're able to gather some data in terms of where products, your products are appearing on Agentic Types searches. as well as give you information about those products and and if there's some helpful tips we can give you in terms of how to even improve those products for use with agentic, then that surface there as well.
Kurt • 11:02.820
So maybe I did my job too well. I have yet to see it tell me how to do the I've yet to have it suggest improvements to me. It's just like your, you know, your products are synced, your policies are up to date. And you could test a query. And you know, you test it and it works like you'd think. Um what are what would like a an example optimization be that it might suggest?
Aaron • 11:24.600
It could be um uh suggesting to uh it fill out the product description as an example, and just to use a very basic example. But you're a pro, Kurt. So that that could be part of it.
Kurt • 11:36.120
Yes. Yeah, that's my issue. I gotta really just kind of like soft pedal it a little bit, you know. See if See if we can half ass this and see if it uh tries to bail me out. Like, look, buddy, we need to talk. Um the okay, and then the other one I saw in here, and I only just noticed this. Relevant searches in, and then it's a category with a drop-down. That's kind of cool. Where where are these categories coming from? I mean like they all it makes sense.
Aaron • 12:02.220
Yeah, so we have information through the Shopify catalog in terms of categorization of these products. So we're able to give you more information to just Help you understand how you're you're participating in Agentic. Um we're trying to bring the mystery of Agentic and the mystery of this this new evolution of commerce. And we're we're trying to demystify it through the identic storefronts and really bring merchants along and and and give you the control and the insights the every merchant is asking for
Kurt • 12:31.320
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Aaron • 13:50.319
They are or their searches, there's obviously a human behind there who would have to be.
Kurt • 13:54.399
But like I, you know, I gave it like, hey, I'm looking for XYZ, whatever. And then the AI spun up, you know, its own agent that then went and made the query. And so really Shopify's seeing or I'm seeing the query most likely I am seeing the query that the agent made on behalf of the customer.
Aaron • 14:10.880
Uh most likely.
Kurt • 14:12.560
Yeah. Like I mean there's no way to know either way, but it's kind of neat.
Aaron • 14:17.120
Yeah, there's no way to know for sure, but it's um uh it's giving you that insight into like how are the products being displayed, what are the types of queries that are being asked for where these products are showing up.
Kurt • 14:28.420
Yeah, you you now know like, okay, this is the exact phrase that is triggering these products to be returned. Yeah. To actual real-world searches. Yep. That's cool. Yeah, oh for sure.
Aaron • 14:41.220
It's uh we're amazing. We're excited to be able to bring that type of insight out for merchants.
Kurt • 14:46.340
And then there's a toggle. Allow Shopify to manage for me. And it's it's check to yes, and then it shows the channels. uh chat GPT, Microsoft Pilot, other channels, and shop. And if I turn it off, then my options are like auto enroll in new storefronts, yes. Show catal shop by catalog access. Shopify catalog access, yes. Is that just saying like this is my inclusion in UCP?
Aaron • 15:11.220
What it does is um as I was saying before, one of the things that is so important with agentic is it mer the is ensuring the merchants stay in control. And so what this does is it allows merchants to stay in control and ultimately you have the decision how you want to show up and where you want to show up. Now you can never prevent an agent from displaying your products. It's sort of like Google. If it's in the Google index and Google is indexed to you, it's public.
Kurt • 15:35.980
They can do what they want with that.
Aaron • 15:37.340
Public info. But a merchant is in control in terms of whether or not they want their info distributed via the shops like catalogs. So that organized set of information that makes it really easy for agents to find you in the Shopify catalog. So you can control that, as well as whether or not native checkout is available through that channel for you.
Kurt • 15:54.680
Mmm. Tell me about native checkout in uh an Agentic channel.
Aaron • 16:00.040
So uh a good example of that would be Google AI mode in Gemini. Um and uh merchants can choose whether or not they want to participate in native checkout, which is essentially like a buy now button. on a Google surface, which allows a consumer to buy seamlessly buy a product surface through an AI chat or AI conversation right within that conversation.
Kurt • 16:24.100
Hmm. Is that processed through Shop Pay through my checkout or through Google?
Aaron • 16:34.740
Yeah, it's still the merchants checkout. So it's it's your checkout, but it's powered via UCP through those services.
Kurt • 16:44.040
Excellent.
Aaron • 16:44.680
Um it's really cool. So merchants are always in control. Um it's just uh it's just another way of bringing your product. uh to a consumer and and finishing that transaction on those other surfaces as opposed to on your storefront.
