Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast, Well, can
anyone build and launch an app? Merchants are starting to use
that as a qualifier for choosing apps.
And like a lot of app stores or even physical stores, what we
want to provide is some quality filter that you can that
merchants can use. The thing I love is it's so
fast. And that's what leads to the
great experience I. Don't want to have the
experience we had with the redirects app we used.
Caused carnage, ruin, ruined my day and potentially threaten a
business at the same time. Hello and welcome to another
episode, the winning Shop 5 podcast.
If it's your first time tuning in, my name's Nick.
It's a pleasure to have you listening to the pinkest,
brightest podcast you have ever seen.
If you've been tuning in for a while, then welcome back.
At the time of this going out, I will be absolutely knackered
because we would have just been at e-commerce Expo here in
London, which our agency are exhibiting at.
If you didn't get a chance to catch us, but you did pop along
to the show and you do want to talk, check out our website spec
dot digital is the web address. So come and reach out.
We can have a conversation about SEOPB.
We also had a challenge on our stand as well.
Two minutes to find two big things that we can change in
your SEO or PPC strategy. And we had two minutes to do
that and we're welcome to have you guys do that over video if
you want as well. My team were very, very paranoid
about how we were going to do so many of these things at the
show. So I'll probably share in next
week or the week week after this episode how all of that went.
So we'll see what goes on. Anyway, if one guest isn't cool
enough, I've got 2 today and I'm very, very excited to introduce
both of them. I'm going to come across to you
first, Jonathan Zaza of who is Director of Product at Shopify.
Jonathan, welcome to the show. How are you?
Thanks so much for having me, I'm doing really well.
Amazing. And if anyone's like, OK,
director of product, I've heard of Shopify and we were joking
before. If you've not heard of Shopify,
wrong. Podcasts change show
immediately. But if people don't know what
director of product is, tell us a bit about your role and what a
day in your life looks like, the kind of things you're dealing
with, things you're talking about and people you're working
with in Shopify. Yeah.
So not to bore you too much, but a product manager is it, it's
sort of a nascent profession, but it's also no one product
manager does the same thing at any other company and maybe even
within the company. But a product manager
effectively makes decisions on what to build.
So there's so many, many decisions that are made on
software reuse and other products, physical products in
the world. Product managers really decide
on like, hey, what, where should we invest?
What problems should we go solve?
And then even within those problems, what kinds of
decisions need to be made? Amazing.
And I mean with Shopify as an organization and we'll talk
about some bit more as we go through and specifically about
apps today and built for Shopify, but there must be so
many bits of tech you come across all day.
So I'm very excited to hear more about the direction you guys are
trying to go in and why some apps get endorsed, why some
don't. There's going to be some really
cool nuances today. And and the first question by
the way, I'm going to ask guys if you've logged in and gone
well, I don't develop apps. The first question I am going to
ask Jonathan shortly is like, well, why should merchants care
about this? So we're going to talk about
that in a second, but bringing that across then you one of the
built for Shopify apps, Obviously Saguno, one of our
favorite partners. You've been involved for a huge
amount of time. But Chris, Chris, welcome to the
show. I we're trying to pronounce your
surname because I've known you for so long and I just jokingly
asked you for hit record. Chris, how do you pronounce your
surname? And you want to tell people
about Shopify, It's not Saguno as well.
If they've not come across Saguno or listen to one of our
episodes. But firstly, welcome.
Back. Yeah.
Good to see you, Nick. Jonathan, good to see you as
well. Thanks for having me on here.
It's Chris Geiss from Saguno. And yeah, we've, we've been in
the Shopify space for over 8 years And you know, we have a,
a, a few kind of primary products, one being kind of a
marketing suite. So like e-mail marketing,
product reviews, pop ups and forms.
Then we have a bulk discount code generator that also has a
lot of reporting and, and good things for attribution.
And then we have an integration with Canva and Shopify that's,
that's really cool as well. So yeah, we, we love building
for Shopify and, and Jonathan's a incredible partner and, and so
yeah, happy to be here and chat through the importance of, of
built for Shopify and, and why we've decided to go all in on,
on Shopify from day one. Amazing.
And I don't want to say too much because I want to hear it from
you, Jonathan, about what it means.
But some of the points you've just raised there, Chris, I
think are really relevant to talk about.
