The Shopify App Show

Martin Cox

The Shopify App Show goes deep with "indie" developers who build the most innovative stuff on the Shopify ecosystem. This is not a product demo show! Hosted by a 14-year ecosystem veteran, we skip the sales pitches, demos, and pricing talk. Instead, tune in for fun, 25-minute chats with founders about their craft, origin stories, and the specific use cases that help you win. Find the hidden gems that outperform the VC-backed giants. Real builders. No corporate fluff. Just great apps. Subscribe to build a better tech stack.

  1. 4d ago

    Test Now or Pray Later: Peak Season CRO with Georgi Petrov & Blake Waldron (Global Compass Series)

    Perfect preparation equals peak performance for peak season. Now is the time to be running the tests and optimizing your store for the busiest ecommerce trading period of the year. It's not the season for think pieces. Merchants just want to make more money. That's why we built the Global Compass series: short, sharp chats with the best of the Shopify ecosystem, from all over the world. Episode 3: making your store perform when it counts. Blake Waldron, founder of Checkout Components, joins from Melbourne, Australia. Georgi Petrov, co-founder of Uxify, joins from Sofia, Bulgaria. We cover what to A/B test right now, why mobile is more important than ever, how 404s and rage clicks kill conversions and why store credit is beating discounts. The countdown to BFCM is on. Sponsors The Global Compass Series is brought to you by: Shero Commerce - a Shopify Premier agency helping mid-market and enterprise brands migrate to, optimise and scale on Shopify. Since 2010 they've built e-commerce experiences across platforms, with expertise spanning migration, B2B, D2C, SEO, AEO and growth marketing. Their approach is simple: understand the challenge, build the right solution, and help brands grow for the long term. Native App Co - Blake made the case for store credit over further discounting in this one, and it's exactly why we built Stork Credit. Stork turns native Shopify store credit into cashback, loyalty and rewards automation. Cash, not points, and no theme edits.  In this episode: What to A/B test now, from trust badges to upsellsMobile is hundreds of devices, not oneWhy ChatGPT shoppers need brand content at checkout404s, dead ends and rage clicks: the silent conversion killersStore credit as the answer to "we don't want to discount further"Shopify Canvas: Squarespace-ification or the start of something big? 00:00 - Why CRO matters for peak season 00:34 - What to A/B test right now 01:48 - Testing the whole journey: devices and friction 02:52 - Mobile isn't one device 04:02 - Multiple Shopify checkouts live at once (and foldable phones) 05:08 - Different content for mobile vs desktop 05:59 - Checkout content for shoppers arriving from ChatGPT 07:06 - Broken links, 404s and rage clicks 08:57 - Does code freeze actually exist? 11:25 - Sponsor: Shero Commerce 11:54 - Store credit instead of deeper discounts 14:11 - Uxify's revenue-per-visitor program 15:30 - Automation vs hands on the wheel 16:51 - Shopify Canvas: first thoughts 19:37 - Who Canvas is really for 22:35 - Wrapping up

    Test Now or Pray Later: Peak Season CRO with Georgi Petrov & Blake Waldron (Global Compass Series)
  2. Sep 29

    Beyond the Black Friday Order: Global Shopify Insights with Order Editing: Global Compass Series #2