Kurt • 17:01.300
How much does this overlap with SEO? Right? Like I need a complete product listing. I need it in a ideally a more machine-readable way via you know category meta fields. And I am going to simultaneously get benefit in agentic storefronts. And I would suspect a lot of this will benefit general traditional SEO as well.
Aaron • 17:25.419
Yeah, they they all work together. There's no single part of um SEO or uh GEO With generative engine optimization or AEO agentic engine optimization.
Kurt • 17:40.140
Agentic makes more sense
Aaron • 17:42.160
There's so there's there's so many terms that are coming out um from that angle, but it all works together. It's it's overall it is your presence online and it's your presence in a format that those agents can consider And so from an agency standpoint, the additional piece that SEO didn't need was that very defined product data. And so Shopify Catalog helps to fill that gap to make sure that your product info is formatted and constructed in a way that makes it so easy for agents to find the right product at the right time and surface it in the right conversation.
Kurt • 18:16.760
The that is such an important piece of it, right? Having the data in a way that it is easily understood and ingested. programmatically, you know, by a machine. Like that turned out to be the hard part to solve was taking this really quite different data, wildly varied, and then structure it. Like the level of the all the the various category meta fields and categories that pop up and it has as you fill out. I think that's probably like if I want to pick an optimization strategy for like it's completeness of listing, isn't it?
Aaron • 18:51.800
Well and not just that, but every every merchant is able to to use Shopify however you want to use Shopify. And so what we do is we make sure that you can continue using Shopify the way you've used it, but we can take that info and make sure that it's prepared in a way that is easily accessible and understandable. And getting the right product to the right agent at the right time sounds like a trivial problem, but it's it's a super complex problem and one that we're lucky that we've been able to solve for merchants and for agents
Kurt • 19:26.299
And even you know, when you consider like, oh well, you know, we could solve this for one store, try to solve it for every store now in the future across a billion products. I can only imagine the the engineering feat that was.
Aaron • 19:40.700
It's massive. Um luckily um I get the opportunity to work with some of the most amazing engineers. and product managers and designers and other crafters here at Shopify. And this is a problem that we've all been really working on and dedicated to to make sure that we can Not just allow merchants to succeed, but allow merchants to succeed with the visibility and understanding of how it's working. And that's what we're trying to bring through Agentix Storefronts as well.
Kurt • 20:06.600
Are there I've got this one place where my Gentec I stuff lives? Are there a while ago we had knowledge base? Are there other apps places I need to be checking, looking? uh to make sure I've got you know my my agentix settings correct.
Aaron • 20:24.840
Uh not not now. Um you'll be able to see the information that you need in that agentix storefront services. or the agentic storefront service as it pertains to how you would show up in agentic. But there are general storefront items, so just making sure your storefront is fully set up, it's available. for sale. Good example being uh you don't have a password on your homepage and you're not password protected.
Kurt • 20:49.000
So there's that would that would make it tough to buy.
Aaron • 20:51.380
Yeah, so it makes it really tough to buy. But there's things like that that are on slightly different surfaces, but those are just general store setup.
Kurt • 20:57.620
Yeah, okay. Not like AI specific. And actually, you know, if you want an easy way to check for those, um launch checklist. I m isn't the the first party Shopify app um that I've used that's from last year that's got uh it'll run through this as soon as it run the store gets a checklist and be like, hey, here's what you might have missed, double check it.
Aaron • 21:14.260
Yeah, assuming you're up and running and ready for sale, then agentix storefronts is the only place you need to go.
Kurt • 21:19.140
If I'm I'm a Shopify merchant, I have reviewed my many Shopify Editions updates. For you, what's the first thing I do?
Aaron • 21:27.560
I would hop into Agentix storefronts. I would take a look at the information that's within there. I'd start, I'd see for the first time this information over what type of traffic and what the sales are looking like for me from different agentic services. And then I would take a look at the search intelligence, which is sort of that information, the product information. you were seeing on the page and really get a sense of how am I showing up online? Is this does this match my own mental model of how I thought I was showing up online? And if there's any recommendations, then I would I would go through the recommendations and and action them.
Kurt • 22:00.740
You know, one of the and you're right, there's you'll be surprised at the stuff that you do and don't return queries for, don't rank for um within the catalog. And it may give you ideas. You know, like we're w we work on a tea store and I was surprised to learn that, you know, this like apparel line that they had that we ignored because it's like, okay, what I don't care about t-shirts when I'm buying tea. Well, turn out there's a ton of people who are actually searching for that particular thing. We didn't know it. And we would not have known it without uh uh search intelligence showing us what like these these AI queries are.
Aaron • 22:36.919
Yeah.