I think as we say, why merchants should care and why it's
important to merchants, but also the fact that you guys have,
we'll talk about a bit more as we go through why you guys have
doubled down in the Shopify space as opposed to being, and I
won't name any names because you're a sponsor of ours and
you're sitting in front of me. But other e-mail platforms are
the discount bulk apps that you could be using in Shopify.
They're not built it for Shopify.
And we're going to talk a bit about what that means and some
of the restrictions that might actually create.
But Jonathan, I've mentioned the question twice now.
Tell us, why should merchants care about the built for Shopify
badge and what does it really mean?
Yeah. So Build for Shopify is the gold
standard for app quality. And so apps that are certified
with Build for Shopify are meeting Shopify's highest
standards. So the App Store has become has
grown a lot and like a lot of app stores or even physical
stores, what we want to provide is some quality filter that you
can that merchants can use when they're going there to
understand is this, this is verified, is this, is this a
trusted seller? Is, you know, any of those sort
of analogies that exist in the real the world?
They exist on the App Store now. And so we really broke it down
into 3 categories. So in order to get a BFS badge,
an app has to meet three primary categories of Excellence,
performance, design and Integration.
Amazing. And so when someone's applying
to become a built for Shopify app, then you mentioned about
the certification. Is it the case at the moment?
And again, I think this is really useful for merchants to
understand anyone, can anyone build and launch an app?
And this is therefore a differentiator that we, Shopify
actually approved to this app now that we are endorsing it.
You should be, if you're looking at apps, you should consider
this one. But there's still a free open
marketplace. Is that how it works for non BFS
apps? Yeah.
So build for Shopify is an opt in program.
So like you said, anyone in the universe can build an app and
then anyone in that in that universe of the app building can
also apply to be built for Shopify.
In order to be built for Shopify, though, they'll go
through a separate application that'll scrutinize their
application for performance design and integration.
And it's not a one time thing. So be mindful that our reviewers
are constantly reviewing and constantly analyzing the apps to
make sure they're still conforming the guidelines so
that when merchants go to the App Store and they see that
badge, they know that it's still meeting that quality bar.
Amazing. And I like that there's that
ongoing process as well because I mean, as an agency, we've been
opted into some programs before and five years go by and it's
like, are we still part of that? Like we don't actually work on
that anymore. We don't there's so many updates
and we're not actually involved. See, if I come across to you
now, Chris, on this as well, what have, what have some of the
hoops been that you've had to jump through to ensure that
you're meeting those standards? But also, what are some of the
benefits that you found by meeting those standards or
looking at your processes in the tech that's actually being used
behind the Saguno platform? Yeah, a lot there.
So you know, we we were essentially kind of like when we
started building for Shopify, we decided to build for Shopify.
And to us, that meant being embedded from day one using
Polaris from day one, which is their user interface library so
that your app can look like Shopify.
And, and so that was kind of our differentiation was to say, Hey,
we want to be so close to the commerce platform that we
actually want to be inside of it and just seamlessly integrated
everywhere. So when you know, the built for
Shopify program came out, it was a natural thing for us to kind
of, you know, go through and double down on and.
And so yes, there is a process to to go through.
Luckily we didn't have to do kind of like a rewrite of the
interface because we were already using Polaris, but that
is a big step that some partners have to do.
And so, yeah, it was performance related things, making sure our
app was as snappy as possible. Some UI changes, nothing too
major for us, luckily. But but yes, there is also a, a
continual review process. We get, you know, pinged every
so often with little things that they think we need to, to
change. And then there's a, you know,
larger kind of annual process that that we just recently went
through with, with one of the apps.
And so, yeah, Shopify is there. It's not just like a, it's not
just a badge, like there's a lot behind it.
And, and, and they're really, you know, ensuring that badge
means something. It has been helpful for the app
in general too, cuz I think merchants are starting to use
that as a qualifier for choosing apps.
There's like a little filter. Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, it's exactly and we're going to talk about that in a
minute actually as to what some of those filters are.
But sorry, you were going to tell us some of the features.
I mean, yeah, please carry on because I think there's some
really important bits in here actually for merchants to go.
What is the difference? How do I know when I'm looking
at like a more of a certified trusted app versus this is just
an app? Yeah, right.