    Trying to reduce Shopify support tickets and increase order value this Black Friday? In this episode of The Shopify App Show, we cover Shopify order editing, post-purchase upsells, customer retention strategy, and how to prep your customer service team for peak season, with Kiril Climson, co-founder and CTO of Shopify app Order Editing, and Nicole Christopher from the Order Editing team. If you're a Shopify merchant looking to sell more this BFCM without drowning your support inbox, start here. On The Shopify App Show Global Compass Series we talk to the smartest people in the Shopify ecosystem to get real insights for how you can win this peak season. Guests: Kirl Climson, co-founder of Order Editing and joins us from Toronto.Nicole Christopher, commercial manager of Order Editing, joins us from Sydney.Sponsors: The Global Compass Series is brought to you by: Shero Commerce - a Shopify Premier agency helping mid-market and enterprise brands migrate to, optimise and scale on Shopify. Their approach is simple: understand the challenge, build the right solution, and help brands grow for the long term. The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify app support, keeping apps covered all over the world this peak season. Native App Co- Sammy brought up store credit in this one, and it's exactly why we built Stork Credit. Stork turns native Shopify store credit into cashback, loyalty and rewards automation. Cash, not points, no theme edits. In this episode: "One brand's 'least valuable' customers, the ones who came in on a November discount, turned out to have the highest lifetime value of anyone.""Running your A/B test on the night of Black Friday? It's too late.""Stop trying to beat last year's revenue. That's not a strategy, it's a scoreboard.""We built a waiting room for order edits. Turns out people don't mind waiting if you're honest about it.""Free express shipping at $100 converts better than a lot of physical 'free gifts' ever did.""Show one offer at a time. Four upsells fighting for attention converts worse than one.""The most important flow this peak season isn't the sale. It's what happens after."

    Beyond the Black Friday Order: Global Shopify Insights with Order Editing: Global Compass Series #2
  3. Sep 22

    Discounts Aren't The Only Answer for Black Friday: Global Compass Series #1

    Looking for Shopify Black Friday discount strategy tips that go beyond "discount everything"? In this episode of The Shopify App Show, we talk Shopify discount strategy, gift-with-purchase tactics, store credit, and how to reduce fashion returns caused by incorrect sizing, with Sammy Isseyegh, co-founder of Shopify app Discount Kit, and Gulnaz Khusainova, founder of Shopify sizing app EasySize. If you're a Shopify or Shopify Plus merchant prepping for BFCM and want to avoid a margin-killing race to the bottom on discounts, this one's for you. On The Shopify App Show Global Compass Series we talk to the smartest people in the Shopify ecosystem to get real insights for how you can win this peak season. Guests: Sammy Isseyegh, co-founder of Discount Kit, joins us from London. Since he was last on the show he's picked up a Shopify Build Award.Gulnaz Khusainova, founder of EasySize, joins us from Copenhagen. Her app helps fashion stores recommend the right size to customers, which is huge for conversion and returns when trade is busy. Sponsors: The Global Compass Series is brought to you by: Shero Commerce - a Shopify Premier agency helping mid-market and enterprise brands migrate to, optimise and scale on Shopify. Their approach is simple: understand the challenge, build the right solution, and help brands grow for the long term. The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify app support, keeping apps covered all over the world this peak season. Native App Co- Sammy brought up store credit in this one, and it's exactly why we built Stork Credit. Stork turns native Shopify store credit into cashback, loyalty and rewards automation. Cash, not points, no theme edits. In this episode: Why precise beats deep when it comes to discountsGift with purchase thresholds, and where store credit fitsWhy wrong size is the number one cause of fashion returnsCutting friction on the product page without overwhelming shoppersPersonalisation done right: how many questions is too many?Is the discount code dead? Plus agentic shopping and what to ignore this Black Friday00:00 - Welcome to the Global Compass Series: meet Sammy and Gulnaz 01:22 - Discounts: go precise, not deep 02:57 - Gift with purchase, and where store credit fits 03:44 - Peak season is a one to two month campaign 04:22 - Why wrong size is the number one fashion return 05:56 - Cutting friction on the product page 07:29 - Automating peak prep without losing personalisation 08:12 - Automatic discounts vs a personal customer journey 09:30 - How many questions is too many? 10:52 - Will AI ever just pick your size? 12:59 - Is the discount code dead? 14:32 - Agentic shopping: ignore it this Black Friday 15:45 - Wrapping up

    Discounts Aren't The Only Answer for Black Friday: Global Compass Series #1
  4. Sep 15

