James Johnson: Whatever we're doing has to add value rather than just be a sprinkle of AI magic and AI shininess. It's like when you jump in the car and you magically appear at your destination and go, how did I get here? Start with why not AI? And I use the example of literally for one or two weeks in your business, try and do every single thing that you need to do AI. First, use the AI tool before you go in and do it yourself.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online reaching detail. Here's your host, Bushy. Hello and welcome back to another episode of ADD to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast for e commerce professionals who never stop learning. We bring you insights from the top e commerce operators, founders and experts across Australia to help you drive results and grow your e commerce career. My name is Nathan Bush or Bushy as some of you know me as joining you from the land of the Turrbal people here in Brisbane, Australia. Now, what do AI agents, frothing merchants and a neon drenched album cover have in common? They're all part of one of the most exciting e commerce releases of the year, released this week, the week we recorded it. And we've got the inside scoop for you. Today's episode is an absolute doozy. We are talking all things Shopify editions. You may have seen it. It's called Horizons. It's the latest release, six months in the making that if I had a headline for it, I'd say it is ushering in the AI era of E commerce for Shopify. And who better to unpack it with than my good mate James Johnson, affectionately called jj, who is the Director of Retail at Shopify Australia and New Zealand. Now, JJ's no stranger to the trenches. He's led digital transformation from the front lines at Michael Hill. He's consulted across many retailers and even did a stint at Salesforce. But we won't talk too much about that these days. He is helping shape the future of retail at Shopify, where he's known for being part strategist, part technologist and massive e commerce nerd. He's also one of the most generous minds in the industry. So if you've seen JJ speak or if you are lucky enough to regularly catch up with jj, you know he is one of those people who always leaves you thinking and is very kind and considerate about everything he shares. JJ has always got one eye on the trends and what's coming and the other on how to actually get stuff done. And that's why I always love chatting with him. But this chat was a special one. It was recorded live and in person at the Bush Residence studio. Just us two in the room geeking out about AI, agents, analytics and Aussie retail. We cover everything from Shopify's new Horizon theme and Sidekick AI assistant to what it really means to build human first experiences in a world of bots and automations. I know this is a good chat because since recording this, I've referenced it to at least four different merchants as they've come up with questions, namely around AI. Before we get into today's episode, I want to share something. If you are feeling out of control with your meta account, whether you manage it internally or with an agency, or you're a solo operator, I've got something for you. I'm teaming up with the legendary Ian Calvert from Boom E Commerce Top 5 episode guest from last year. Thank you very much for a brand new no Fluff course reset and scale your meta bootcamp across four action packed weeks. We're going to help you audit your account, rebuild your campaign structures, fix what's not working, and set you up to scale with real performance, not just vanity metrics. It's 100% online, 100% practical and it kicks off on Monday, June 23. Spaces are limited so grab your spot. Now there is a link in the show notes and you can also get all the details on addtocart.com now let's get into today's episode. A very special one. Big thanks as always to our partners Shopify and Klaviyo for making this episode and this podcast possible. Here's James Johnson, enterprise leader at Shopify to explore how Shopify is helping shape the future of retail with its latest editions release horizons. JJ welcome to add to cart.
James Johnson: Thank you Mr. Bush.
[Voiceover]: How good to have you here. Welcome to the bush Home Studio.
James Johnson: Two thorns between a fern or something similar. I'm not 100% sure, but great to be here.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, you're the Zach Galifianakis in this.
James Johnson: Thank you.
[Voiceover]: That's okay.
James Johnson: Work on the beard.
[Voiceover]: Big day. Big week for Shopify.
James Johnson: Absolutely.
[Voiceover]: Thanks for taking the time to come to my humble abode. We are going to dive into the new additions today. But first, I've known you for a long time and I've followed your career path through Michael Hill, through consulting, and now into Shopify. There's a little salesforce in there, but let's not talk about that.
James Johnson: Six years or so who's counting doesn't count.
[Voiceover]: And we are now diving into the world of Shopify. So I'm keen to hear from you. When you first took that call, was it 2021?
James Johnson: Yep.
[Voiceover]: Shopify looked very different back then.
James Johnson: Absolutely.
[Voiceover]: What was it that excited you about Shopify back then?
James Johnson: Yeah, I had a view of the business from an external perspective and I think many did. And many of the discussions we're having now with retailers are The Shopify of 2025 looks very different from the Shopify of two years ago, three years ago, four years ago. I think that was definitely the case. What really excites me about Shopify is we are a product led company and from an external perspective, you know, we are founded by Toby, who is our founder, is our CEO and is our Chief Product officer. And so what that does is infuses product thinking throughout the whole business. It means all of our behaviors are there and we focus on product and shipping, the right stuff, which is genuinely exciting. As you said, we have a checkered past or a long past from an e comm perspective. I call myself a reformed retailer. So similar to you, you know, being in the trenches, doing the things and it's now nice working more in the tech side of the business. But I have an e commerce vein throughout that experience. So I studied a Bachelor of Electronic Commerce, which blows my mind. I did 2001.
[Voiceover]: I was sure that never existed, which
James Johnson: marks me as a geriatric millennial, which is very fair.
[Voiceover]: Or you're making it up.
James Johnson: That's very true. But I think the key point is I have a deep, deep, true passion for commerce and e commerce. And our mission at Shopify is about making commerce better for everyone. So honestly, that ticks a lot of boxes. We've got amazing product, product focus and we genuinely want to make an amazing product for people.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. And so if you look back on when you signed up in 2021, it's like going into the army is how I'm making it out. It's not like that. Obviously you're on board with the mission. E commerce has changed a lot in that time. Shopify has changed a lot. What excites you today?
James Johnson: Yeah, I'll share some excitement via numbers because that's what I like to do and that's the analyst in me and my team are sick of hearing these numbers. So apologies, team, for hearing them, but I think they provide good context on how we think about commerce and the landscape overall. So in 2024, 875 million unique shoppers purchased From a Shopify retailer.
[Voiceover]: Unique.
James Johnson: Yeah, that's huge. Big numbers you should always be wary of. Big numbers is my talk track. But put another way, that's almost a third of anyone that bought anything online last year.
[Voiceover]: Wow.
