Agentic Commerce Is Here: What Shopify’s UCP Means for Ecommerce | #597

Download Shippit's Commerce Delivery Report 2026 for free.

At NRF in New York, Shopify and Google announced something that could quietly reshape the foundations of ecommerce: the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

In this episode, James Johnson, Enterprise Leader at Shopify Australia, joins Bushy to unpack what UCP actually is, why agentic commerce is accelerating faster than most retailers realise, and what operators should be doing right now to prepare.

Because while AI shopping sounds futuristic, the data says it’s already happening: Since January last year, Shopify has seen a 9x increase in AI traffic to merchant storefronts and a 14x increase in orders originating from AI searches. This isn’t theory. It’s distribution.

Today, we're discussing:

• What the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) actually is, and why it’s more than just another tech acronym
• The 9x growth in AI traffic and 14x growth in AI-originated orders
• Why agentic commerce is a new distribution channel, not the death of the storefront
• How AI agents like Gemini, ChatGPT and Copilot are reshaping product discovery
• The difference between AI traffic and AI conversion
• How tools like Shopify’s Knowledge Base and Sidekick prepare you now
• What retailers should be doing in the next 12 months

Connect with James
Explore Shopify

Download Shippit's Commerce Delivery Report 2026 for free. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

So, this is, I think, a really pivotal moment in agentic commerce and commerce overall. It's really as simple as this being another channel to sell and engage with consumers. There are checkout intricacies, there's fulfillment logic, there's trust that needs to be built through all these pieces. Hi everyone, I'm James Johnson, Enterprise Leader at Shopify. Today on Ad DeCart, really excited to share all the ins and outs of getting ready for Agentic Commerce.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

Hey, it's Nathan Bush or Bushy joining you once again from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Now, before we get into today's episode, and it is an absolute cracker, I've got a quick one for anyone who is grappling to get some great benchmarks around delivery and customer experience. It's that time of year where one of my favorite reports is out, Shippet's Commerce Delivery Report. And the findings, as per normal, are mind-blowing. Did you know that retailers offering fast delivery outperform their competitors by 4% over Black Friday? And that's just one interesting stat that's come from that report. Shippet's Commerce Delivery Report digs into exactly why speed now equals success and what it means looking ahead into 2026. It covers everything from automation and AI through to fulfillment, inventory, and operational decisions that actually move the needle for your business. If delivery is part of your growth equation, it is the report that you can't miss. You can check out the full report at shipit.com forward slash CDR2026. We'll put the link in the show notes. All right, let's get into today's episode. Welcome to Ad to Cart. Once again, welcome, Rosa.

SPEAKER_04 1:46

Thanks. Thanks, Bushy. I'm joining from the land of the Garagal people here in Sydney.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Lovely to have you here. We have a very, very, very special episode, hot off the press, coming up today.

SPEAKER_04 1:59

We do. We have James Johnson, the enterprise lead at Shopify, who is hot off the plane straight from the NRF New York City conference. Oh, yeah, he's very cold. He's freezing, but his Intel is piping hot. But yeah, he's joining us to talk all things agentic commerce.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Lovely. So there was the big announcement over in NRF, in case you missed it, around the UCP protocol, which is a collaboration between Google and Shopify and involved some really significant retailers, such as Walmart, in creating, as James says it, one pipeline for agentic commerce for the future. I think it's going to be one of the most massive changes in e-commerce that we've seen in some time. So as soon as it happened, I put a call out to our friends at Shopify and I said, hey, can we get a little bit of a download on exactly what this thing is and how it will impact retailers, especially those in Australia? And we were lucky enough to get JJ on again.

SPEAKER_04 2:56

Yeah, and it was so good. Everything he talks about is just so easy. Like we come away with like simple to-do lists and it really does feel exciting again. Like I feel like e-commerce, probably for the last seven years, has actually felt quite like stagnant. Like we talk about the same things, we're all trying to gain the same channels, but it's like actually UCP, Agentic Commerce is like a whole new channel. So yeah, it's it's gonna be a great one.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

It is a great one. And in this conversation, I love that we obviously future guys and we we want to unpack what this is, but there are so many tips in here that you can get started on straight away. So it's not like uh I'll learn this and then I'll store it for future. It's actually like, no, I'll learn this and I can get started straight away. So James breaks that down really well. We talk about everything, UCP, energetic commerce, what it is, how it works, a lot around getting data right, especially writing for both bots and humans. And we talk about some of the AI tools that are available right now in the Shopify ecosystem to get your hands on straight away. But what I also love is that this isn't necessarily a Shopify conversation.

SPEAKER_04 4:03

I agree. I thought that was a really interesting announcement as part of this release was yeah, that they have an agentic plan. They can almost see, like they're not just holding strong to their bread and butter. Like it is really cool to see that they've created a product that basically any business, no matter like what platform you're on, is that like, hey, cool, you're gonna need to be connected to these conversations that are happening with AI. Like, we've got the solution. Here's how you do it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:32

And we'd learn a lot about your data daddy in the meantime.

SPEAKER_04 4:35

I want a data daddy.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

If you want to hear about Rosa's data daddy or you're interested in agentic commerce, make sure you stay for the rest of this episode. Here's James Johnson, enterprise lead for Shopify. James Johnson, welcome back to Add to Cart. What a delight. Great to be here. Thanks, Bushy. Hello, Rosa.

SPEAKER_04 4:55

Hi, thanks for having me back. And yeah, welcome, James.

SPEAKER_03 4:58

Thank you so much. Great to connect. On our pre-call, Rosa, you said, James, lovely to meet you. Really great. And James, like, we've chatted before. Great way to start.

SPEAKER_04 5:08

You're my child's godmother. Oh damn it.

SPEAKER_03 5:11

Maybe not that intense. But then I don't feel bad for James at all because the first thing he said when I introduced you, Rosa, is joining us as a coach. He said, Well, it's good. It's about time you leveled up.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

And I think we can all accept that that is the case, Nathan.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

The proof is in the pudding. All right, let's get into it. Today we are talking all things agentic commerce. It's a very special episode of Add Descartes because over in New York City during NRF, there was a big announcement that came out from Shopify and Google together around UCP. And I think it has the opportunity to change everything we know about e-commerce. And that's when I reached out to our friends at Shopify and said, can we please get on the blower and have a good in-depth conversation about what this actually is and how it could impact retailers? And that's why we're here today. Are we ready to get nerdy? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 6:03

Yeah. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

All right. Kick us off, JJ. For those who don't know anything about UCP and what UCP is, can you give us the background on where it's come from and what it is? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

UCP is the Universal Commerce Protocol. Great name. As you called out, was announced by Google CEO Sundarpa Chai in his keynote address at NRF earlier this year. I had the great pleasure and great fortune of being in New York to be there at the time. And honestly, the energy and discussion that flowed from that was fantastic. So this is, I think, a really pivotal moment in Agentic Commerce and Commerce overall. To your very specific question, what is UCP?