    Can you make a website optimize itself? Self Driving CRO with Georgi Petrov

    For every case study you see about A/B tests and CRO changing the world and printing money for merchants, there's unlimited, untold stories where these two methodologies are eternally in the too hard basket. At the end of the day, every Shopify store has the same s****y numbers. A hundred people land on your site, maybe three make it to the checkout. The rest just vanish, and we all get stuck trying to work out how to solve it. Georgi Petrov is the kind of guy who makes the rest of us feel like mere mortals. In the last 15 years, he has built iSenseLabs into the number one OpenCart plugin vendor, then carved out three companies from it: SMSBump, which sold to Yotpo, NitroPack, which sold to WP Engine, and he's involved in Consentmo too, which we featured on the podcast in a couple of other episodes with Elena Tsacheva. His newest venture, UXify, is AI agents that watch real shoppers, catch the exact moment they get frustrated, and fix it without spending time and money on A/B tests. So I got Georgi to share his story and I had to grill him about what UXify's AI agents actually do. We get into some juicy topics like why shoppers coming from ChatGPT convert 10 times better than everyone else, and a new tool that's basically TikTok for rage clicks. SponsorsThe Support Heroes provide support for app developers all over the world. If your app business is drowning in support tickets, head to thesupportheroes.com. Native App Co, building apps that don't feel like apps, including Stork Credit, Fish Wishlist, Product Pelican & Omnibus Owl. Check us out at nativeappco.com. In this episodeGeorgi's path from iSenseLabs (the number one OpenCart plugin vendor) to spinning out SMSBump, NitroPack and ConsentmoWhat UXify's AI agents actually do: watching real shopper behaviour to find friction and fix it liveReal numbers: one agent driving $200K/month in extra revenue, another lifting re-engagement by 30%Why ChatGPT-referred traffic converts at 10x the rate of regular trafficTalking to your data instead of drowning in dashboards, and unifying every AI tool under MCPReals: a "TikTok for rage clicks" feed showing the last 10 seconds before shoppers bailWhy layout shift (CLS) matters even more now that AI shopping agents are browsing sites themselvesHow much traffic you need before UXify is actually usefulYouTube Chapters00:00 - Intro 02:15 - From iSenseLabs to SMSBump, NitroPack and Consentmo 05:10 - What UXify's AI agents actually do 07:45 - Real wins: $200K/month and 30% re-engagement 08:56 - Winning back abandoned tabs 10:58 - Why ChatGPT traffic converts 10x better 13:07 - Ditching dashboards for an AI-first chat interface 14:52 - Correlation vs causation: weather, World Cup and email timing 15:50 - Unifying every tool under MCP 17:39 - What's next: Chrome extension and new agents 19:20 - Reals: TikTok for rage clicks 21:35 - Making layout shift (CLS) visible 22:40 - CLS as an agentic Core Web Vitals problem 24:12 - Real user monitoring vs synthetic testing 26:23 - How to get started and the traffic threshold that matters 28:16 - Wrapping up

    Can you make a website optimize itself? Self Driving CRO with Georgi Petrov
  5. Sep 8

    Shit in, Shit out. The Ugly Truth About Merchandising with Mark Rillera of Tagalys