James Johnson: Another big number. In the history of the Shopify platform, we've processed more than $1.1 trillion of GMV. And then last big number in the Australian market, specifically 11.8 million shop pay users now. So people using the purple button to accelerate the checkout. I'll pick on my wonderful wife who I absolutely love, but she's a perfect marker on the trends we're seeing here, where she won't get off the couch unless it's got the purple button because why would I not have the accelerator checkout make it easy for me? And so there's 11.7999 other people in Australia that have a similar bent in of terms terms of what that looks like. And so I think the big numbers are important because it talks to the trends we see from a commerce perspective, it talks to what we can see from a consumer trend. And that helps inform our roadmap, that helps us figure out what's the next thing we need to build. And we'll talk about that today in addition. But really that gives us that direction and that really unique view across commerce to say, let's build that thing next. Because we know that there's a consumer need and there's a retailer need.
[Voiceover]: So if you've got such a, I wouldn't call it saturation, but widespread adoption in market and you have introduced the things that people are like, oh, this is E commerce, like that checkout is now. E commerce is the focus then in bringing more retailers onto the platform or is it about creating more new experiences?
James Johnson: It's a bit of both. So I think you've seen that particularly in the Australian market. We've continued to invest and expand into different channels where consumers are. And so Point of Sale is a really good example of that, where we've got many, many retailers and brands that are leveraging us in an online sense and a growing number of brands that are using us in physical retail stores now as well. So part of that is the product expansion towards that, but it's also how we continue to add to our core offering of online because consumer expectations change, consumer shopping habits change and so our job is never done in online. We can't say, yep, we're finished. We've now solved E commerce.
[Voiceover]: Let's hang on, boys.
James Johnson: Absolutely. So that's the exciting bit I think is we have a view of what's coming up, but it's always surprising for me to go, oh, yeah, you know, this is what consumers are really doing now and this is how we need to show up in that context. So I think it's a blend of all of those things and that keeps us on our toes and keeps us thinking about what's the next iteration to come.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, and I feel you on that. Like, I was literally just on a phone call before you arrived to the Bush residence, and it was with someone who had been on the Shopify journey for a long time and got on board really early and was, you know, that was the excitement. Like, it was like, oh, I actually don't need to organize a server or being self hosted. I can get in this and I'm not technical and I can actually create a storefront in a day. Back then, it was a day. It's a lot less than now. And I feel like in the last three months that excitement's come back because I think the last few years has just been about you rolling out the roadmap. It's like we've got these planned and you could just see it coming. You just go, yep, next one, next one, next one. And then that was the adopted way of doing E commerce for most businesses. And then now I think with AI and it's reimagining what that whole customer journey looks like. So I've got that real excitement about E commerce and I could see that rolling out now with the new additions, 100%.
James Johnson: I literally spoke to someone yesterday that had that same insight or very similar insight, which was we again were both geriatric millennials. And so I'd been through cloud computing and what that looks like, and to a certain extent, we just kind of take that for granted now. And it's a reflection point to go, hang on. This is still amazingly cool from a technology perspective to be able to deliver in this way. But we had the observation that it feels like this AI wave is exactly or has similarities to that in terms of you need to show up, you need to be able to understand the landscape, you need to be able to respond at the speed of your consumer. And so there's real advantages for people that are diving in and taking that advantage. So I think it's very similar.
[Voiceover]: It was interesting. We were in Sydney together. We've been able to spend a lot of time recently.
James Johnson: Quality is great quality time.
[Voiceover]: But we had a brilliant Shopify and Add to Cart E Commerce Leaders dinner in Sydney on Wednesday night, and we had 16 founders and retail leaders around the table. And stupid me, I opened up the conversation, you know, between entrees, come out and go, okay, let's have a bit of a conversation. Bring the whole table in together. I was like, guys, what do you want to talk about? And, you know, I was thinking, maybe it's product development, maybe it's marketing. I accidentally dropped the AI word in there.
James Johnson: Yeah, those two letters.
[Voiceover]: The next two hours was all about how the leaders were adopting AI in their business 100%. And we had so many people at different levels, Right. We had some people in there who were brutally honest to say, we still haven't got Click and Collect. Right. And then we've got others who are now looking at how they replace certain parts of their customer service with bots that are costing them close to six figures in, you know, software costs just for these bots, but they can see the return in it. Where are you seeing retailers and merchants that you're working with have the most impact with AI today?
James Johnson: Yeah, it's such a good question. We, I mean, I have many discussions with many retailers, and I think it's fair to say there's a big continuum in terms of capabilities and where folks are and even within businesses. You know, you've got your early adopters and people that dive straight into the tool. You've got people that are a bit more reserved and want to understand what the landscape looks like. And that's natural, that's great. But I think the idea or the real benefit of thinking from a retail perspective is apply some frameworks to how you can think about these things. And part of my discussion is start with, why not AI? And I use the example of literally, for one or two weeks in your business, try and do every single thing that you need to do AI first, use the AI tool before you go in and do it yourself. And we're talking about this before, about some tooling that you do. So literally, do I have to send this email myself or can I? Is there a better way to do that from a workflow perspective? I need to run this report. Should I be running that report or can I get some help? And the real talk is that that will be painful and bumpy and you'll learn what's really hard and what's really crappy. But it's a good mindset to have, and you will have a few nuggets in your workflow to go, oh, shit, I can do something different and have a real different perspective and take one of the other key things we talk about is avoiding the shiny, so making sure you have a real business value and impact linked to what you're doing. So there are a plethora of tools out there. Unsurprisingly, everything has AI sprinkled into it, but that's irrelevant if you're not getting the business impact. Don't waste your time if you're not actually going to get the right result and get something functional off the back of it. And I guess the last call out, and it's something that we've done culturally at Shopify that I think other retailers or retailers can pick up from as well, is look at how you can work cross functionally and then also embedded some of the AI thinking in everything you do. And so for us, we do that in many different ways. We share what's working and what's not. We have amazing access to a plethora of tools internally. We're very fortunate to be able to do that. But we can pick and choose and say, these tools are amazing. I use it in this context, whether that's solving a product problem or a go to market problem or a customer challenge. And so there's real cross functionality work that we do around saying, well, here's a technical person and a business person and a marketing person, let's figure that out. And very specifically we also do that via things like hack days. And so that's very intentionally saying, here's a project we're going to come together and solve. And I'm actually spending, I'm about to jump on a plane very soon to head to Toronto. So we've got this thing called Summit, which is our cultural moment for thousands of people to come together at Shopify. And we will have thousands of people literally in the same room hacking together for three days straight. And the energy that comes from that is phenomenal. It's hey, I want to solve this product problem. Hey, I want to solve this internal problem, Mix some AI over the top of it and you've got some magic. So I'm really looking forward to that.
[Voiceover]: I'm still waiting for my invite for that private jet that's going over there.
James Johnson: Definitely not a private jet. All you need to do is come over Shopify and we can hook you up. And you're very welcome to come and hack.