SPEAKER_03 6:44

Oh, by the way, I was so jealous that I wasn't in NYC at that time of the announcement because of all the conferences, you'd never get big announcements. And this one was like smack bang.

What Agentic Commerce Really Means

SPEAKER_00 6:53

It was pretty cool and filled with TLAs, three-letter acronyms, NRF in NYC with UCP.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

So yeah, let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Exactly. I love it. Breaking it down. So UCP was co-developed with Google and Shopify. It is a new open standard for AI agents to connect and transact with any merchant. So at Shopify, we're all about making it so that you can sell everywhere that commerce happens. Increasingly, we know that AI is a huge shift in commerce, and every day millions of people are turning to AI to do things like product discovery or browsing and increasingly buying. And so UCP is about us making sure that our merchants have the latest innovations to reach their customer. Importantly, as we said, co-developed with Google, but it's already supported by 20 plus retailers and platforms. And basically it's a protocol. So in some respects, not to underplay it, but you should think about it as the plumbing that really facilitates a lot of these agentic and agent-based discussions and transactions. And it's designed to make every integration fast and flexible because we know that every retailer's needs are unique. And so retailers have different discounting requirements or loyalty requirements or logistics around pickup points and picking things like delivery dates. So we know no one version of checkout meets all those requirements. And UCP has been built with that in mind to really drive the right outcome. I think very importantly, UCP is also an open standard. So it's not a walled garden. We are really building the infrastructure using the experience that we have from millions of checkouts and billions of interactions, which is honestly a pretty exciting place to be.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

Huge. That's just like so huge. So can you just explain, just in case people don't understand what agentic commerce is? Like let's just go even back one step, just in super simple lay man, lay woman terms, lay them terms.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Uh yeah, agentic commerce. So agentic is really transforming retail in many respects. To make it as simple as possible, I think about it as an umbrella term of agents interacting with agents to buy something. We know and we've seen from Shopify data and broader market data that AI is fundamentally changing how we shop. So moving from search to conversation. And that's really moving into this world where shoppers describe what they want with a conversational agent, and those agents are servicing the right products. So, in those simple terms for lay people, it's really as simple as this being another channel to sell and engage with consumers. So historically, we've had things like social commerce, we've had a whole variety of ways to sell as retailers and as merchants. The AI agent shopping is really the newest channel to grow and is increasingly relevant. So, as I mentioned, Shopify is all about building the infrastructure so that retailers and merchants can jump directly into those AI conversations and making it possible so that you can transact directly in chat and have that really relevant experience. The important aspect as it relates to UCP and agentic, again, think UCP is the plumbing. We've built this open standard so that others can build on top of it. As a consumer, you will be using UCP, but you won't be interacting with it in a discernible way. You'll be interacting with an agent that will allow you to purchase. And so those agents are ones that we know, like Google in AI mode or Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT. They will be the agents that consumers will interact with. And fundamentally, this is about Shopify syndicating your products into all of those AI channels accurately in real time.

Control, Channels, And Merchant Of Record

SPEAKER_04 10:38

Okay. So Shopify UCP is making sure that your products as a retailer are there when anybody's in their private chat with ChatGPT, Claude, wherever they are, they're in there and Shopify is like giving you the ability to like present your products like where and when this customer needs them. So it's not just, it's not an agent like some people might think, like how people are paying for bots to go and shop and do their tasks for them. Um Andrew is doing that. My husband has outsourced everything to our bot Bingo. It's actually just everyday people shopping, just but on like a floating product, a floating catalog that now no longer just exists on your website, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Correct. And I think the important aspect there is that merchants and retailers are in control. So you're choosing where you sell, you're choosing where you show up in those AI channels from a checkout perspective. You remain that merchant of record. So you still have views over customer data, you still have responsibilities to ship the right product to the right customer. The easiest way to think about it is this is a new channel to grow or to think more broadly from a distribution perspective.

SPEAKER_03 11:45

And do you think UCP is about getting ahead of the game? Because obviously AI is evolving so quickly, right? And we're still learning around even advertising, what's going to be possible in different channels, like where can you place your ads? What will the ads look like? Is the idea that this gets ahead of the game, especially with the partnership between Google and Shopify, to go, no matter where you're going to sell, we want one way for retailers to set up their data to make sure they're not doing it multiple times for multiple agents.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah, the the multiple times for multiple agents is the challenge, right? So if we think about, take a step back and think about the partnership. I think the really exciting thing is that Google is an expert in search and discovery. They've done that for a significant period of time. Shopify are the experts in commerce. We've been doing this for two decades now. And so it makes sense to partner to co-develop the protocol around those strengths. And so we have brought a wealth of expertise in terms of all of the challenges and quirks of checkout and commerce because it is so broad and we've seen it so so broadly over time. So that's important from a relationship perspective. In terms of as we think about setting up those merchants and those discussions, powering commerce is really hard at that scale. It means you need to have that structured product data that you mentioned. There are checkout intricacies, there's fulfillment logic, there's trust that needs to be built through all these pieces. So, one, that's that's a particular reason why we partner with Google around this. And part of the power of Shopify, particularly as it relates to having that information once from a product catalog and then sharing it to the right places, is a benefit for retailers and merchants. Because the other way is you're building your own custom integration with all of these platforms. And just thinking purely from the innovation and the scale perspective, we have thousands of engineers that wake up every day and build for commerce. From a retailer perspective, that's a challenge to then go, I now want to move on to whatever the next tool is from an AI perspective. So, really part of the proposition here is have all your products there, make sure they're enriched, make sure they're communicating the right information, but then syndicate that to Google, to ChatGPT, to the Shop app, to all those aspects of where your consumers are going to interact and transact with you.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

I could imagine when UCP was announced, because you've got such a strong partner network, especially in that app space, heads would have gone into overdrive, into how to not only update their offering, but also new ideas in what might be available in Agentic Commerce. How are you handling that for partners there who might have all these ideas, but not all the details are there on UCP yet? How are you going to manage that?