    Merchandising and fashion sound easy, don't they? Everyone's been selling clothes online for years, so surely all the existing platforms have that covered. But this episode might change the way you think about that. I sat down with Mark from Tagalys, who specialise in search and merch for fashion. We talk about one of my favourite technical terms: shit in, shit out. If your data's a mess, it doesn't matter how good your AI, your merch tool, or anything else on your store is. We spent some time breaking down what good actually looks like. Mark name drops brands like Sheike and Represent in the UK, who balance brand storytelling with trade performance. I'm a big believer that if you get the stuff under the hood right, that gives brand, marketing and e-commerce teams the power to do good marketing that's creative and interesting - which is what fashion should be all about in the first place. Given the time of year, we also talk about how you need to be trading differently heading into peak season versus the rest of the year, and what you should be doing there. We talk about what the future looks like too - Shopify Sidekick, and whether that's the UX merchandising teams actually want, or whether we're moving to a world where you've got a Tinder swipe for merchandising instead. Mark's spent time on the agency side at MindArc and running e-commerce for the likes of Incu, Hype DC and Glue Store before landing at Tagalys, so he's seen the "get your data in order" problem from every angle. We get into what separates the merchants who nail merchandising from the ones drowning in spreadsheets, why the data problem people should have fixed five years ago still isn't fixed, how to restructure your collections for peak trade without torching your brand identity, the benchmarks you should be watching daily once peak hits, and why Mark thinks the next merchandising UX looks less like a chatbot and more like Tinder. Sponsor ReadsThe Support Heroes: dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. If your drowning in support tickets for your app heading into peak season, head to thesupportheroes.com. Product Pelican: If today's episode hit a nerve, it's probably because your product data isn't in the shape it needs to be. Product Pelican is a native PIM for Shopify - it helps you manage and audit your catalogue at scale so your merch tools, your AI, and your search actually have something good to work with. Shit in, shit out, remember. Check it out at apps.shopify.com/product-pelican. 00:00 - Why fashion merchandising is harder than it looks 02:04 - Why Tagalys exists: the physical store analogy 04:16 - What actually makes Tagalys different 05:39 - The merchants nailing it: Sheike and Represent 07:04 - The data mistake almost everyone's still making 09:05 - Shit in, shit out 12:14 - Peak trade prep: what to do right now 14:44 - Structuring collections for peak vs business as usual 16:13 - Day to day merchandising once peak hits 18:02 - Automating rules instead of manual pinning 19:07 - Getting the whole team reading the same data 20:45 - Feeding merchandising data into Sidekick, Klaviyo, MCP 21:44 - Has Tagalys built a Sidekick extension yet? 23:19 - The Tinder swipe future of merchandising 24:41 - What keeps Mark excited about e-commerce 32:12 - Wrapping up

    Shit in, Shit out. The Ugly Truth About Merchandising with Mark Rillera of Tagalys
  6. Sep 3 ·  Bonus

    "You can't fake real trust": Agencies and Influencers with Gavin McKew & Yash Chavan (live episode)

    Third and final bonus drop from Toronto. This one's got an agency lens on it: Gavin McKew is Director of Innovation at SHERO Commerce and doesn't hold back on what actually gets an app noticed inside a 75-person agency. Yash Chavan runs SARAL, an influencer marketing platform, and just launched SATHI, their new Shopify affiliate offering. We get into why Gavin doesn't trust app store reviews anymore, the one thing that gets an app instantly deleted from his test store (hint: it's about metafields), the build vs buy fight happening inside every agency dev team right now, and Yash's take on why AI-generated influencer content still can't fake real trust. Also a properly funny bit at the end about the best way to bribe an agency person. Video's rough as usual but the panel's razor sharp. If you're pitching apps to agencies or wondering how influencer marketing actually plays for B2B, this one's for you. Sponsor Reads This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing, and the team who helped make this Toronto live show happen. Head to thesupportheroes.com. And from us at Native App Co, a plug for Product Pelican, the native PIM for Shopify. Gavin's entire "if it's not using metafields and metaobjects, it's uninstalled" rant is basically our whole product philosophy said out loud. apps.shopify.com/product-pelican. In this episode: Gavin on why app store reviews don't cut it anymore for agency evaluationThe instant red flag: any app that doesn't feel native gets uninstalled on sightThe build vs buy fight playing out inside agency dev teams right nowYash on SARAL, influencer marketing as a numbers game, and why B2B and AI companies are jumping inWhy AI-generated influencer content still can't replace real trustSATHI's quiet, waitlist-only launch and its 100% trial-to-upgrade rateClosing bit: what's the best way to win over an agency person00:27 — Meet Gavin and Yash 01:39 — The state of the app ecosystem from inside an agency 03:40 — What signals Gavin actually looks for in a new app 05:17 — The instant red flag: apps that don't feel native 06:16 — The build vs buy fight inside every agency 09:14 — Meet Yash and SARAL: influencer marketing as a numbers game 11:04 — Why AI-generated influencer content still can't fake trust 13:05 — SARAL's go to market and agency partnerships 13:55 — SATHI's quiet launch and 100% trial-to-upgrade rate 14:48 — Building partnerships as an indie vs enterprise app 16:56 — Yash's strategy for his first Toronto trip 17:38 — Closer: how to actually win over an agency person 19:24 — Wrapping up