Kurt • 22:37.400
So one example.
Aaron • 22:39.559
Well for sure. And and because part of what's fun about it is agentic can bring consumers to products that they never thought that they needed or didn't know existed. Um, there's this evolution that's happening over, you know, typically you would type a search query, you would type a question, or you would type something that you already knew, and you would be almost mid-funnel at that point. Because you you're you're you already know what you want. Whereas with Agentic, you might be starting upstream. Using my camping analogy, you might not even know you want to go camping. You might be like, hey, I'm thinking about a vacation and want to do something in the outdoors And so camping could could evolve from there. And so you could be taken in different pathways that you weren't expecting through a Gentec and find t-shirts for a tea company.
Kurt • 23:24.780
Yes, exactly.
Aaron • 23:26.940
Or gifts. I'm sure it makes a great gift.
Kurt • 23:29.500
Gifts as well. Yeah, give I suspect there's a lot of like gift queries. that are occurring in there. It's for now that I know, you know, have you talked to you and know like, oh, this is what these these search queries are I when we get off this call, I'm like, I'm gonna go through these these search queries. I'm really curious to see if, you know, that there's a pattern and you could try and work backwards to like, okay, this is what people are asking. You know, and we're getting referenced uh in you know, chat GPT, copilot, whatever.
Aaron • 23:57.680
Yeah, no, totally.
Kurt • 23:59.200
Tell me about Shop as an agentic storefront for Shopify store, right? Because Shop is is listed as one of our agentic channels.
Aaron • 24:06.179
So Shop has a new agentic purchasing experience that was released, not as part of this editions. It was released uh previously, but you can go in and do that agentic type conversation right within Shop app. um which is a magical purchasing experience um as well. And you get access to every shop by merchant that is um enrolled in and eligible for shop would be listed within there and available for buyers to go in and Find you.
Kurt • 24:35.380
What's funny is, you know, looking at these results in this agentic channel, SHOP is the one, you know, that really is is very successful currently. uh in all the the client stores I've looked at. Like all of them will get and they they do get sales for chat GPT, which is cool. But in that one is shop not the winner. You know, shop as a sales channel really I think is is a worthwhile endeavor to at least experiment with.
Aaron • 24:58.740
For sure. It's it's a channel I think that is um underestimated and fantastic.
Kurt • 25:04.580
See it you know, when people jump into the Sigentic analytics and see this, I think then they'll Hopefully we'll understand.
Aaron • 25:11.240
No, I I I think it's it's one of the magical parts of this. It's it's all about understanding, getting the visibility and really understanding how you are a part of Agentic and bringing merchants right to the forefront of it.
Kurt • 25:22.240
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Aaron • 26:25.400
You know, I um I'm sure it's uh I'm sure we use a lot of tokens, but um, you know, it's just it's the new way of working. It's the new way of building. And I think it's it's it's part of how we bring uh this magic so quickly.
Kurt • 26:42.540
What uh in this release, what are you most proud of, Erin?
Aaron • 26:46.080
I I I honestly I know we've been talking about it a bunch here, and I'm biased, but uh agentic storefronts is awesome. Um I really love that we've brought the Agentic surfaces to merchants. Um we've also um really rolled out a lot of great things with Shop by Catalog. And Shopify Catalog is available for developers to go and use and build their own applications from. And I think that that is that in and of itself, you know, you're talking about your personal agent or your personal shopper. Being able to build on top of this and all of a sudden for any application, anything you dream up, having the ability to go and access this vast catalog of products is incredible. So it's it really takes it from one of the most complex parts, and I know you said it, but like one of the most complex parts of building things like this is just knowing where the products are. And now for a developer, that's solved. So now you can focus on the consumer part of what is the what is the actual consumer experience you want to bring? And and what can I dream up? You know, what what would be amazing to have and It's just a few taps away. Just try it out.
Kurt • 27:57.660
Are there what do you think people will build with Shopify Catalog? Like I can think of all kinds of stuff to attempt.
Aaron • 28:06.700
I have seen so many great um uh great ideas and fun things that people have done. Um I've seen people curate specific stores or experiences just on them. Even within the additions, we have a bunch of examples built on top of Shopify catalog of different stores that we've built out. But there's amazing ideas you could do it from motion video. Um there's a there's a store that's allows you to go and identify things in photos. Um, you know, if you wanted to build like the Kurt store. And you could build it something based on the catalog where you're actually able to to build these experiences around you. It it's it's so cool. You can do personal experiences like your shopper. You can do experiences for other people.