Partner Ecosystem And UCP Readiness

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, well, the UCP as a protocol is standardized and published. So it's available, people can tap into it. Anyone can go and look at that in terms of the schema and the tech specs. That's one. What really excited me was we had a partner that literally the day of actually produced a landing page about agentic readiness. And this talks to your point, Rosa, about I've got all these things to do. Is my site ready? Am I going to be am I going to be found? Am I going to be discovered in the right way? And so they actually did some work to say, is your product information structured in the right way? Are you UCP ready effectively? And so, one, that it was interesting in terms of, okay, it's an interesting service offering to help merchants do the things we spoke about to get ready. And then two, the speed they're able to do that is pretty phenomenal as well. So I think that's the real exciting piece here to figure out how do we think about different services to help merchants and retailers in this context? And this will also unlock new ways of shopping, which the partner community are amazing at building. So I think that's where it gets really exciting. It's gold rush time.

SPEAKER_03 15:21

Rosa, I know that Andrew especially is very AI forward in your business, obviously co-founder as well in Crokt.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Is he playing around? Or are you playing around in terms of getting visibility through agents yet? Or are you waiting to see how it all folds out?

SPEAKER_04 15:36

Yeah, I think he's just like forgotten about Crocks altogether. Let's be honest. I think he's just like gone. But yeah, look, it's crazy. I think even the way Andrew, like watching how he consumes now, like and what he's doing and how he's using agents and and how he's like, he's yeah, he basically has like built a little bot in our house that's now like able to like literally do work for him, starting to look at like putting our kids' names down at different schools and like all this kind of stuff. Like it's like a full-on thing. So it's I think he's almost forgotten about that middle step. Like he's almost thinking, oh, we're gonna have these agents who are gonna be doing all this stuff for us. I think he's forgotten, what a loser, about like the market that's actually where we are already, which is asking like our AI agents like what we need and and where to get things and so on. So he actually, when we were talking about this conversation that we're gonna have today, he was like, damn, I actually haven't thought about that. About like, yeah. He's like, I already went too far to like basically having bought slaves. But yeah, this is like just so fascinating. I think it makes us feel like so excited about, oh my God, finally the game is changing again. The rules are resetting, the playing field is like going back to zero for like retailers. And if you are tech forward, like have fun. And if you're not, like, damn.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

I think it's such a good call out, though, in terms of being, you know, someone like Andrew who's clearly on the leading edge of some of this thinking. You know, what we're seeing is that the normies, and I mean that in the most loving way possible, like normal people are increasingly, even like Nathan, are increasingly using this technology. Well, you're gonna call me a laggard.

SPEAKER_04 17:18

Yeah, we call him laggy.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Laggy. But it's not just technologists. So we see that in terms of the numbers overall. And to give you uh quantification point, since January last year, we've seen a nine times increase in AI traffic to merchant storefronts and a 14 times increase in orders originating from AI searches. So admittedly, off a small base, you know, this is not every single person, but the growth there is phenomenal. And so as the capabilities are developing, consumers are turning to this more and more. And it's up to retailers to be able to be where your consumer is, right? Yeah not every single brand is gonna need to have to be full on into this as a strategy and have 90% of that traffic coming from agents. That's unlikely to happen in the next little while. But depending on where those brands are, depending on that retailer's digital strategy, I think this is going to be a really important distribution channel on an increasing basis.

Early Consumer Behavior And Metrics

SPEAKER_03 18:11

And I think that's interesting right now in terms of where traffic's coming from. But where we are going with agentic is obviously being able to take the customer on the whole journey through to check out even maybe loyalty, re-engagement through bots. So it's really disrupting not just retail business models, but in reality, it really should disrupt the Shopify business model, right? Because you build websites. Yeah, but when you announced this, the actual share price went crazy. And I feel like it's a big move, it's a big bold move by Shopify to not abandon its core product, but still obviously still building websites, but to go, actually, we believe the future is over here and almost leapfrogging your core product. How does that feel internally from a culture perspective?

SPEAKER_00 18:54

It's rich interesting. You know, one, we don't follow the share price all that closely. So I'm glad you've got that observation. I certainly didn't. But what's important is to bring that back to what we think about from our mission. And our mission is to make commerce better for everyone. And honestly, that's why I get out of bed in the morning. And it's exciting because everyone is a large and diverse group. You note the mission's not we build the website for those retailers. And so, you know, we've seen the data and growth and expect that this will be a key sales channel for merchants in the future, but that doesn't mean that everything changes overnight. That doesn't mean that websites and storefronts are no longer relevant and they disappear tomorrow. And I think about it in a store context, Nathan, you and I have been around for a little while in e-com land and we, you know, we used to there were big bold claims, right, in terms of what does the future of retail look like in an online sense, and online's gonna eat the world, et cetera, et cetera. Hey, newsflash stores still exist, you know, they have a functional need. The role of stores have changed. It's more experience-based, it's more engaging with the brand, but it absolutely provides another option for consumers. And I think that's gonna be the case here. Consumers, again, depending on the brand, depending on the model, are gonna have a storefront and a website interaction for some aspects. They're gonna have something physical where that makes sense. They're gonna have something that's probably convenience or value-based, which is just order me that thing, please, because that's what I need. And an unbalanced view of all those elements together, it's gonna morph over time. But I think it's gonna be a mix of everything, is the short answer.

SPEAKER_04 20:19

So basically, we're talking like how it exists now. So pre-UCP making its like moves in Australia and New Zealand is right now like, yes, you're seeing that agents are driving traffic, which traffic then drives sales. That's great. Except with the introduction of UCP, what is gonna happen is that it won't actually be a channel for traffic, it's gonna be a channel for conversions. So, as retailers, like traffic, you know, we're no longer gonna be living in our data in terms of like sessions or you know, looking at our like conversion rate. Like, do you foresee how are we going to be able to measure like our positioning or if our product is hitting? Like, what do you see as the future there? Like, where are these like metrics gonna shift to and what should we start to like care about?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Such a great question. And I do not profess to know the answer to it. I think what we can see is absolutely those data points that I mentioned where we're seeing growth overall in terms of transactions, but also searches and and discovery. And that'll still be relevant, right? Not everyone is going to complete a transaction in the context of an agentic storefront. They may do research and then complete a purchase in store or complete a purchase in an online channel as well. So I think that'll still be important. And so all those data points you mentioned will still be relevant from that digital context. But now we'll have additional data points in terms of what's happening from a discovery in these agents and how do I get visibility around that. Honestly, that's a question for all the builders of those agents because that's their data, that's their insight in terms of how things are getting ranked and prioritized and what you see. But I think it means we'll have more metrics around that and new metrics. Around that in terms of discovery and then conversion across channels.

Checkouts, Security, And Embedded Protocol

SPEAKER_04 22:03

So will the merchant, will the retailer still own their customer? Like will I get that customer's details or does that stay with the agent?