    "You can't fake real trust": Agencies and Influencers with Gavin McKew & Yash Chavan (live episode)
  7. Aug 31

    Shopify B2B: Why It's Time To Get On Board, with Josiah Hubbard

    B2B is quite possibly the biggest opportunity for most ecommerce businesses. The B2B numbers most people ignore: 87% of all US e-commerce transactions are B2BB2B orders run roughly four times bigger than B2COnly 2-10% of Shopify stores actually do B2B That's why this episode is an important one. B2B is one of my specialities on Shopify, so it was a pleasure to sit down with Josiah Hubbard, who's been at Helium Dev for eleven years. Helium's flagship app, Customer Fields, took off in 2018-2019 as merchants kept bending it sideways to hack together B2B registration flows. That misuse is what led them to build Onboard B2B, a dedicated app for vetting and approving business customer applications. We get into why B2B on Shopify used to mean tagging customers and duct-taping discount codes together, what changed when Shopify opened B2B to all plans (not just Plus) earlier this year, and how Josiah decides when to say no to a feature request even when a merchant's convinced it's a no-brainer. If you've ever talked yourself out of trying B2B because you don't have a "proper" wholesale operation, or you're an app developer wondering where the next opportunity is, this one's worth your time. Sponsor readsThis episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com. Speaking of B2B, this episode's brought to you by Fish Wishlist. Fish works natively with Shopify B2B, pulling in your B2B price lists by default, and lets customers turn their wishlists straight into quotes that land in Shopify as draft orders. If you're running B2B, it's built for exactly this. Check it out on the Shopify App Store. In this episode:The stats nobody's talking about: 87% of US e-commerce is B2B, but hardly any Shopify stores touch itHow Helium's Customer Fields app accidentally became the backbone of DIY B2B setups (and why merchants abused it into spaghetti flows)Why Onboard B2B exists: Shopify authentication first, then a proper vetting and revision process for business applicantsWhat changed when Shopify opened B2B to every plan, not just Plus, and the pricing pivot that followedHow Josiah decides what to build when two merchants want a feature versus fiftyBuilding outside Shopify: Scale Headshots, the corporate headshot SaaS used by H&R Block and FIFAWhat's next for Onboard B2B: global tax ID validation and storefront application formsYouTube Chapters00:00 — Why B2B is Shopify's most under-tapped opportunity 02:00 — Helium's eleven years and the birth of Customer Fields 06:11 — How merchants hacked B2B together with tags and abused flows 08:21 — The problem with building for a workflow with infinite branches 10:51 — Deciding what to build: two requests vs fifty 16:01 — Shopify B2B goes to all plans - what actually changed 20:26 — Where merchants get stuck starting B2B 25:10 — Building outside Shopify: Scale Headshots and Snap Bar 31:18 — What's next: tax ID validation and storefront forms 33:38 — Wrapping up

    Shopify B2B: Why It's Time To Get On Board, with Josiah Hubbard

About

The Shopify App Show goes deep with "indie" developers who build the most innovative stuff on the Shopify ecosystem. This is not a product demo show! Hosted by a 14-year ecosystem veteran, we skip the sales pitches, demos, and pricing talk. Instead, tune in for fun, 25-minute chats with founders about their craft, origin stories, and the specific use cases that help you win. Find the hidden gems that outperform the VC-backed giants. Real builders. No corporate fluff. Just great apps. Subscribe to build a better tech stack.