In the App Store, like there's a built for Shopify button that
you can Click to filter the list of apps down to just ones that
are built for Shopify. So that's a very helpful thing
to do as you're as you're looking for for apps.
But yeah, we hear from merchants that they're starting to use
that as a reason for choosing apps and, and, and yeah, it's
been, it's been great. Hey guys, I just want to take a
moment aside from today's episode to introduce one of our
amazing sponsors, Kavella. They are the all in one platform
that helps you design, sample and launch your product lines.
Kavella are helping Shopify brands save up to 40% on stock
costs thanks to their smart streamlined supply chain.
That means more profit for you, less costs, and loads of time
saved in trying to get stock on your shelves right now.
You can fast track their waiting list and get 50% of your first
sample order just by using the code winning at checkout.
This exclusive offer for winning with Shopify podcast listeners.
Just go to the link in our description or in our bio to
unlock the savings and skip the queue.
We build your brand, save on stock and step into the future
of e-commerce with Cabela. That code again winning back to
the episode. Amazing.
And I mean, from our perspective as an agency, like we work
across so many different platforms, like we work on
Magento, WordPress, we can build our own apps and just sort of
plug them in. We can grab an app knowing
nothing about it. It looks like it's going to
solve a problem. And then six months later the
app just disappears. I mean, that has happened once
it's posting Shopify apps as well.
And where the we woke up 1 morning and the redirect servers
disappeared. They won't name names.
I mean, it would point this anyway because the app doesn't
exist anymore. But yeah, we suddenly had
150,000 redirects, having done a quite a large hybris to Shopify
plus migration suddenly disappeared and it landed on my
desk and it was like a, can you just clear my diary today, guys?
Like I'm in a spreadsheet, a big spreadsheet.
But I think having that certification and as you say,
Chris, having Shopify themselves, your team, Jonathan
actually reaching out and saying, hey, we think you should
change this. That extra pair of eyes must be
so powerful. But with the built for Shopify
badge, does the app have to be exclusive to Shopify or can it
be a platform that's or an app that's being used across lots of
different sites like some platforms just Shopify now
endorsed that? Yeah.
So there's nothing that says it has to be exclusive.
I'm sure there's plenty of apps that will support other commerce
platforms. The badge is really just meeting
our quality standards. Which is good because certainly
when we look at like some of the competitors to Saguno, for
example, some of them have the badge, but we know they're not
just completely like like like you guys are at Chris at Saguno.
It's built for Shopify. So actually when you're using
it, it's like everything we've done is Shopify focused rather
than we've built a really cool e-mail platform and now we're
trying to get it to work with Shopify.
And we've eventually got the badge.
Maybe we've created a second version of the app that works
within Shopify or something. But again, that that integration
piece, I've seen it so many times over the years where
trying to integrate anything with anything, there are things
that can go wrong. So having something like Saguna
that's much more native within Shopify, obviously a massive,
massive benefit for that. But yeah, good, good to know.
I think that actually some of the apps people use if they're
moving to Shopify could still use those in the in the Shopify
space. But I mean, just coming across
to to you, Jonathan, I know we've mentioned a few bits on
this already, but are there any other problem, problems that
Shopify were looking to solve by launching the built for Shopify?
Because it must be more than just a we like this one and we
don't like this one. You know what are some of the
other problems you guys were trying to solve that merchants
should consider? Yeah.
So we know that like, you know, at Shopify, we're always trying
to solve problems for merchants. And a common problem for
merchants, whether or not they're starting out or they're
scaling massively and like facing new challenges is knowing
which apps to install. And so that's why we built the
program. We want merchants to feel
confident in choosing and installing apps without
stressing about if it's going to be slow or hard to use, right,
Really basic things. And, and so that's really the
purpose of this is to solve that merchant problem while they're
facing new challenges, whether that's starting a new business
or scaling into new areas. And so like every merchant's
going to face that problem. Absolutely.
And I always say the tech's only as good as the person wielding
it as well. If it was like a tool, which
we've got some clients that say, well, we've got the best tech
there is. And we look at it, it's like
your page speed's terrible. You're only using one out of 50
features on this one. So why did you choose that app?
And it's, we work in SEO, so page speed's really important,
which Shopify's made that. I don't know if you were
involved in this and a complete tangent, but the Shopify page
speed that you can see within Shopify has been really useful.