Kurt • 28:48.419
Yeah, my my personal shopper project is is clawed code, but you're right really with what you've provided here, it would not be difficult at all for me to extend that and go, hey, your preference is now the Shopify catalog, and here's how you search it and access it.
Aaron • 29:02.360
Yeah.
Kurt • 29:03.000
You know, I I could make it do it. And then it would get, you know, it would not be relying on web search. Now it's getting like actual real catalog data. Think I might do that.
Aaron • 29:12.000
You should and send it to me if you do. One of the fun things of Shopify, though, is there's so many amazing entrepreneurs There's so many amazing entrepreneurs that have crafted incredible products that sell on Shopify. So the fact that you can access those uh those amazing items that people have created through Shopify Catalog is is for me it's one of the most magical parts of building on top of it.
Kurt • 29:35.900
It is. I much prefer it when it's like, okay, I know I'm buying from a Shopify store. Partly just I'm like, hey, ShopPay, this is secure and convenient. Right. But then on top of it, like I, you know, the larger meaning of you know, I am supporting an entrepreneur, a family, a small business. It's satisfying.
Aaron • 29:53.120
Yeah. And I think that's one of the, that's one of the magical parts of certainly building these products is we're building them for the for the commerce and we're building them for transaction, but we're also building it for the people behind it and the entrepreneurs and the people who are up late at night working on these products and and figuring out what do they want to do next and what do they want to build. Or even the next entrepreneur that is thinking about taking a risk and starting something. So it's pretty magical.
Kurt • 30:22.540
I would all right it The the system, you know, really I'm opted in. It should if like if I go check it, I it should just be working. If it's not, it's gonna tell me, hey, this is what your your product catalog needs, what your listings need. Really like, you know, you left your descriptions and photos out. Like, okay, I I understand. Um, and then we beyond that, is there anyone this isn't right for? You know, other stores of like, okay, well, you know, not quite, not quite ready for you yet.
Aaron • 30:50.360
No. Um, so Shop like Agentics Storefronts is is It's designed and it's there for everyone. Part of the global rollout of agentic across different surfaces is happening country by country. So if it's not there for you, you might be in a region that is not supported by some of those agency. Surfaces. So for example, Chat GPT. But from a merchant perspective, no. It's there and it's ready for everyone. And I encourage everyone to go check it out and take a look and engage with it.
Kurt • 31:20.960
And I found in uh in my settings there's a toggle for, you know, automatically include new channels. And do we know what the new channels are? I mean, any hint?
Aaron • 31:31.900
No hints, but uh what I can say is that we put that toggle there because we want merchants to be able to participate in these channels the second they can. And so this just makes it easier to constantly stay at the forefront of Agentic, but also have the opportunity to stay in control. And so that if there's something that you don't want to participate in, um you you're in control. It's your choice.
Kurt • 31:53.580
Are vendors are other par say partners excited by the opportunity? Do they see the potential here?
Aaron • 32:00.500
They do. They do. They're super excited about this. Both from the opportunity of Agentic and I think there's a really amazing role that they can play in terms of helping consumers. accomplish something, helping shoppers accomplish something. But there's a bigger thing that happens here, right? When we talk about Shopify, we think about shop flying, we think about those entrepreneurs It's also this opportunity to start connecting you, like connect you, Kurt, to somebody who you never would have found before, selling a product that you didn't even know that you wanted. Until you found it and realized, oh wow, this solves something uh that I wasn't able to solve before. And that's magical. And it's magical for everyone along the process.
Kurt • 32:45.380
That it's cool. Uh, you know, I I had that experience over the weekend. I had new headphones and I'm like, man, these are sweaty And I was but I'm like, these headphones get great reviews. And I asked ChatGPT and it came back with it's like, oh well you should change to the earpads. There's aftermarket earpads and check these. And sh it was like it it was a link to a Shopify store. And you know what? I Within an hour I'd bought them.
Aaron • 33:07.840
Amazing.
Kurt • 33:08.640
Yeah. And I mean it was exactly that kind of that path you had described. Um and you know, I didn't have to get fancy with my research agent or anything. It's like it just open chat GPT and it was like, hey, I got a problem. What do I do about this? My ears are sweaty, Aaron. And you know, it was happy to find a Shopify store for me.
Aaron • 33:24.860
That's amazing. And it probably found a product you wouldn't have known had existed, and you may not have even known how to find that product. Um in a traditional world.
Kurt • 33:32.180
And that's my I had never heard of the the brand. It was uh Dacan and I'd never heard of it. I I purchased through their Shopify store, done.
Aaron • 33:42.020
That's awesome.
Kurt • 33:42.980
Yeah. It's cool. It is cool. Okay. Anything I should have asked, but didn't I think so.