[Voiceover]: I'm interested though, because I think there is a lot of people on the outside looking at Shopify and what you're rolling out and how your team works. Really efficient team, really switched on team. Are there any of Those tools around workflow that you can share to kind of give us a bit of an insight into how the way of working inside Shopify has changed.
James Johnson: Yeah, so we literally have access, I think, to all of the tools. And again, we're very fortunate to have that. We are a wonderful group of nerdy folks that care about commerce. And so that means that we have access to all of the models you'd expect in our own tooling internally to make that easy and straightforward. From a personal level, we've got access to things like Cursor, which is an AI coding platform. And I found that really revolutionary because I'm a crappy coder. And so having all the Shopify context and some coding context and commerce in a coding console means that I can actually do things that I probably could have got to previously, but it would have taken me three hours and now it takes me 20 minutes.
[Voiceover]: That's different to what you were telling me off air, where you said you just outsource your coding to your kids.
James Johnson: Now they are again, much better than me. So I think the blend of children plus AI is the future clearly around that. So I think it's less about the tools specifically. The answer is we've got access to many, many tools. I suppose the tip would be, what is your workflow as a retailer or in your business? How can you maximize the human impact from that? So leverage the tools in the most effective way to build human impact rather than the other way around. And again, if you do that in your business to, okay, one week we're going to go follow these workflows. You'll find stuff, you'll find those nuggets, those areas that are unique for your business that you go, oh, that's crappy. How do we do that? And maybe just jumping back to that dinner that we spoke about, someone shared around the table that they were rethinking what their customer service team were doing. And so they've positioned basically their customer service team and now doing less around tickets and answering straightforward questions, but doing more about co selling with customers in their sales room floor. And so if I think about the customer service team, that's more powerful for them. They're getting better sales results. It's probably more exciting for the team themselves. And so I guess the tip is think through your flow, think through how you interact and where can AI mean you can be more human because that'll be the differentiator for businesses going forward.
[Voiceover]: It's really funny. My brother is a GP and we have this conversation all the Time, because he's a bit more like, what's this funny rash?
James Johnson: Is that the conversation?
[Voiceover]: Sometimes that's funny, sometimes it's alarming. He's a bit more of a laggard, whereas I'm like, oh, what's the next thing? Like, we've got to keep moving forward. And he's like, hold up for a sec, let's take this a little bit more seriously. Which is why he's a GP and I'm doing what I do. But we have this conversation around. Well, the medical industry needs to take on AI more, because wouldn't you rather, instead of sitting at a computer typing notes, be facing this way and talking directly to your patient? He's like, yeah, I would, but I can't trust the notes. I'm like, well, it's not that you have to trust the notes, it's that they can do the heavy lifting for you and you can review the notes and you can do all that. And it's similar to what you're saying about customer service team. It's not replacing them necessarily, it's empowering them to add more value and do things that actually give you a bit of joy and a little bit more satisfaction.
James Johnson: 100%. And I think it's exactly that joy, but it's also differentiation. So, as a business, what is your value proposition to customers? And to be honest, it's probably not answering customer service emails or chats. How can you double down on what that differentiation is? Because that's where the power is for your brand and your business. So I guess that's the opportunity that people should be digging into.
[Voiceover]: I love it. And just to loop back to what we were saying before, the tool that I'm so excited about at the moment, it's called Whisper AI and it's a little tool, it's a little plugin, but all it allows you to do is, no matter what app or what window you're in in your Mac or your Windows, is press the function key, talk to your computer, and it will type it out like it's typing and it will learn your communication for different mediums. So if I've got my SMS open, it will type it like an SMS and maybe put an emoji in there. And then if I'm on my emails, it will format it like an email.
James Johnson: This makes a lot of sense for the text you sent me last night, but I get it. Thanks, Dave.
[Voiceover]: It doesn't do images so well, but it's been a lifesaver for me because I can get through emails in half the time, but put a lot more personality and a lot more explanation into it. Whereas shorter shorthanding everything.
James Johnson: Yeah, perfect example. And I'm using as well. So. Yeah, plus one to that.
[Voiceover]: Plus one. And that principle that you were talking about around use AI for everything. Yeah, I came across that in the book CO Intelligence.
James Johnson: Oh yeah, yeah.
[Voiceover]: Have you read that?
James Johnson: I have, yeah.
[Voiceover]: I got recommended from Mike Rhodes on
James Johnson: this podcast and I read it because he recommended it to you.
[Voiceover]: I hope he's getting a clip from Amazon.
James Johnson: But I didn't buy it from Amazon to be really cool. Oh yeah. Why would you do that and buy it from other places?
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
James Johnson: On Shopify or anyone else.
[Voiceover]: But that's one of the principles in there. And it just blew my mind. As soon as I read that I'm like, oh yeah, why wouldn't you do that? Anyone who's had a personal trainer knows that whatever targets you set, they're going to raise them. So when Nutrition Warehouse looked to engage Klaviyo, it wasn't just about sending emails effectively. They tasked them with increasing revenue, driving, driving awareness and building customer lifetime value. That's a spicy set. But Klaviyo were up for the challenge. By creating the right email flows triggered by customer actions, using geotargeting for their 110 stores, and using predictive analytics to target high value customers with personalized offers, they proved that they were up to the challenge. Smashed it, in fact, with a 47% year on year increase in placed order order rate on email flows and a Klaviyo Roi of 50 times, Nutrition Warehouse remain ahead of the pack to explore how Klaviyo can grow your E commerce business. And to see more case studies like this, visit klaviyo.com au all right, let's move forward because Shopify editions came out this week. Yes, Horizons IUI is at the core of it is the headline. Like you said before, we had the boring edition before this. This is anything but boring.
James Johnson: Absolutely.
[Voiceover]: Very shiny, very shiny, very flashy. It's got, you know, pink neon vibes going on.
James Johnson: It's strong 80s vibes. And if you haven't listened, if anyone hasn't been to the site, go to the site, check out the audio. There's some banging beats.
[Voiceover]: Oh, I haven't even. I always have audio off on my computer. Make it happen. Oh, okay. There you go. All right, so tell us, how is Shopify putting AI at the center of everything?