Just we can obviously dig deeper with some of the more insightful
tools we've got, but it's really nice just to get a very quick
steer. I think for merchants, which
relates to apps massively because it tends to be app
bulking and big images, which Shopify deals with most of the
images that app bulking, I call it on site where you're putting
too many apps on and overloading it.
It's all too common in Shopify, isn't it?
So I understand why you guys have launched that dashboard,
but you must be getting some really good feedback from brands
about how important it is just to see that page speed,
especially for the early stage, not wanting to hire someone like
us to do a bit of a deeper dive into it.
Yeah. So at Jump, we talk about
performance a lot and we care deeply about it.
We're sort of like for both buyers as well as merchants.
And so yeah, like apps can't slow down your store, it's just
sort of period, right. And that's why it's a big part
of the built for shop by standards.
And we also know that merchants are doing a lot of complex tax
everyday. They're sort of like trying to
succeed at, at running a business.
They, they shouldn't have to worry that like the Shopify
admin is slow, right? Like that's just, that's just
going to like make their lives miserable and they're going to
experience that multiple times throughout the day.
And so that's why we we set up pretty high standards for apps
to conform to the same standards that we we ourselves live up to,
which is, hey, let's make this product really fast.
Yeah. And I'm just, I'm half writing a
note, but it's probably easy if I just ask you the question and
try and record it. But would you guys at Shopify,
if something was going badly, as in an app wasn't performing well
and you were getting complaints, how strict does Shopify start to
get with actually removing or maybe not even removing?
Is there anything you guys do to say this is not an app we longer
endorse beyond just removing the bill for Shopify badge is do you
guys actually say this is we believe is now a harmful app or
this app is not just simply not working?
Is there an approval process to get an app submitted and you
guys would remove something if it wasn't working well?
Yeah. So separate to build for
Shopify, just to even be in the store, there's a set of App
Store requirements and those are those are separate, you know,
but somewhat related. Yeah, there there there is sort
of an App Store requirement that has to be functional.
So if you know an app is not returning anything, that's not
quite functional so. Yeah, yeah.
Which which makes sense that I think so many brands we talked
to that are moving to Shopify or thinking about it, one of the
big challenges they're like, we won't be able to do half the
things we can do already. And sometimes I say, well, look,
it's a double edged sword because actually it means you
also can't break it that easily. Or if something's harmful,
Shopify might intervene and remove it for you or, or, or
tell you to take action and give you a time limit.
So actually if there is something damaging on your site
before it kills your conversion rate, your customer reputation,
your SEO, actually we can start to deal with that.
But going from that end of the scale then to the other end
built for Shopify brands, you've, you guys actually give
out awards to brands, don't you? And I'm understand Chris, you
guys have won one of these awards at Saguino.
Talk us through what that means and how hard you guys have had
to work to actually win that award and how important it is to
have that recognition beyond just the Build for Shopify
badge. I mean, that was, yeah, winning
the build award for for best app in 2024 was kind of a surreal
experience and, and something that we're incredibly honored
and grateful for. You know, we've, like I said,
we've been completely dedicated to Shopify for, for over 8 years
now. And and so for that, for Shopify
to recognize that that effort was it meant the world to us.
And and so, you know, my Co founder got to go up on stage
and accept that award and take a fun selfie with Harley and, and
it was just really cool and meant so much to the team.
So just incredibly thankful for for that.
And I think it's so good to have recognition, especially when you
guys have doubled down so much over.
I mean, we've worked with you for quite a few years now, Chris
and and Brian and the team at Saguno said it's great.
I think you guys have got that recognition actually for how
hard you work to improve the lives of merchants.
And, and just just to say from my point of view as well, for
everyone listening, whenever I've turned to Chris or any of
the team at Saguno and said, Hey, could it do this?
They've never said no. They've either come back with a
here's why we don't want it to do that because I do have some
wacky ideas from time to time, but also some of the things
developed if if you're working with Saguno or you're using
another platform and feeling like it's a very faceless, just
as a set of settings in front of me to run my e-mail or bulk
discounts or camera integrations, things like
whatever. The thing is actually, if you
want to have a conversation, it's one reason we introduced
Saguno so much. So I, I was delighted to see
that you guys won that award back at Christmas.