SPEAKER_00 22:10

No, it's absolutely a very, very important point. And so from a merchant, you are still the merchant of record, you still have your customer information, you are they are still completing a transaction, you'll still see that in your admin from a Shopify perspective, in the same way that you have multiple sales channels now in a Shopify admin and you see all the orders come through in your admin. So really important that that is the case.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

You might not have the answer to this yet, but obviously Shopify does such a great job at a seamless transaction with a checkout. Obviously, a lot of effort going into that side of the experience. Is there anything in place from a security and protection of that experience once you start handing it over to bots? Like obviously, we're comfortable with open AI to a certain extent. Gemini, we go kind of know what you're getting. But this could go in any direction. How do we know that we're not going to be opening up our checkout to crazy bots that are specializing in some serious business?

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Yeah, so I think it's a great question. And again, part of why UCP exists. So a key input to that from our perspective was the two decades of experience we have in terms of looking at how complex commerce is. And so the inputs to that are billions of transactions, millions of merchants. And so if I think about that, is things like payment options and rules that make my head hurt or differ based on the properties of cart and buyer and market. That's things like discounts and discount rules and stacking and combinations that are super complex. That's really complex fulfillment options with lots of permutations. That's things like loyalty that we mentioned before. And I think importantly, that complexity is not a bug. It's the emergent property of diverse retail. And that's what we should be celebrating. You know, all these retailers have different needs and expectations, as do their consumers. And so part of us designing the integration and designing UCP was to account for those individual retailers' needs. And so if you have a loyalty thing or a pickup point or picking a delivery date or a unique discount quirk that doesn't fit into a standardized checkout, you know, historically, too bad. You know, we'd have a simplified checkout and then that's it. But now with UCP and others, there's what we call an escape hatch. But basically, you can have the formal, the technical sure, you can have an escape hatch, but it's technically called the embedded checkout protocol, which is probably slightly more formal.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

It's just better.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

But the the idea is really having this escalation that is bi-directional messaging between agent and merchant. So putting that in simple language, that means that the checkout is embedded on the agent surface with secure credentials and context flowing both ways. So that kind of addresses the security point you made, Nathan. So can retailers choose where their checkout can show up? Yeah, again, they're having choice in terms of which channels they're going to be turning on to in terms of genetic storefront. So yes. But what that escalation or why that escalation is important is you'd go through a normal checkout process and then can pop up a human in the loop version of, hey, type in your loyalty information for me now, please. Or hey, I need to pick a date and I can't do that yet as an agent, therefore pop up a browser so you can interact in that way to complete a transaction. So that's really important because it means that as a retailer, you're capturing the information that you need to complete a real transaction. And there's things that agents can't yet do, and maybe they'll do that over time, but that's a really important step to make sure that we've thought about and built for all of that complexity.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

Booty prides itself on making some of the most comfortable underwear on the planet. Soft, breathable, no bothersome theme. But behind the scenes, their marketing stack, well, it was a lot less comfortable. As Booty scaled across Australia, the UK, and the US, customer data was scattered across email tools, on platforms, and iPads.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Getting clear insight, taking action, slow, fancy, and the way you so they simplified everything and unified their channels in Clavio.

SPEAKER_03 26:19

With one field of the customer, so they could finally understand how people browse, abandon, and buy, and then free up first across email on site page and SMS without adding more tools or manual work. The result an 87 times hour away from Clavio year today, a 10% lift in retention ERD, and a 34% increase in high-intend customers in just 90 days. Turns out when your marketing platform is as comfortable as your product growth, it feels a whole lot better. If your stack is causing friction, head to Clavio.com forward slash AU and see how brands like Booty are scaling comfortably.

Knowledge Base And AU Availability

SPEAKER_04 27:04

My brain is just like exploding. Like I just have so many questions, like, and a lot of them are for Google. Like, let's get Google on the call. Like they need to answer some stuff. So many questions, I think, that other like merchants are gonna be feeling. Okay, do we get those conversational insights? Like we used to be able to see from Shopify, like if you had a search bar, we can see what sort of things people are looking for. Are we gonna lose that? Is like the agents gonna end up just like working against all of us? Where it's like, hang on, we know that they have a uh an abandoned cart discount code. Why don't you just like hang on a little bit? I mean, whatever. Like this is the future, and that's gonna happen. And it's just gonna be who like knows how to play in the gray area and deliver an amazing customer experience.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

Can the ports make my pottery for me?

SPEAKER_04 27:48

What is the point in pottery?

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Uh no. I think the the customer experience is the right lens to think through and a partial answer for that. So for anyone that is on Shopify and hasn't installed the knowledge base app, make sure that is your to-do list, install that. That is really important to part of your point, Rosa, around capturing your store policies, things like brand voice, FAQs, and that feeds that to agents in the right construct so that when people are asking about, you know, what is my sizing fit, what are the return conditions that that information is being surfaced in the right way. So that's easy win. You install the first party knowledge base app from Shopify, and that will give you some guidance. So some of that information you're after in terms of what are people searching for, what are those trends, will come from that. It won't be the full product richness in terms of step by step, but it'll absolutely give you a flavor in terms of how it's showing up as a brand and should give you some good ideas in terms of do we need content or information that answers those particular questions.

SPEAKER_04 28:47

And so does that have weight now, the knowledge base app? Like rather than like, is that already if you've got that and you've got it tip top, then that's already helping you show up?

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Yes, you can do that right now for all the Australian retailers and that will help you in terms of those channels. And it's worthwhile just being really clear because I know we've got a large Australian audience here, though, in terms of timing and availability for these various things. So UCP, the Universal Commerce Protocol, is a global protocol. It's available around the world now. Agentic Storefronts, which is Shopify's capability to help brands on Shopify get discovered in AI platforms, is currently US only. And right now, you need to be US entity and in the US to take advantage of that. Why do you have to do that to us, Straja? Yeah. Everyone wants to go super quick, and that's exciting. Not everyone can go all at once, unfortunately. So stand by. We'll let all the Aussies know as soon as possible. For those, and we we have a really diverse range of retailers. So if you're a Australian retailer with a US entity, you probably can apply for some access if you get in the right way there from an agentic storefront perspective. That's right. So that can be a way to think about uh again looking at using that as a distribution mechanism for US-based stores. There's still a process to follow through that. Everyone wants to go fast, which is awesome, but it takes time to do these things well.

SPEAKER_04 30:11

It's okay. The US can be our like burnt toast, the guinea pigs. We'll get it when it's good.