James Johnson: Yeah. So this is edition number seven for us. And maybe just to reflect on what Additions are. Because that's probably a useful context. So editions for us, we ship every six months. It's a really great opportunity for us to celebrate the things that we've shipped as a platform over that time. And to be clear, we roll out capabilities pretty much every single day. And for the nerds amongst us, you can go to the changelog and see that everything's coming through, but additions are a really great way to go. What have we shipped? What are the themes? And for honestly, humans to have that in a digestible form to be able to say, oh yeah, here's this great collection and here's how I may apply it to my business. But you're right, AI has been a big focus, probably unsurprisingly, and a few key areas of call out. So number one that I'm really passionate about is Sidekick. So Sidekick is the AI assistant in the Shopify admin. For any Shopify merchants listening, my number one tip is please go spend some time with Sidekick. Sidekick has been around for probably 12 months, but we've done some really big improvements around multiple reasoning. So now you can ask a question. It will have a lot more context about what it's digging into. Where it's really powerful is looking into analysis and then additional steps off the back of that. So asking a human question to get to a particular outcome and maybe let's come back to it, but I've got a few good merchant examples of where people are finding real value from that.
[Voiceover]: I want to, because even in the conversations that I've had, there's people like, oh, I've used Sidekick and it kind of didn't give me everything that I wanted. So I think it's. Let's come back to that, because I think if you've used it in the past, it's a bit different to what it is today.
James Johnson: Absolutely. Second big one was Horizon as a theme. And so Horizon is the name of the edition, but it's also the name of a new theme foundation for us and that builds a whole range of AI capabilities into theme functionality. And I guess the key one to look at is AI block generation. So really the idea there is now within a content block. So if you're a business user building a landing page, building a product page, you can insert a block and in natural language say, I want it to look like this or style in this way, or have this functionality, and then the AI will actually build the code for you. And so if it's great out of the box, you can just use it, but you can tweak the code as well as it's there. And so that opens up creativity and ability for business users to do things that historically devs would need to do on the front end. So that's a huge multiplier, I think, in terms of impact there.
[Voiceover]: And what's the, I suppose, parameters around that? How hard can you go? Like, how crazy can you be with those block ideas?
James Johnson: You can be pretty crazy. So I think if you think about things like sliders or images or countdown timers are some of the examples that are included on the Editions page. They're all possible. So you can do that in again, natural language, talk about what you need and have blocks created. There's a whole range of other improvements around themes. So now you can cut and paste blocks as well between sections across sites as well. So a lot of functional richness to make that content editing a lot easier and a lot more powerful. And we know how important that is for people to be able to communicate their brand and their value propositions. So it's really exciting to see that continue to change.
[Voiceover]: I know it's early, but are there any retailers already out there on Horizon?
James Johnson: It's pretty new, so literally released two days ago.
[Voiceover]: So I thought you might have given it like a little sneaky little access somewhere.
James Johnson: We've definitely. So there's a few different ways that stuff rolls out. I shared a little bit earlier. So the keyword that I've heard from merchants so far was the word frothing, which is not something you typically hear from people based on product feedback. But I take that as a positive thing.
[Voiceover]: I thought Surf Stitch would close down.
James Johnson: Maybe
[Voiceover]: that came so naturally for you. Thank you. Frothing. Yeah, that's a good word. I'd put that in a testimonial.
James Johnson: Okay. Yeah. But I think the key point, there's a lot of excitement around that we'll see over the next few weeks and months about how people are actually leveraging it. It's one aspect, though, so again, I call out Sidekick is definitely a place where people should spend some time. In the Shopify ecosystem, AI themes and content will continue to be used in interesting ways. And so that always excites me to figure out what that will look like in six months. The other bit from an AI perspective, which is possibly not as clear to see, is things like Global Catalog and MCP as well as Knowledge Base.
[Voiceover]: MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, which
James Johnson: of course you'd know, Mr. Bush.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I'm all across it, which is
James Johnson: basically anthropic have released mcp. The simple way I'd think about it is it's really a connector or consistent connector for AI agents. And so think about it almost like a USB C. So USB C I can plug into anything, and it's pretty ubiquitous. MCP means you can plug in agents to things as well. So, for example, it's a simplified way to plug into Shopify from an agentic perspective. So it sounds very impressive. It's going to be something that developers focus on more. But I think the big picture there is really quite interesting when we think about global catalog, which means that in a consistent way, businesses like Perplexity can access Shopify store product information across the board. So suddenly that becomes important from a discoverability perspective. And for brands to say, well, where's my customer spending time? Where's that next channel that I should be interacting and transacting? We're kind of making that easy to say, your product's already in the right place and it's in a structured way and it's in the way that these tools expect. So that in terms of catalog plus MCP plus knowledge base becomes really powerful as a mix.
[Voiceover]: I noticed that you use the word agentic in there. It's the new darling word. I'm not even going to call it a buzzword because I don't think it's a buzzword. I think it's actual here to stay. We're going to hear a lot more of it, but it's still in the infancy of it rolling out. We saw the big Google release as well, where, you know, it's that whole ecosystem playing together. It's like maybe we actually don't need to sit there and click buttons or scroll a page to check out. Is that we can have bots do all this for you. Is that kind of in the forefront of your mind?
James Johnson: It is. And I think, again, I'm a geriatric millennial. I've been around E commerce for a long time, but I think about SEO has always been so important, right? And so we think about how do I be discovered in the right channels? How do I make sure that Google in most instances finds my site and loves it and loves that product information? I think the next flavor of that will be how am I showing up with all these new channels from an AI perspective? And this is part of solving for part of that problem. Right? So it's making sure that your information is discoverable and it's in a consistent way. And maybe just to focus on the knowledge base piece again, it's relatively small but it's important. And so this is a first party app in Shopify. So you install it in Shopify Store and what it does is helps you build FAQs and information relevant for AI. So I was playing around with it last night. Super easy to use to say here's one or two sentence answers to common things that people would be asking and so think about the context of hey, I'm in GPT or whatever model you choose to use and I'm asking a question about a brand. Suddenly what responses is it coming back with? We've got that in a structured way so that you can make that easy and make sure it's discoverable for those sort of models.
[Voiceover]: Because I know that's on the top of everyone's head at the moment is how do I make sure that I'm not left behind as more and more traffic comes through GPT 100%.
James Johnson: So that's exactly why we're focusing on what we are and how we're thinking thinking about it.
[Voiceover]: Brilliant. I want to go back to Sidekick, but probably more broadly around you've got so much data, so merchants have so much data within Shopify, right? The extent of the depth of data around customer product trends, visits, conversions, like it's a treasure trove. Most founders and retailers are time poor. I love the Sidekick example of being able to quiz something and come back with responses. Can you give us a bit of an overview around how you are helping merchants make the most of what you've got inside of the Shopify platform?
James Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. So maybe it's worthwhile just speaking from a principal's perspective first and then getting into specific examples. So from a principal perspective we are focused on commerce intelligence, not general AI. And again that comes partially back to our mission of making commerce better for everyone. So not making everything better for everyone. So we focus on solving the commerce problems. That's point one. Point two is about having a goal oriented architecture, which sounds very impressive, but really we think about that in declarative commerce. So how can I in real language say I want to do a thing and get agents, computers, systems to do a thing for me rather than me have to figure out I need to click that and then click that and then click that and then the last bit is about practical innovation. So coming back to my shiny point before it's really saying whatever we're doing has to add value rather than just be a sprinkle of AI magic and AI shininess. So we think about those in terms of principles and I'd encourage retailers and brands to think about it in the same way. Right. So think about what's the impact I'm doing rather than just doing the thing, translating that into Sidekick. So Sidekick, as I said, has really evolved over the last six to 12 months. And now we're seeing some really good use cases around things like analytics, where in natural language you can say, you know, what are my top customer segments here? Or what are these particular parameters around a customer group? And then with Sidekick, you can create a segment around it, you can create a promotion around that segment, you can customize and build different collections and things based off that. So it's again, action oriented rather than just an insight. But we're seeing some really good results around the analytics component because that natural language is so important. And so a real customer example I spoke to a couple of weeks ago, they would spend sort of 15, 20 minutes in a report trying to get a particular outcome. And now they literally spend two minutes saying, hey, Sidekick, I want to understand more about this thing. And a very real example they had was around Cyclone Alfred, which hit a couple of months ago, and they wanted to understand the impact on specific postcodes of logistics and why sales were down or what the actual criteria was. So they asked in us like, okay, help me understand what this looks like. And it gave them a really good starting point. They still did tweak it a little bit, but the outcome was the person that ran that looked like an absolute rock star in their business because they had this insight that everyone's like, whoa, we could never get to that via a standard report. But Sidekick helped them accelerate it and similarly got a really nice example of a business that saved an awful lot of money around some marketing attribution leakage by asking some questions of Sidekick. So it's less about having a standard report, taking the time to look at the report. What does that mean? What do I do with it? It's more conversational and saying, help me understand what this is and what the opportunity is.
[Voiceover]: I'm going to put you on the spot here because I know you are Sidekick's biggest cheer fan, like supporter person. Love it. We've had a lot of conversations around it. If we've got retailers or merchants going, okay, so what would be interesting to us, Sidekick, to test it in its new form, can you give us, say, two or three questions that you think will surprise people?
James Johnson: Yeah, I'd be asking questions around your customer group in terms of what are your top customers doing, what are they purchasing, where are they geographically located. And I think that's a great starter for something around loyalty. So help me identify customers that have particular characteristics that I should care about and then I'd also think about products. So similarly, I hope you know what your top products are and what that looks like, but then combine that with a customer view and when you bring those facets together, that's when you'll start seeing magic. So I think start there top customers understanding product mix, and that's a really good place to start.
[Voiceover]: So the question I've got is, as it begins, that anyone can develop no code as it is, that maybe anyone can start getting decent designs, anyone can pull the insights. Like you said, do you think AI will help differentiate brands or are we going to get brands that are actually closer together?
James Johnson: I think it's a fantastic thought experiment and the ease of spinning some of these things up means that naturally some of it will converge. I think my take, though, is if you don't have a differentiated value proposition, you're in trouble anyway. Right? And so if you don't, then, yes, you're going to be in the sea of beigeness in between and you should be at risk anyway. The opportunity, though, is again, how do you amplify that human impact or that human insight? So if you as a business have a niche, you know your customer, you've got a differentiated product, like, use the tools to accelerate. What are those differences? And that's the real opportunity.
[Voiceover]: We're still going to have old school retail principles.
James Johnson: Amazing. What an amazing concept in 2025.
[Voiceover]: It should make it easier, though, like when. I know we were joking about getting your kids to code, but it's genuinely exciting. Like, I was. We did our accelerator course with a group of high school students last year and we asked them to study a retailer and said, okay, look, let's do a bit of an analysis on it, have a look at it. What would you change? What do you think their biggest problems are? And the solutions they came back with were phenomenal because they weren't thinking, oh, I can't code, or I don't know how to code, I don't know how to do this, or I can't design, or I don't know. It's like, actually, I'm going to pick my biggest idea and I've got a rough idea of actually how I could implement this. You know what I mean? Back when we were thinking, or even if we're thinking about it today, we'd think about it totally different. So I'm excited about the new era of entrepreneurs and founders in retail over the next five years around some of the new ideas that are going to come through 100%.
James Johnson: I think it democratizes that. Right. It opens up the opportunity to do that. And so there's plenty of tools now that can help you design those elements, Whereas previously I'd have to work with a whole group of people to do it. Or I might do a really clunky wireframe and say, can we build this? You can prototype it and figure it out. You can test it and mark it and see if it's going to work. And they're all opportunities to continue to iterate and improve. So it's super exciting times.
[Voiceover]: Super exciting times. All right. We can't talk about additions without talking about pos. You mentioned earlier that that is part of the mission to expand out into new channels. Tell us about some of the changes in POS that are the most exciting.
James Johnson: Yeah. So we've released an updated, a big dramatic update to Shopify Point of Sale. And that fundamentally builds a whole range of capabilities around efficiency, speed and design. There's a few tactical pieces in terms of what that design can look like in store. So now you can have terminal designs, which means you can present your brand more completely to customers. But a big change has been how we can make that easier for store teams to leverage more of point of sale. And discussions I have with retailers, they love that in terms of using Shopify Point of Sale, because it's not a system where you need to take someone off the floor and train them for a week about how do I do the thing? People pick it up and go, I get it really easily. And so there's a training and a familiarity and an operational efficiency aspect around it. So we've really double down on those elements. The other one that's exciting is with ship and Carry out. So think about that as having split delivery methods within a single transaction. So I can buy something and take it from store today and then also get something shipped to my home in the same transaction. So we know that's important, obviously, in terms of thinking about that customer experience in store, particularly when you've got inventory in faraway locations.
[Voiceover]: Some would call that unified commerce.
James Johnson: You may well call it unified or Omni or just what customers expect to 2025. Right. So whatever we call it, it's about delivering on the customer expectation around that and also opens up things like Endless Isle in a meaningful way. So really exciting. And the power we see from that is, unsurprisingly, whatever happens online and Happens in store is consistent and the customer's getting a great experience across the board.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I think it will change the physical retail experience tremendously. We were talking to a retailer and I'm just pausing there because I'm like, how much of this can I give away? But a retailer who was opening up new stores and they were saying, look, we'd normally put four hours aside and this isn't tooting Shopify's horn. I'm like, the world of pause and in store technology has changed so much. They normally put four hours aside to replace pod systems in stores, but now they're allocating half an hour to it. And the biggest part is cleaning the dust out behind the big black boxes. But what surprised them the most was the onboarding of the teams. And this. This caught them by surprise. They didn't really think about this, but makes a lot of sense when you go, actually we got this new system and we've got this training program. Here it is. But then they were saying, actually, I just turned around and in 10 minutes they were like scrolling and they like. It was native to them because they're, you know, a lot of our retail salespeople are the touchscreen generation.