And I think it's a really good recognition of how hard you work
and how you've really doubled down on your niche audience
where I think a lot of e-mail providers across the board have
actually gone. Let's just get as many customers
as possible where you guys have actually gone there.
There's a specific set of people we really want to help with
this, but talking about those merchants, Chris or Jonathan, I
don't know if which one of you guys wants to go first or either
of you guys, but are there any particular merchants that really
stick with you? Using built for Shopify apps
made a meaningful difference to how they were trying to run
their business. And, and most importantly, I
always like to bring it back to revenue, something that actually
helped the the store and the merchants revenue increase.
I don't know who which one of you guys wants to go first on
this. I don't know if.
I have any. Specific merchant, yeah, I don't
know if I have any specific merchant story, but like I
talked to about app developers often and I love it when they
come to me and say, wow, like, you know, even though it was
hard, maybe there's a bunch of effort to get into built for
Shopify. What they discovered is that
they've, they've seen that merchants are now consistently
praising their apps now. And both both like qualitatively
and quantitatively, they're, they're ratings have gone up.
They've, they're now getting more and more growth for
themselves. And, and it seems like we're,
we're making the right match, right?
We're making the right matchmaking experience happen.
And so I just, I love hearing those stories, and those are the
stories I hear quite often. Yeah.
I mean, aside from like our incredible customer support, the
number one thing that people mention in our app reviews is
the integration with Shopify. And so it, it is meaningful to
folks. It's, it greatly reduces your
learning curve when you're trying a new tool because it
works and looks like Shopify. And, and they just love that
experience getting to stay inside of, of their Shopify
admin, not having to worry about, you know, duplicating
data in different systems and all that sort of stuff.
So yeah, we've definitely heard it from merchants through
reviews, through anecdotally, you know, and, and support
conversations. We've also seen, you know, apps
come, you know, potentially leave go for, they hired an
agency. The agency pulled them off to
another platform that they worked with.
They ended up firing the agency and then came back to shop or
came back to Seguno. And, and so that, that ease of
use that being built for Shopify provides, it enables merchants
to do more with less. And, and so they're actually
able to take advantage of the functionality that apps provide
and, and do more with it. And, and so we've, we've seen
that a number of times that people are, are choosing that
because it, it gives them more control and they feel like they
can do more with it. And one thing I love about
Saguna as well, just to kind of carry on from what you've said,
Jonathan, about people praising the apps.
And also I think I love your response as well, Chris, with
like it's the integration so important.
Some of the feedback we've had with our clients where we've
jumped on a call with Saguno and said, right, these guys, they're
using this platform or they're on somewhere on Saguno already.
We need to be using it more like we need to work out
segmentations, audiences using customer data.
The way the pop ups work. The thing I love is it's so fast
on page speeds because the pop ups are already built within
Shopify rather than you've done some JavaScript into your theme
to get something to fire to offer a discount on a initial
purchase or sign up to our newsletter for XYZ.
Because it's so integrated, when somebody signs up, they're now
in your Shopify customers area. They're not in some CRM or ERP
system elsewhere. They might go there later, but
they're they're in Shopify, which means they're also in
Saguno. And then you can automatically
have the automations and stuff flowing through.
We've had clients where automations through a third
party non Shopify native app is working completely independently
and it stops working for a week or two.
And it's only when somebody looked at a dashboard that had
e-mail revenue coming in from GA four that really noticed
something was actually wrong here.
Like why are the numbers dropping whereas Saguno's built
into it? So you just don't see that
happen because of that integration.
So I think that I, I, I know it's not completely native to
Shopify. It's still an app on its own
server that plugs in, but I call it native because it looks like
that when you're actually in the interface.
You don't have to leave Shopify to do anything.
Are there any specific features I've missed there, Chris, that
you also think are important? But that's what our clients are
saying is so important. I mean, just speaking more
broadly about the, the BFS program, right?
Like I think like Jonathan mentioned, there's performance,
there's design and then integration.
And so the integration is an area that I think is often
overlooked and it's something that Shopify is pushing even
more and putting more requirements there, especially
for different categories of apps.
And that's what leads to the great experience when you have
data in the right places that enables merchants to leverage in
segments or discounting or, you know, storefront things, all
that, all that type of stuff, it matters.