Data Cleanup: Write For Humans And Bots

SPEAKER_00 30:16

I hear guinea pigs haven't heard burnt toast all that off, and that's a nice way to think about it. But I think to your your broader question, Rosa, so yes, knowledge base, like super important. That's something that everyone can do right now and is a good way to think about you know, structuring your non-product data. What I would also just call out, because many of the discussions I have with retailers now is well, how do we get prepared for this agentic future? And I think this is honestly where we are an advantage as Australian New Zealand retailers, because we don't yet have the storefront piece, we can get our data set up in a really effective way that not everyone has the opportunity to do. Data's not boring, Bushy. What's going on here? We want the storefront. Let us go, James. Honestly, the most important bit is making sure you get your data cleaned up and in a really sensible and structured way. So the good news is Shopify Catalog does an awful lot of work here in terms of making sure your information's presented the right way to agents. So that's a win, and we've put a lot of effort from a product perspective to make that happen. But importantly, you want to make sure you've got really good titles and descriptions and images and variants and attributes. The better that information is, the more context that the AI agents have, and they're going to surface your products in a more complete way. So that's important for product feed, but also think about philosophically writing product descriptions for humans and the bots. And so think about I know your mind has been blown there, Nathan. That's what we need to do, you need to balance. But it's it's about what's the material composition.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

But are we getting the bots to write for the humans and the humans to write for the bots?

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Oh, maybe. This is where it gets really interesting. We're in a big vicious loop. Who knows?

SPEAKER_04 31:57

Everybody come together.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

What's so bad?

SPEAKER_03 32:01

That's that's cheesy. We don't do cheesy around here.

SPEAKER_04 32:04

But yeah, okay, so write and make sure that you're including like your keyword stuffing, but like in a natural way of like fabrics and stuff that makes sense. I'm deep in couch words. So can we use a couch example?

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Oh, I literally just bought a couch on the weekend, so let's use that. But did you buy Rosa's? Because Rosa just sold a couch that she hates. Maybe I did.

SPEAKER_04 32:26

Winning.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

So I think back to the how do we get ready? Yep. It's about having product descriptions that make sense for humans, because by doing that, they will make sense for bots. And so, to your point, material composition, like use case or usage scenarios, sizing and fit guidance, care instructions, why this product is great or what makes it different, you know, all of that context is super important because people are asking these things in natural language. If you don't have that information, if it's just three-seater blue couch, like no one, where's your differentiation? So if you're designing and building that now in terms of your content and your your data structure, you're going to be in a much better place going forward. Coming back to your couch point. So I literally, this is a normie, or maybe I'm not a normie, I'm probably not a normie. Um literally, the Johnsons need a new couch. So I went couch shopping on the weekend, and it was uploading a photo and then having context around it. So I wasn't searching for the three-seater blue couch. It was here's a photo of my lounge room. I have three boys and they're likely to destroy this thing. So please make sure it's robust. Looking for some random mustard colour. So let's give that a go and give me some feedback. And so got some product recommendations off the back of that, which is you know more tailored to me and my use case to the point.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

And when you talk about writing descriptions for the bots and writing descriptions for the humans, in practical terms, are we putting them we're not creating like different product groups or anything like that. It's all under the one product description, but having both sets of consumers for lack of a better word, or or or end users in mind when we're writing it, so we're tail we're incorporating both in the same d item description, for example.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Yeah, so I again back in the days, we would do interesting things from an SEO perspective, and you might have hidden SEO texts and you'd keyword stuff and do all those things. Yeah. And so that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is being using all the data structure that exists in your platform or in Shopify with you know titles, descriptions, all the product data. And as part of that, making sure that you're actually answering human questions and challenges as part of that description. So that's what I mean by you know the fit guidance, the use cases, why is this product different or better from something else? Having that as part of your product description is what you need to do to make sure that that sort of information is being communicated. The other quick tip, just for Shopify folks, is not for anyone else, everyone else close your ears. Well, this is a very specific setup for your products in Shopify. Okay. What you can now do is you can have a draft or an unlisted product in your product catalogue in Shopify. And so that if it's draft or unlisted, it's not going to AI. Okay. That's when would you use that?

Practical Catalog Controls And Content Signals

SPEAKER_04 35:07

Yeah, hang on. That makes sense. If it's not listed, it shouldn't go anywhere. Thanks, Shopify.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Correct. Well, it's a new thing that we've just added. So it used to be some other workarounds to kind of make sure that those products don't show up. This is an easier way now where you can unlist things easily to say, okay, I don't want this to show up in a particular channel, and so you can now have that flexibility.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

Okay, right. That makes sense. So it used to be the whole like follow, unfollow links and like all of that sort of stuff. Yeah. Okay. Trying to make it easy. Love that.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Thanks, Rose's stock in 2004, but that's okay. When we talk about the power of backlinks, JJ, in your conversations with retailers, are you finding any tools or ways that they're unearthing new queries around what their products might be? So when you talk about like writing descriptions or benefits or even FAQs, is there any anything that you've come across in your travels that are giving people real insights? In terms of them adding to their product catalogue or thinking about new things to sell? Thinking about different ways customers are going to be searching for products and talking about products because obviously the the two to three term search term is is dying in the as we write essays to our GPTs to find our, you know, what is it, our camel-colored couch? Mustard. Mustard, thanks, watching. Mustard, mustard, sorry. Color blind, it's a disability. Thank you. Leave it there. Same thing for me. Doesn't make any difference. But I will appreciate your couch when I see it, I'm sure, JJ. But obviously, the terms that people are searching for are so different, and the way that we're talking about what we're searching for is different. Is there any any tools out there that you can find? Like obviously, we'd normally go to a SEMrush or something like that, but is there something better?

SPEAKER_00 36:47

Great question that I don't have an awesome answer for. Other than the existing tools will give you a good guidance. Those use cases, though, are really important. And again, you can see you can see some of that from knowledge base. Again, that's more about the process rather than the product, but we'll give you an idea of the random things that people are searching for because they are so broad. So I think knowing those use cases is really key. And we're just talking to a few retailers last week, particularly around how they were using their reviews information. So these are obviously people that have purchased, but using a lot of that, their keywords, a lot of their language, and getting a lot of the sentiment from that to then figure out well, how do we capture the goodness from those real customer testumes and use cases and then put that into product information as well.

SPEAKER_03 37:30

Okay. One of the most interesting things that I saw was the agentic plan. So I know that, you know, we talked about if you're a Shopify customer or something, but this is really interesting, I think, around giving retailers who aren't on Shopify, maybe not even thinking about ever going to Shopify, the ability to be on the action. How does that work?