James Johnson: Absolutely. And having many discussions with retailers at the moment where the question is, you know, what is your training program of how you will roll this out? And usually we can do things there to be really specific. But usually it's, I don't think you'll need it. Just let it happen organically. And so that's exciting. And it also means there's operational efficiency around what that is. But again, the whole intent behind that is removing the technology because you should be having an employee to customer discussion in store. So how can you enable more of that discussion and maybe just to share an example. So we're doing some work with Harehouse at the moment. Then they're rolling out Point of sale to 105 stores to do exactly that.
[Voiceover]: Right.
James Johnson: Already have an amazing online experience for them. It's thinking about, okay, what's this channel in store? And without the super heavy plug, why Point of Sale is really interesting and beneficial. It's just another channel for us. And I don't mean that in a derogatory sense. Literally have the same view of customer and product and inventory because it's the same database record in Shopify. And it's just saying, great, let's deliver a great customer experience for people in store.
[Voiceover]: But I love that it just takes the shackles off. What physical can look like. Can look like a Store. Absolutely. But it could look like a pop up, it could look like an event. It could be that you just turn up at a music festival and you can start selling. Like it really opens up how you can connect and create community 100% and
James Johnson: maybe to share a very personal example. So just bought a new laptop bag from Crumpler. I'm an amazing fan of the brand. If people aren't familiar with it, go and check it out. They make their bags locally in Melbourne. Literally have people sewing bags in there and I've got about a dozen of them. So I'm a fan person but wanted to pick it up in store so researched what I wanted to do online. Their online experience is zany in the most wonderful way. So worthwhile checking out but amazing experience in store and exactly that. Had a great discussion with the person in store, had questions around the product. We were able to have a really great conversation. Their floor footprint was half the size of this office but amazing transaction that I had to complete on the shop floor and I was out in two minutes. So just exactly what I needed. But an amazing customer experience.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I mean you are in add to Cart Tower like it's the glorious surround.
James Johnson: Absolutely.
[Voiceover]: I want to get nerdy with you for a second. Is there a feature in additions and you can get as deep and as technical as you want here jj that you think is just underrated, that's gone under the radar because obviously you got your big ones, your AI, your sidekicks, your pause. What's underrated in this release I'm really
James Johnson: cheeky and say a few things. So from an Australian retailer perspective, selling with multiple entities and multi currency payouts is really important. So we know it's so important for us to sell into multiple markets for our growing businesses because we're a relatively small retail market, so that's important. I think the bit that probably goes underappreciated is a lot of our developer tooling updates. So I'd encourage people to check out the editions landing page. One, because it's fun and it looks like the 80s. But two, there's lots of richness there but there is a developer section and it's really comprehensive and there's a lot of fundamental updates and tooling changes just to make the dev experience easier, easier and get more done. And so that's just a shout out for the devs of the world who don't always get the praise. But we're trying to make that as easy as possible and we've really focused on much of that tooling and that's always not immediately visible at the time of Edition's launch. But if you fast forward 3, 4, 5 months, we'll see some amazing things shipped because of that development investment that we've made.
[Voiceover]: Kids are busy 100%. I am going to share one that maybe not as exciting for you, but a lot of excitement in the community around the Apple Pay integration into checkout. Obviously shop pay is great and quick checkout, but the Apple Pay was often put, you know, behind the next experience and to bring that to the forefront, I think just from a customer perspective makes it so much more accessible and easy to get that conversion however a customer chooses as well.
James Johnson: Yep, great call out. This is the challenge of having 150 things we release, right. There's so much to cover up and so many things that will be uniquely relevant for different businesses.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, and that page that's created of 150 features is awesome. Like from a UX perspective. I was like scrolling through for about an hour and a half yesterday.
James Johnson: It's a wonderful cultural moment for us internally as we think about the teams that build that and then also everyone rallying around when we do ship. It's pretty exciting.
[Voiceover]: Jj, I want to get your thoughts on the Australian market at the moment. Is there any retailer, like, I bet you get asked this all the time, who's doing retail the best? I'm not even going to call it E commerce, but who's interesting to you right now?
James Johnson: That's a bit like asking my favourite child.
[Voiceover]: Well, I know you've got an answer for that too.
James Johnson: I do. And my kids will probably listen to the podcast, so I'm not going to disclose it on air. I love all of my children, I love all of my retailers, but there's pockets of people that are doing really interesting things. Right. So I called out Hare House before. I think they're doing amazing in terms of how they're thinking about rolling out that point of sale in the store and what that experience is. We call it out a lot. But I love calling out also the JB hi Fi Team 1 because I love working with the team. They're a great bunch of humans. They think about things in a really interesting way, but also how they think about aspects like Uber delivery and what that means for their consumer proposition. So very firsthand experience myself, literally traveling interstate a few weeks ago, needed an adapter for a thing. The experience was, okay, I'm going to buy it from JB and 24 minutes later I had an Uber at the door going here's your cable, Mr. Johnson. Let's go.
[Voiceover]: Stop forgetting your shit. But this the last time. 24 minutes. Here it is.
James Johnson: 100%. So great experience. Yes. Now I need to pay more and I'm sure it's a tax expense. If anyone's got some advice, that'd be helpful. So love how JB hi Fi is thinking about some of those pieces and also love the work that the Aushair and Beauty team are doing as well. So again, that blend, let's not call it unified, let's not call it Omni, but what they do install, what they do from an online perspective is genuinely exciting.
[Voiceover]: Mr. Guy Napper, number one in E commerce. Thank you very much.
James Johnson: What a great place to be.
[Voiceover]: What a great place to be. I agree. What is it about the hair industry that's kind of making so much innovation?
James Johnson: Maybe I'm compensating for something at the moment. I'm not sure.
[Voiceover]: You're living a few dreams out there.
James Johnson: They're not making much money off you, are they? Not for me personally, that's for sure.
[Voiceover]: All right, I want to get your take because we've talked about the future a lot and I know we've discussed ideas. If we were to get into running an E commerce or a retail business again, if you were to spin one up tomorrow, what would you spin up?