And, and so even data portability you could think
about. So as you're using one app and
then you decide to switch it out for another, if you have the
data stored properly in Shopify, you don't have to go through a
whole migration process. It's easier to kind of plug and
play these things. And so I, I just love how
Shopify is, is just putting forth the right way to do things
and starting to incentivize apps to, to go after that because it
makes a better experience for, for everyone.
Do you ever find that in your warehouse you have dead stock,
You can't sell it, no one wants to buy it, and you can't get a
refund on it. Or alternatively, you're missing
inventory in your warehouse that you need, you've got sales
coming in and you're low on stock and you haven't ordered
more stock. In time, all these things hit
profit. And I've been there.
I've run my own Shopify store and had exactly that problem.
We've partnered up with Inventory Planner who have the
most incredible app to help you manage that and forecast exactly
what products, what skews even down to what colour of product
you need to order in advance to make sure stock levels remain
consistent throughout. They're also running a seven day
boot camp and if you want to go and sign up to that, it's 7
emails every seven days and it takes the same amount of time as
your morning coffee. And in seven days, like me, you
can become an inventory management pro.
Both links are in the description.
Enjoy. Absolutely.
And as someone who's in Shopify a lot working with clients,
making changes in my team are it's when you've got something
in there, it's so much easier across the board just to go,
let's just open the app within the Shopify interface.
It's already plugged into my theme.
I can customize things quickly. And one of our clients, they,
they moved from Hybris and the site would cost them like 2 and
a half, $1,000,000. And they moved from Hybris to
Shopify. It was $110,000 build on
Shopify. And that included all the
integrations. And when we stripped back the
brief under all the different layers of the onion, right in
the middle was the marketing team wants to click new page and
add some content hybrid. It was so complicated.
And then I mean, that was back in 2021.
I think we did that, that project and selling when live in
2021. And so I just think having that
ease ability through there, the App Store.
But I, it's really good to have you on Jonathan, actually to
talk about. There's so much more going on
behind the scenes than just good app, bad app and it's just
random voting system actually so much behind it.
Those three points think are really key, but where is it
going? Like where's the built for
Shopify going at the moment? What are you guys focused on,
the principles starting to evolve?
Are you changing some of the features in there like tell us
what merchants should be looking out for?
And also anything exciting? We love exclusives on here.
But yeah, anything exciting that you are allowed to tell us?
Yeah. So, I mean, I won't say anything
specifically, but I will say that Shopify evolves.
And as Shopify evolves, we want to give tools to developers so
that merchants have that experience both in the sort of
core Shopify experience as well as their apps.
And so we'll continue to always do that.
When I see the big shift that I see happening, which is which is
nice, is that I see app developers are now building
built for Shopify first. They're not thinking of it as an
afterthought of like, OK, I launched the thing, now I need
to go do this. This like other now large task.
They're thinking about it from the start, which is wonderful,
which means what what's that's going to mean is that quality is
going to become baseline, not the exception.
The one thing I will say and give a little preview to is that
we are going to be providing some app recommendations through
Sidekick, which is Shopify's AI powered assistant.
Right now it doesn't do a good job of that.
Well, when we do that, of course, what we want to do is
provide those recommendations with both for Shopify in mind.
Amazing. And just, if anyone's never
listened to my British Tuesday tea break talks, I call it
British because it's tea. And the guys in the US find that
hilarious. We love tea here.
We drink so much of it. I drink tea, but when, Yeah, I
mean, it's good. It's good.
We so. But on the Tuesday episodes, so
I often look at the Shopify change log and things coming out
and we talk a lot about sidekick.
Then when I talk to merchants and talk to clients of ours and
say, hey, you've used the sidekick, they're like, oh, I
know what it is. I haven't really used it yet.
Is there anything else, Jonathan, you can tell us beyond
just me trying to fix little problems we're dealing with as
an agency working with merch? Is there, is there any, any
specific things that people should be using it for that or
or trends you're seeing merchants actually start to
evolve it for and beyond. And I love the idea of it
recommending apps. That sounds brilliant.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's I think
this experience like the sidekick experience, just like a
lot of AI experiences in our lives are are massively
evolving. And so the way that we think
about sidekick is it's sort of like it is your sort of Co
founder, right. You want to ask it questions and
it should be able to answer them quickly or or quickly take you
to to that experience so that you don't have to, you know, you
know, try to figure out where it is in the admin and where where
I need to make these changes. And so more and more of these
use cases we think will be supported by these AI powered
assistant. Amazing, amazing.