Open Standard, Platform Neutrality, And Strategy

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Yeah, so the agentic plan's new, again, US only for now. So can we stop the combo about it now? No, is it? But the idea behind it is if you are not a Shopify business yet, then you can use the Agentic plan to add your products to syndicate them to every AI platform and through the Shop app in the same way that we do for Agentic storefront integration. So again, if you are a Shopify customer, you can use the agentic storefront integration to say put this into Google or ChatGPT or copilot. With agentic plan, that'll mean if you're not yet a Shopify customer, you can absolutely do that in the same way. So the idea is take your products, put them in the catalog, syndicate where you choose to syndicate. And then also we use a lot of the Shopify Smarts about structuring and enriching that product information that we just spoke about so that as your shoppers ask, your products appear and they can buy it in chat.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

That's pretty cool. I don't envy anyone trying to clean up Magento data, but good luck to them.

SPEAKER_04 38:50

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 38:51

We can help.

SPEAKER_04 38:52

Wow. So it's like, is there a race then? Like, is there a race between, say, like Shopify and Amazon? Like, is this like I think we're talking about this offline as well. Like who's gonna get there first? Because it once your data is all in one place, you're gonna keep it all in one place. I think even to just rewind a little bit, we even now have a totally different sync with of our catalog with Google so that we can do all of that and like punch in for our Google shopping and our PMAX, like all like the different search terms that everyone's looking for. And I hate it. It's so annoying. And then we've got a different one on Meta as well. So like this idea of there being like one beautiful agency, like place where everything is is huge. But like, are we gonna end up with like we have like agentic, we're also gonna end up with like Rufus or whatever Amazon's like dorky name is. Like, what's it gonna be? Like, is there a race or not?

SPEAKER_00 39:46

I think you know, part of UCP, so part of the idea there again is it's open, it's standardized, and so it gives us a really good baseline to have that level of connectivity. So what we're solving for for merchants and retailers is to make it so that's as easy as possible for them to be able to have their product information in one place, turn it on, and be in control of where their products are gonna show up. So that's what we're working towards. I can comment on that. I can't comment more broadly, but I think I think again, I'd come back to the fundamental point that this will be an important sales channel for many businesses, but there's still commerce in other places. There is still commerce that's happening in stores, there's still commerce that's happening online, that is not gonna disappear tomorrow. And so this should be an and strategy from my perspective. It should be absolutely let's get our data in the right way so that we can distribute to these new channels and appear where our consumers are spending time, but also what are we doing in store? What are we doing online? How are we tweaking those experiences for those consumers?

SPEAKER_04 40:46

Can I ask then? So my brain is going this like full when we started this conversation. I'm like, death of the storefront, it's gonna disappear, it's not gonna be relevant anymore. Like, stop putting money into it. And now I'm like, whoa, it's probably gonna just like completely change. And like, like we're seeing with all of these different like substack and long form content, maybe it's gonna be like the return of the blog, and then it's gonna be like advertorial is how we're gonna shop.

SPEAKER_03 41:11

Are you gonna start a Tumblr account now?

SPEAKER_04 41:13

I'm ready, I'm getting off a podcast. This is dead. Yeah, is that like does Shopify have, or are you privy to any of these like predictions of like if this isn't the death of the storefront, as in the e-commerce storefront, where do you feel like it's gonna go? Like, what's gonna matter to a consumer if it's not about just having this like well-organized, filterable catalog site anymore? Because if we can have that in a conversation, what does a future website look like?

Storefronts’ Future And Role

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Yeah, I think fundamentally I see this as an additional channel. So agentic commerce is an additional channel. It is not a replacement for everything else.

SPEAKER_04 41:52

Yet.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Yes, correct. And maybe, maybe it will change over time. But I think the important thing is it's gonna differ by brand and by retailer. And so our goal is to help merchants to show up wherever their customers are shopping, whether that's online, in-store, social, or now AI conversations. And again, we work with millions of merchants and they typically have different mixes of those channels that depends on their strategy. So for some, online is really important, in-store is really important, and they want to blend that together, social not so. For others, it's how do we do social commerce and let's run after that? For more, it will be absolutely let's go do AI, and that is the channel we'll win our new customers. I think the answer is gonna be a blend. And that's gonna differ depending on the brand, the retailer, and the consumer.

SPEAKER_03 42:38

Because if we think about it, social commerce and agentic commerce is probably going to come together at some point, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:45

I think in some way, shape, or form. The way I think about this specifically, and I was I was reflecting on this earlier today, it reminds me of the Mark Twain quote. Yeah, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. And I think it's very probably very similar in terms of storefronts, right? And he's alive and kicking today, isn't he? He is, yeah. He's doing really well. No, but I think in all seriousness, I think to your point, Rosa, it's how does the storefront, how does a website change in terms of what it needs to do for customers? And same way stores have changed, it's less about just the transaction. Now it's more about that experience or that that branded environment. Will websites be going a similar trajectory? Possibly. And I think the important bit is it's somewhere you can control your brand story and can control more of that than you can in other channels. I think we've even seen that when marketplaces were a thing and they still are a thing for many businesses, but it was suddenly, well, why would I have a an online store because I'll just go and sell via all the marketplaces? That's a strategy for some businesses, works really well for them. For many, though, it is an and strategy. Yeah, well, maybe, but it it's an and strategy, right? So it's yes, I want to have a controlled experience for my consumers and in the elements that I can control of what that looks like. And I think that'll be an important.

Sidekick For Ops, Insights, And Speed

SPEAKER_03 44:02

We've all been there, right? Slipping on a great looking pair of shoes, only to regret it a couple of hours later. Who knew that blisters could get blisters? Well, the founders of Frankie Ford did, and that's why they've created a line of stylish, podiatrist design footwear that don't just look good, they actually feel good too. But what began as an online success story quickly stepped into the real world with retail stores opening across the country. And when they moved to the Shopify Plus plan and rolled out Shopify Pods in store, Frankie 4 really hit their stride. Now everything works together. From online browsing to in store buying, it's one smooth, unified commerce experience for both customers and the Frankie 4 team. And with the Shopify App Store, they're able to test new features quickly to see what works. It's paying off too, with a 170% increase in site visits, a 25% drop in return rates, and more happy feet than ever. Streamlined, stable, seriously stylish. That's Frankie4 on Shopify. To read more success stories like this, search Shopify Case Studies online. If we've got people here who are in their e-commerce career at the moment, whether they're a founder or whether they are managing an e-commerce store at the moment, what do you think are kind of two or three things that they could do right now to improve their AI literacy or experience so that they're ready for when it actually takes off properly?

SPEAKER_00 45:31

Amazing. What a great question. I think importantly, get hands-on. And that's something that we do internally at Shopify and something I'm really passionate about as well. And so we call that staying curious internally. So my overwhelming response would be stay curious. And that'll differ from different folks. If that's jumping into the tools, getting hands-on yourself, awesome. If it's doing some competitive research and understanding who's doing this better than others, great. Go away and figure that out. If it's looking at practical steps to update your product data that we spoke about, awesome. That's a real win. Go and do that. So it's a it's a bit of a wishy-washy answer, other than stay curious and get hands-on, I think is the right way to win.