James Johnson: That's a great question. Great, great question. We spoke about principles before and I think that's important in terms of knowing your customer having amazing value proposition and what that niche is. So I don't know the specific product, but it would definitely be something is relatively niche, but solves a customer problem in a very purposeful way. And I'm pretty sure that's a very vague answer, but I think there's real opportunities for those sort of solutions given the new distribution mechanisms we spoke about. You know, we're in this world of niches where people are solving their unique problems and sometimes it's problems they don't even know they had. But how do you find that group of people and how do you give them something really unique and valuable? I think is interesting.
[Voiceover]: The market is shifting, costs are climbing, and the pressure to do more with less is real. But when resources are tight, you can rely on Shopify, the platform that's consistently first with new capabilities. Shopify invests significantly in R and D and drops more than 150 updates every year, evolving with you and absorbing complexity so you can focus on what moves your business forward from AI powered insights to the world's best converting Checkout Shopify is designed for the next era of commerce, helping you sell more, scale faster and future. Proof your brand, build for what's next with Shopify. Visit Shopify for Enterprise to learn more.
James Johnson: What about you, Bushy?
[Voiceover]: I was just thinking about that we had recently on ADD to Cart we had in our community. Come and join us if you. If you want to join free community. 300 experts in there already. We had a thing around dog treadmills.
James Johnson: So the chat I saw some random AI content generators. Fascinating.
[Voiceover]: There was a lot. But Ian Calvert put up the thing of like, hey, imagine you're selling this dog treadmill. What are all the different ways you can market it? Using AI, image generation, ad creation and some really interesting pieces there. So I'm not saying I would go into dog treadmills, but it gave me a lot more confidence that to your point, I don't think it's about the product so much. I think it's got to be unique and I don't think there's much market at the moment if you're trying to sell other people's product. I probably wouldn't get into that game unless you've got millions of dollars behind you. But I think it's more about how you think about an audience's problem or customer's problem and what are we solving there. So my mind was going to you and you know, I know how much you travel and it's easy to forget things. I'm like, there's surely something there like a brand or a product that could help busy people pack their bags quickly or have an emergency kit ready to go or, you know, I don't know what the idea is, but I think if you come at it from bit
James Johnson: of Velcro for my cables to stick to my bag. So don't forget them. Maybe that's it. I'm not sure.
[Voiceover]: But like, I think that's the thing. The more people you talk to, the more customers you get in front of understand the problems. There's products and it's never been easy to create a product. Right now, 100%. Yeah. So you just got to have the idea. So you mentioned additions every six months and you have a look at that. Over 150 features in this one alone. If we Fast forward to five years to 20, 30, that will mean that there's been 10 more additions in that time. What's Shopify going to look like then?
James Johnson: I'm feeling tired already. That's a bit exciting. That's a really great question. And it also Blows my mind as the geriatric millennial that 2030 is five years away. So let's park that as a separate discussion.
[Voiceover]: I think we also need to unp how many times you've called yourself a geriatric millennial. We'll go to lunch after this.
James Johnson: Okay. I actually need some therapy. I'm not 100% sure what that is. I think it's going to be fascinating. And we see Shopify as a commerce operating system of sorts. Right. And so it's less about, okay, we're solving this online challenge today. We're solving a point of sale challenge today. We're solving a B2B challenge today. We're helping to figure out what does the AI landscape look like. So really, I think there will continue to be new channels rather there'll continue to be new distribution methods for customers. There'll be new ways that customers expect to be engaged. And so the way we think about that is how do we show up where the consumer is to help retailers and brands and merchants make sure they're representing themselves in the right way. And I don't know, in short, what are the next 5010 editions going to cover? But it's super exciting in terms of we're betting on that we will be there to be that commerce os and that's what we're building for our customers to make sure that they're staying relevant for their consumers. And honestly, that's, I said, slightly terrifying, but it's also very exciting to figure out, okay, let's go on that journey together and figure out what's the next thing that we need to be doing. So, yes, we're speaking heavily about AI now. I don't think it's going to go away in the short term, but there'll absolutely be new flavors of that. There'll be new engagement mechanisms, there'll be more that we need to do around conversational and gentic and all the buzzwords there. And so that will absolutely be where you'll continue to see us focus. I think over the next couple of
[Voiceover]: years it's going to find its feet, it's going to settle down and then we'll probably see the more long term planning come out. But at the moment it's kind of a where are we going? Where do we need to be right now?
James Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. But I'll come back to the points I made before about things like Shopify, Global Catalog and mcp. Those are really the building blocks. And it may not be completely evident yet, but they feel like the building blocks in terms of what that next distribution looks like and means. And so that is us hopefully setting up retailers for success to make sure that they're where the consumers are and making that as easy as possible. So again, super exciting times.
[Voiceover]: Going to put you on the spot here with a question. If you spend enough time on LinkedIn, if you're unfortunate to do that, you'll see the latest hot take in E commerce is that websites will die. You know that we've got all these other ways of distribution, product discovery, whether it be in your smart glasses, whether it be through GPTs or other ways. Do you think we'll still need websites in 2030?
James Johnson: Again, five years is a long time. I think we'll absolutely have the web as a distribution mechanism in some form and clearly it's going to differ based on a business. Right. So if you're a business with a handful of products or SKUS becomes an easier mechanism to say go where customers are, transact where they are, transact with one click in a channel, go nuts. If you've got more complex products, if you're in a B2B context, then that's different again. So I think it's not quite a done deal that the web disappears. Definitely continues to evolve. We know from all of our metrics that people are spending more and more time doing these things already. And so I think it's similar to stores. Have stores disappeared? No. Has the strategy evolved to be a mix of mobile, online, store, AI, whatever that is? Yes. And so it's how do you bring those elements together, be where your customer is and then figure out, well, what's the next step for them as a brand?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, and I think that's a really good point. Be where your customer is. So don't say no to any of these opportunities. But I also think, like it was a bit of a tongue in cheek question. Websites aren't going to disappear. Maybe they'll back off the growth. But it's like how do you also maintain control of the brand experience? There'll be enough platforms and people out there that are willing to represent your brand, whether that's OpenAI, whether that's Google, whether it's Ray Ban. But at some point you're going to have to have places where customers go, oh, this is owned by that brand, by that brand to complement everything else. Completely agree jj, you have shared so much around the Roadmap, so thank you so much for that pleasure. I learned a lot and I think anyone who's listening to this, especially if you've Got a store at the moment, will have two, three, four actions that they can take away now and start playing with with new additions. But what about you? I know, like, you're this weird mix here because you represent Shopify so well and I know how much you love it and how much you're in it, but on the weekends, I know that you're the outdoors dad. Like, you're on the board of Bicycle Queensland, Correct? Yeah. And you are an avid camper, you're the outdoors guy. So you've got this mixed world going on between your personal and your. And your professional life.