And sticking with the future as well, talking about what's
coming up. I'm going to come to you first,
Chris, and then and then back to you on the same question as
well, Jonathan, to to sort of round off today's episode,
Chris, if you were a merchant and you were looking for apps
and specifically going, I don't want to have the experience we
had with the redirects app we use that just disappeared
overnight, caused carnage, ruined, ruined my day and
potentially threaten a business at the same time.
How do you what advice would you give us if you were the merchant
you're looking to future proof your business with the right
apps? What are some of the things
beyond just built for built for Shopify badge?
What are some of the things you're looking for, the way you
would go about that searching mission?
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think obviously as
we're talking about it today, I think built for Shopify is a
great lens to look through. The App Store reviews are
obviously super important. You know how long someone's been
around that type of stuff. Can, you know, potentially avoid
the the thing you ran into. But I think the, the important
thing is to think about, there is no way to future proof like
your, your choice of apps. You want to focus on finding
what's the right fit for the stage of business that I'm in.
When you, when you see, you know, all the big brands use
this app and I want to use that so I never have to change it as
my business scales. I think that's one of the, the
pitfalls that most merchants fall into.
And it's, it's one that actually hurts your business and slows
you down because you're dealing with complexity that you're not
ready to, to handle. So by choosing apps that sort of
meet you where you are, which is likely inside your Shopify admin
both there and as a business, I think that's the the biggest
thing to think through as your as your choosing apps.
And if I could just respond to that quickly with a real world
example in my inbox right now, one of our clients are using,
it's not quite a custom build, but it's where a small
organization, a small agency have built their own e-commerce
system. And the problem is that every
time the ERP in the warehouse system updates and every client
has a different ERP, which if if you're really small, you're
like, what is this ERP? It basically is a list of all
your products. It's your stock level in the
warehouse. And it pumps that feed out to
like Shopify and lots of other places or your website.
So they're on a custom, custom built platforms, an e-commerce
platform. And every time the ERP updates,
they have to pay thousands of pounds to then have the web
store updates so it can still display the correct product,
stock information, pricing, descriptions, pictures, knows
what's there, knows what's not when new things get added.
Whereas because that ERP has a Shopify integration, the ERP and
Shopify, they just make sure the app is working all the time.
So you don't even know when it needs updating, which saves you
the cost. Whereas this custom platform
every time the ERP updates like you have to pay money to a
developer to sit there and do stuff.
So I love what you're saying, Chris, And I think the bigger,
wider thing absolutely is on Shopify, you don't have to make
those long term app decisions. I love the point you make about
you can use the one that's relevant today and then you can
change it quite easily later because you're not changing
Shopify itself. And if you want a new website,
you build a new theme, not a whole new e-commerce store.
I think there's loads a good advantages like that.
So thank you, Jonathan. Same question to you.
What advice would you give to merchants if they were looking
for new apps or a new app suite or a new tool stack as we used
to call it pre Shopify days? Yeah, so obviously I'm going to
sound like a broken record, but definitely start with a built
for Shopify badge you. Know that filter?
Yeah. Exactly.
I, I mean, I think we specifically designed the
program to make sure that it matches what merchants care
about. And we know that these apps are
going the extra mile for quality and integration and performance.
And it just sort of like let's you go run your business.
You don't have to worry that things are going to be data is
going to be out of sync. You're not going to have the
full picture of your store and, and, and, and things like that
that are just so important to us and should be, you know, so
important to Shopify and then therefore so important to
merchants. And so I'm going to be a broken
record on that. It's like start with my, my
first three things are start with a built for Shopify badge,
start for the built for Shopify badge, and then of course, start
for the built for Shopify badge. I was.
Wondering what the third one might be?
Yes. Exactly.
Yeah. And and like Chris, I agree.
It's like read the reviews like we've also spent a lot of time
refining the review system. It was a very controversial
thing in the app, in the app developer space.
And but we did that for merchants, right?
It was, it was a very large Band-Aid that hurt a lot to RIP
off, but we did that for merchants.