SPEAKER_03 46:10

Well, I feel like there's, especially if you're on Shopify already, there's all already those tools to get in there and get your hands dirty. We talked about knowledge base before, but even sidekick, like I love sidekick.

SPEAKER_04 46:21

I want a next born child is being called sidekick. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

But it's all there, ready to play with, right? 100%. And I'm glad you both raised that. I was about to, so thank you. Yeah, we've spoken a lot about agentic commerce and as a new distribution option, right? And so that's super powerful. But I think about this in two lenses. So number one being how do I enhance a customer experience? And we've spoken a lot about agentic commerce in that context. So how do you show the right product to the right person at the right time? And so search and discovery is key. So the second bit that honestly everyone that's listening today can take advantage of is how do I be more intelligent with my commerce operations? And so how do I make my team's life better and make them more productive and so they can get more done. And so I think Psychic is a really great unlock there. And for those that aren't familiar with it, you know, Psychic knows your store because it's got your store context. It's plugged directly into Shopify's back end. It's powered by a really advanced commerce language model, and you can ask questions around data, insights, creating customer segments, creating content, discounts, it does things independently. I'd love to understand how you're using a Rosa, but before that, just to give a bit of context, so we now have a hundred million conversations, or there's been more than a hundred million conversations with Sidekick to give you an idea of the scale and the insights that Psychic is kind of dealing with. And about one in ten of our larger customers are using Psychick every week. So to me, that's great, but it means there's even more opportunity as well.

SPEAKER_04 47:49

I'm using it on the daily.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

There we go. It's all we like to see. And ultimately, it's about how do we get people having more experiments, getting to faster campaigns and faster insights and faster decisions.

SPEAKER_04 48:02

And also never having to do a new theme ever again. Because it's all there with Psychic.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Like Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 48:09

Yeah, I think Psychic's been like one of the biggest game changers, and like equal parts, like I'm like, oh, how incredible. This has like unlocked so much opportunity, like you said, to just like test and scale so much faster. And then equal parts like annoyed at everybody starting and all our competitors starting like today, that they just like don't have to spend the money, like the wasted money on all this yeah, crap. But anyway, yeah, we love it. I think I think I would agree with you. Like if you're not already using sidekick, then don't even think about hiring a data daddy for your products suite.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Don't hire a data daddy for your baby sidekick. Maybe don't hire a data daddy, period.

SPEAKER_03 48:49

And then we move on. JJ's did say that this podcast has gone to a new level with you, Rosa. I'm just not sure whether it's up or down.

SPEAKER_04 48:55

Yeah, I think it's down sideways.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

So how else are you using Sidekick, Rosa? I'd love to understand. So you're using it for sort of content production and building some some front end.

Enterprise Perspectives And Real Use Tests

SPEAKER_04 49:06

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So just like just straight up getting it to code and just I'm just like brain dumping into it, which I love. I don't even have to like Bushy got me onto Whisper, so I don't even type anymore. I just like talk to Sidekick and then it is like producing what I want. But then in Black Friday, how I found it super useful was we ran a massive gift card campaign this year, which we've never done before. And gift cards can be really confusing showing up in your reporting and your sales. So it was just like even as simple as just like asking Sidekick to like give me a breakdown of what I actually cared about every day in Black Friday, including like what is this including gift cards, what's it not including gift cards, like what product specifically, and just like all of that sort of stuff. I I love because sidekick kind of came out, right? Well, maybe I'm the laggy, am I the laggard? But it sort of came out after the new reporting dashboards, which I know Andrew loved and that really appealed to him, but I'm not so much as like a graphs person. So I love that there's this like qualitative little sidekick. It reminds me of um the clipper, the pin that used to like pop up on your clippy.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

I don't know if we can compare sidekick to clippy, but I'll take that.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

Clippy was the OT sidekick, but yeah, that's how I use it mostly. It's just like I don't want to read a report, I don't want to look at a graph, I just want to talk to sidekick.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

Amazing. And we're hearing that more and more, particularly around the data insights, right? So I just want to answer this thing and then to action. So hey, I learned a thing, help me build a customer segment around it, or what should I do next? That's whether we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_04 50:38

I didn't even think of that. I didn't even think of that. I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_03 50:42

There you go. Amazing. JJ, I'm keen to push the boundaries with you here. UCP was developed with Walmart and some rather like really leading retailers who you know, I love what Walmart are doing. I read about them every week. They're releasing something every week. I think them and Target actually are really doing some really cool stuff. What did you hear in the States around some of the ideas of how big retailers are going to push this further and their vision for what this could turn into?

SPEAKER_00 51:11

Lots of interesting discussions just overall were around many discussions we're having here, which is what does it mean? What do we do with it? How can I be at the front edge of these innovations? And so, not for the brand specifically that you mentioned, but overall, there's still are we trying to be a leader or are we trying to be a fast follower and how do we think culturally about these pieces? And that's that's an interesting, you know, non-tech, non-solution frame to actually think about strategically, you know, how do we want to adopt and adapt to these pieces? You know, all the examples you called out there, I think, are great retailers and have really unique use cases, which leads back to the point that I made before that none of these checkouts are simple. And so that's why UCP exists because you need that flexibility because they keep adding on to their commerce operations and consumer-facing propositions. Well, differentiation will never be more important, right? 100%. And so that's why it's important to have something that is scalable and flexible and all those sort of things, and you need to be able to move at the speed of your customer and what they expect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:15

Are you thinking, did you see any demonstrations over an NRF, even if it's got nothing to do with UCP, around different surfaces, different environments, different ways of shopping that we haven't even kind of talked about or thought about?

SPEAKER_00 52:28

Unsurprisingly, agentic and AI was a hot topic. And so I think if I looked at all the booths, which I did a big booth walk, I think I did 25,000 steps in a day checking everything out. You know, everyone had a sprinkling of AI and a sprinkling of agentic.

SPEAKER_03 52:42

I heard it would take only 25,000 steps to get around the Shopify booth alone.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Probably very fair. We had quite a few people hanging out with us. So there's definitely a lot of discussion around that. What I would do is come back to those two lenses that I mentioned. You know, is this going to improve my customer experience or is it going to make my team's life easier and kind of do something else? And so I look at many of those innovations quite critically to say, okay, is this kind of real or does it have a real use case? Or is it an amazing piece of technology solving a problem? So all that to say that I saw plenty of stuff that probably didn't feel those two hurdles and went like, oh okay, that's interesting, but is it going to solve a real problem? But definitely some surfaces, some interesting things happening across social, interesting things continuing to happen across all the agentic aspects that we mentioned here. So I think the b the key bit for me is really how do we improve those commerce operations or how to make it easier for my team to do the things because we don't all need the next shiny thing until we've built a scaffolding for all the stuff that actually sits underneath it, which doesn't mean we can do it effectively.