Aaron • 33:52.500
We we covered a lot of ground there. Um I I think that um part of uh part of the magic here is um is just participating and being a part of AgenTec and starting to learn. Um the thing that I don't want I don't want to lose in agentic. And I think for merchants, it's really important is that while agentic changes part of the shopping experience, It doesn't change the customer relationship. It's still your customer. And so all of the things that you've done as a business to build up your business. um, whether it be how you engage within communities, how you market, all of those things are still really important. And so all of those activities are still things to continue building on as you embrace Agentic and go be a part of it and go learn.
Kurt • 34:46.560
I love the the thoughtful approach that is being taken here. There is a consistency about like about control. about guardrails, you know, about things working as the store owner, the brand owner, the business owner intends. Which is, you know, that's what's you know, there there is just there is backlash against AI, right? Even, you know, the AI doomerism, they call it online because it it gets engagement. And so I You know, when people are skeptical of a new technology as they should be, it is wonderful to see it deployed in this way, as you know, as opposed to like a uh damn the torpedoes, move fast and break things approach.
Aaron • 35:27.180
Yeah, we we've taken the approach like merchants are still in control, but at the same time on Shopify merchants have access to everything as fast as it's possible. If you're on Shopify, you've got access to everything that would be available. And there's so many people working behind the scenes that are making sure that you as a merchant on Shopify will be wherever your buyers are.
Kurt • 35:48.880
And there there you go. That's that everywhere theme again. Yeah. Um that's wonderful. Aaron Glazer, last time we talked, we talked about you told me about rollouts and simgem. As long as I have you here. Any updates there? Well when we talked rollouts was not yet available.
Aaron • 36:06.180
Rolits wasn't available, so Rolits is available. It's awesome. If you haven't tried it out, I would highly recommend you go try it. It's a great way to go and try and experiment with your new ideas. And go see and assess the impact, especially as we head towards a busy season in the fall. Now's a great time to start experimenting and trying some new things. So you can do that in rollouts. SimGym also got a feature edition. I don't think we chatted about it last time, but the ability to actually use or have your AI shoppers go and assess a single theme. So previously SimGem was launched as compare these two themes and tell me what the impact will be on uh real buyers using the AI shoppers. But now we can even deploy this the AI shoppers onto a single theme and get feedback, which Delivers actionable feedback for you as a merchant to understand, hey, it looks like uh my AI shoppers are getting trapped in this location or they're having trouble using my search. And then you can take that back and figure out what to do, whether it's change it because it's really obvious and you're ready to go, or if you want to run a new simulation, you can do that, or run an experiment with roll-its. The other cool thing on RolET is that it's not just for experiments, it's for any type of launch. So if you're running a um a sales or a sale over a weekend, for example. or some promotional event, you can go and stage it within there. Say I want to start it at this state, stop it on this state, and use rollets to manage the whole thing.
Kurt • 37:32.880
I imagine in uh in the coming months I'm going to get a lot of use at a rollouts.
Aaron • 37:37.440
I hope so. It's, you know, honestly, especially as we head into the uh the BFCM uh time period. It's one of these things that we really hope merchants take advantage of because it it allows you to set what you want to happen when you want it to happen. And then let you focus on other parts of that very busy weekend as opposed to worrying about is something going to happen at a specific date and time. We take care of that with Rolets.
Kurt • 38:04.539
That I mean, so useful, no you're no more staying up till midnight to launch a theme or a sale.
Aaron • 38:10.859
Exactly. Exactly. We got you.
Kurt • 38:13.460
Cool. Okay. But you know, back to the topic at hand, agentic storefronts. Where do I go from here? Where do I go learn more?
Aaron • 38:20.020
So to learn more, hop right into the Agentix Storefront. So go into your Shopify Admin and click on the Agentic Storefront button on the left side in the nav and get started.
Kurt • 38:30.920
Beautiful. Aaron Glazer, thank you so much.
Aaron • 38:33.800
Thanks for having me.
Kurt • 38:36.440
Hey, before you go, I was hoping you would check out our new app, Promo Party Pro. It is what I want to be the single best, easiest way to run a free gift with purchase promo on Shopify. We just put it live in the app store. We've got less than 50 users. We want your feedback. So if you need to run a free gift with purchase promo in the near future, install it, try it. There's a live chat. I check that all the time. And so if you have any issues at all. you know, or any suggestions on how we can make it even easier to use, let us know. We're happy to help. If you want to try it, search promo party in the app store. Promo Party Pro is the app. Give it a shot. It's got a free trial. Thanks.