And so now the review should reflect reality and what's
happening. And so those reviews really,
really do matter. And I would start there as well.
Amazing. And we haven't spoken probably
enough today, actually thinking about it about about the reviews
themselves. And I'd certainly echo reviews
are really, really important. And it's both people reviewing
your products to your customers and how much you guys work on
that as merchants. It's exactly the same with the
app. See, I would actually recommend
if you're using any app and you really like it, and I'm sure
you'd love this, Jonathan, there's more content on your
system as well. And it helps other merchants go
and review the apps you're using and then be honest.
You know something's not working.
This is one thing I love is these apps are not just a random
website. You download a plug in, you
Chuck it on your server and get on your knees and pray.
It's like these are all indoors, of course they've been checked.
And actually if something's not right there is there is support
available. And I probably should have asked
to say, is this support a requirement?
I don't know if it actually is or not, but if you have an app
in the App Store, do you have to provide support if people have
an issue with it? Yeah.
So that is a baseline requirement.
There are apps that provide better support.
So but and that's that's something that we could explore
in the future. We just know that that's, it's
a, it's a, it's super important. We know for for merchants.
Absolutely. And I've had such good support
by from obviously as an agency we get the partner support from
Shopify, which is amazing, but also the the support from apps
as well. And again, one reason we
endorsed you guys at Saguna so much is you can actually talk to
somebody. It's not a faceless system and
that person is going to care about your business and help
advise you on e-mail flows and workflows and automations you
could create and the way you should be discounting and that
kind of thing. So yeah, I want to say a massive
thank you to both of you. But Chris, I'm going to come to
you first. If people are like, all right,
I'm done with my e-mail platforms.
Saguna sounds amazing. You've told me 5 billion reasons
today why I should be using Saguno.
How can people reach out and how can they get that consultancy
through Winning we Shopify as well?
Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to saguno.com, you
know would love to which is S e.g.
Uno.com and so check us outreach out install the app that you can
talk with the team through that. We would love to, to help.
It's, you know, coming up on BFCM time.
So it's a, it's a perfect time to, to make sure you have your
house in order. And whether that's from a
deliverability perspective or from a campaign perspective,
we're here to help and, and talk through those things.
And yeah, we do. We do have an offer.
I'm sure you guys will put the link in the description here to,
to to help. But yeah, just love, love
working with merchants. And we're, we're just, we're
just here to to help. Amazing.
Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us today and thanks
for all the insights you've shared as well.
It's been great to have you with us.
Yeah. Thanks, Nick.
Amazing. And Jonathan, massive thank you
to you as well. It's great to have Shopify on
the show as your name is in our name, although we couldn't put
it on our domain when we set up our website because we wanted to
have a Shopify store and we couldn't include Shop by the
domain. Apart from that, we've had a
lovely experience working with you guys today, but I want to
say a massive thank you for your time as well.
I know you're incredibly busy, so thanks for joining us today
and thanks for sharing so many great insights.
Thanks for having me, appreciate it.
Great stuff. And for everyone listening at
home again Tuesday, I'm gonna be doing a tea break talks.
Send in some really cool facts, some cool Quivia we're calling
them. It's a bit of trivia.
I'll ask a question and one can guess what the answer is.
I made a word, I googled it. No one else is using it.
So I'm gonna try and trademark Quivia.
But make sure. Join us on Tuesday, grab a cup
of tea and we can talk about some of the news headlines going
on and be back again next week with amazing guests.
Also similar to today, interviewing guests, talking
about loads of different things going on.
If you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button.
Join our newsletter, which is powered by Shopify on our
Shopify store and it is Saguno powering the newsletters and
sent helping cinema as well. So go and sign up to that and
say yeah, hope you can hit subscribe, leave us a review and
we hope to have you again next week.
Thanks for tuning in. Black Friday and cyber money are
coming in fast. Is your store ready?
You need your marketing dialed in before the big rush.
And our sponsors. Saguno has everything you need
in one place from emails and pop ups to reviews and more.
Saguno's suite of tools is built inclusively for Shopify, so
everything works seamlessly in your store.
And right now with code WWS 20, you get 20% off your first three
months. So don't wait until the chaos
starts. Get your Black Friday and Cyber
Monday marketing ready today at saguno.com/winning with
shopifythatssaguno.com/winning with Shopify.