James Johnson: I'm glad you described as weird. Thanks, Nathan.
[Voiceover]: I introduce you every time, actually. That's going to be in the intro. But tell me about that piece of your life where you, like, how do you switch off from all of this?
James Johnson: I don't know if I do completely, but I do call cycling. So I love riding. I do literally call it my mental marination. So if I ever need to think about a problem or, you know, think deeply about something, I will literally do some pre work, jump on a bike for an hour or two or five and go, ah. It's all kind of mixed in my brain and I've got an answer as I come through.
[Voiceover]: Is it the cycling or the Lycra?
James Johnson: Maybe a bit of both. But it's like when you jump in the car and you magically appear at your destination and go, how did I get here? That's me on the bike. I have my. My moment of Zen. So I don't profess to be perfect at this at all. I have the right balance that helps me in terms of staying grounded and thinking. I had the great fortune to do lots of travel around Australia with my family last year and I guess from a personal perspective, very fortunate to make that happen. But my tip for everybody would be figure out what your version of that is and prioritise it, because life is short. You need to kind of make that happen. That'd be my tip from that perspective.
[Voiceover]: Your photos made me sick.
James Johnson: So good.
[Voiceover]: What an experience. That looked so good. All right, so next 12 months, I know that you're shortly off to Canada. We're going to actually see each other in Singapore.
James Johnson: Nrf.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Looking forward to that in two weeks. And then you've got Canada as well. So you've got a lot of travel coming up. What's your focus for the next 12 months?
James Johnson: Yeah, so continuing to help retailers adopt more Shopify is really our focus and discussion. As we said, heaps of capabilities heaps of areas for businesses to improve. So personally, my team and I are looking forward to having many of those discussions to figure out how we can add value to retailers. But businesses, over the next little while, you'll continue to see more and more happening, unsurprisingly from a product perspective for us. And clearly the industry is never dull. So, you know, we'll wake up and there'll be something new tomorrow. So it's how we respond to that, both professionally and personally. It's pretty cool.
[Voiceover]: How fun. And if people heard this and they love hearing from you, I know you're on a stage, like, literally, you can kind of go, you know, open up your computer and find JJ on a stage.
James Johnson: Go everywhere. Absolutely.
[Voiceover]: But I will say you always deliver. Like every presentation I've seen you, you know, oh, God, I almost said hundreds, but it's probably pretty close. But tens of times deliver. And you always, every time I see you, you're always presenting something that is valuable to the audience. And I always leave thinking about something new.
James Johnson: Awesome. Thank you.
[Voiceover]: So you do a brilliant job there. So I recommend seeing folks, maybe just interrupt.
James Johnson: For folks that are going to nraf, I am going to dive deep on some AI topics and how you can apply that in your business. So come to the Shopify booth and say hi and happy to share some thoughts on that.
[Voiceover]: There you go. And if people aren't going to nrf, what's the best way to get in touch and learn more?
James Johnson: Dropping me A note on LinkedIn is probably the best way.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Great. And then if you want to find out more about additions, we'll put the link in the show. Notes.
James Johnson: Beautiful.
[Voiceover]: I'm not going to ask you to recite the URL.
James Johnson: Shopify.com additions will get you there as well. Perfect.
[Voiceover]: JJ, thanks for joining us in the Bush residence to record this very special episode of Add to Cars.
James Johnson: So good to chat irl. Thanks, Nate.
[Voiceover]: There you go. I hope you had as much fun listening to that as I did recording it. It's always special to have someone in the studio with us rather than being on the other end of a Riverside conversation. And as I said at the start, I always leave my conversations with JJ feeling a little bit smarter, a little bit more optimistic, and really a little bit more of a shell of a human. He just manages to manage a life so well. It's from what I always love about jj. I always feel inspired after speaking with him. But as always, my aim for those conversations are to leave you with some practical takeaways that you can implement in your business straight away.
James Johnson: Here we go.
[Voiceover]: Here are my three takeaways. Number one, have you tried Sidekick and given up? It might be time to give it another crack. We've all been there. We've opened up a new tool, asked a question, got something vague or generic and never touched it again. And I've heard that a little bit with Sidekick in the past. But JJ made it clear that Sidekick has seriously leveled up. It's not just about giving you data, it's about helping you do something with it. Now you can ask Sidekick questions like what were my top selling products in New South Wales last quarter? Or which customers bought more than twice in 2023 but haven't returned since? Normally an analyst would cost you tens of thousands, but still, Sidekick will not only surface that insight, it'll help you build segments, launch promos, or even create collections. So if you've written it off, go revisit it. It's gone from gimmicky to being genuinely useful. Learn what questions you can ask it and rely on it for, and it could save you hours and find you lost revenue every week. Number two, your product data isn't just for customers, customers or search engines anymore. It's got to be for bots too. One of the most powerful ideas that JJ shared was how AI discovery is already changing how people find products. I think we all know that and we realize it and we're trying to grapple with how we can show up in GPT with tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT. Pulling data directly from Shopify's global catalog and knowledge base. The rules of SEO are changing. AI doesn't care about fancy content copy. It needs clean, structured data. So if your product titles, prices, delivery info and descriptions are inconsistent or vague, you won't get surfaced. When someone asks, what's a good vegan moisturizer with same day delivery in Sydney? That's not my question, but it could be a question. So the action here Spend some time this week thinking, discussing, learning how you would clean up your CAT catalog to make it most relevant for the bots. The trick here is knowing that this will change over time. But what is it that you can do today? Use Shopify's native tools to structure your info properly. It's not just about ranking on Google anymore, it's about being readable by the bots that are shaping the future of shopping. And number three, start every task with AI first. JJ shared this that he's using for himself and with his team for one week. Start every core e commerce task and maybe personal task. If you're up for it by asking can AI help me do this faster, smarter or better, then see where it takes you. It could be writing a product description, building a customer segment, planning a campaign, drafting an email, or practicing a difficult conversation. Use AI to give it a go and then refine. Sure it will take you longer up front, but as you discover offer more and more capabilities, it will save you time in the long run. This is an idea that came directly from the book Cointelligence, one of the best books that I've read recently. It challenges you not just to use AI but to partner with it, treating it like a creative collaborator, and I highly recommend giving it a read if you're looking to sharpen your approach to working in the AI era. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend, especially one who who will be frothing to jump into Shopify's new feature releases. And if you're kind enough, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps make a difference and grows our Add to Cart community. As always, a huge thank you to our partners Shopify and Klaviyo for making this episode possible. Thanks again for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to cart.