SPEAKER_04 53:44

I love it. All I'm hearing is like data cleanup, like fixed everything, data manual, data entry, but then like just do it, just do it once, do it right, and then like yeah, make sure it makes sense to what your customer's actually looking for. And you know what? It is really cool because we went from like a bit of a website like blindness, I don't have a better term for it, but we stopped even looking at our descriptions for ages because we were like our customers, they're not looking, they're not scrolling, they're not diving in. So then we just started like literally giving up and like not updating our descriptions and like our we added like a huge conversion up list for us when we added annotations on the actual image itself. But it is interesting now to know that okay, the way people are shopping is shifting. Like you can't just ignore your product descriptions anymore, like you can't ignore the specifications. Like we need to build for both. Like, how do we make thumb stopping, scroll stopping content? But then also how are you making sure that you're gonna show up when the agents are crawling?

SPEAKER_03 54:45

No, it's a great time to be an e-commerce because you've got to create double the content. It's fantastic. JJ, next 12 months. So if you're a retailer right now planning out the 12 months, I love your point around there is absolutely a decision to be made around you can sit and do nothing and you can observe for 12 months. That's an option, or you can go and be an Andrew and try and get ahead of the ball and try and skip everything, or you can kind of follow along with what the roadmap is. Where do you see most retailers playing in the next 12 months?

SPEAKER_00 55:13

I think there'll be an element of experimentation, as we kind of called out, you should have a business strategy first. And part of your business strategy should be what is our digital or our agentic or our go-to-market strategy, which will help inform all the stuff we've spoken about. So if you don't have a business strategy, you've got a bigger issue, honestly, then do I turn on this agentic commerce thing or not? And so I think having that and having clarity about where your consumers are and where they're going to be is really important. One that I would absolutely be figuring out how I can experiment easily in this space to see what people are really doing. How can I be nimble enough and build capability in my team to go out and do these things? And importantly, how can I get my data and my product information structure in the right way that puts me in the best position to be successful here? Sounds simple. Let's go do it. Let's go do it.

SPEAKER_04 56:03

So good. Thanks so much for your time, James. Or can I call you JJ? Are we JJ bases now?

SPEAKER_03 56:09

Go on, let's do it, Rosa. It depends if you remember if you've spoken to him next time I know.

SPEAKER_04 56:14

I remember, yeah, I remember. No, but seriously, thank you so much for your time. I think this has been such an exciting conversation. And honestly, it's not a scary conversation for people to listen to because it does feel like you're kind of sharing what you know in real time with us. So I don't think any retailer should listen to this and feel behind. Like, if anything, if they're listening to this conversation, then they're right where they need to be. And for me personally, I've written down so many things I need to focus on. And yeah, I just think, yeah, thanks so much for bringing us on the journey. And yeah, how good is how good is Shopify? Come with you, one of our sponsors as well. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 56:55

JJ, you're a legend as always. Can never think of a better person to have on the show and always love our chat. So thank you for joining us on Add Descartes. Thank you both. Appreciate the opportunity.

SPEAKER_04 57:08

So what a fun conversation. That was so good. I feel like we could just like have a whole nother hour just debriefing on that.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

But can you imagine when we listen back to that in like 10 years' time?

SPEAKER_04 57:19

Oh my god, yeah, I know. And we're gonna be like, gosh, can't believe datadaddy.com became big business, all thanks to that.

SPEAKER_03 57:27

I can't believe we've got a kid called Sidekick.

SPEAKER_04 57:29

All grown up now. But yeah, I'm so keen to hear your brain was kicking during that as well. Like, where did it go? What did you think?

SPEAKER_03 57:37

Wild. I only caught up with JJ in December before he went over to NRF, and I had no idea any of this was on the cards, and I just find it fascinating how fast everything's moving at the moment, for one. And two, just that partnership, like Google and Shopify coming together to announce this together. I don't think you can underplay how big that is in terms of the market share they've got. And I'm a huge Google fan at the moment. I will put my hand up in that for a while there. Probably 12 months ago, I was like, oh, they are falling well behind in AI. And I'm worried that they won't, but what they've released in the last 12 months is phenomenal. So to see both of them coming together and agreeing on what this protocol is, it's so significant. And I think also the people that aren't involved, Amazon, TikTok, raises even more questions around how this is gonna work.

SPEAKER_04 58:25

Totally. I feel like it would be so interesting to be a fly on the wall at Amazon right now and just be like, okay, we're not hearing from them because they're doing something else completely different, or are they hanging out with Bing?

SPEAKER_03 58:38

Well, we've come from this like time. It was only 12 months ago. We were so worried about all these walled gardens. If you think about what was happening with cookies and everything around Apple putting up their walled gardens, Google doing that, meta. We're like, well, this is gonna become hard because no one wants to play with each other.

SPEAKER_04 58:54

Yeah, no one's talking to each other totally.

SPEAKER_03 58:56

And all of a sudden they're like, actually, here's the protocol. Everyone come join in.

SPEAKER_04 59:00

Yeah, and it makes sense, right? Like it feels cool to hear James talk about like, yeah, we're we're kind of just staying in our lane. Like, we know commerce better than anybody. Google knows search and like customer inquiry better than any anyone. And obviously they've built a huge, like incredible Google AI and and Gemini and Nano Banana, which I live on now. But it just feels really cool rather than everybody racing to be the answer to everybody. It's like, okay, the big guys are actually coming together, and then that's where us like retailers and customers are gonna actually see some massive innovation.

SPEAKER_03 59:34

Absolutely. And you mentioned Rosa at the end of that. I'm really interested from a retailer's perspective. You said you had a long list of notes and actions that you were taking away from it. What was the standout for you?

SPEAKER_04 59:45

Yeah, I feel like a lot of this we kind of joked about, oh, it's in the US first, it's not here yet. And then it was a big like, ah, moment when he said, well, knowledge base is here. Like, have you downloaded it? Have you installed it? I'm like, ah, actually, no, I haven't. And and I feel like for me, that's my immediate, you know, get out of this, gonna download knowledge base. So I feel like that's my immediate action. But also just, I think it allows you to start being imaginative about your customer and everyone always knows word of mouth is so important, but that's happening in these conversations. Like people are so intimately connected with their AI agents now. So I think thinking about your product descriptions and detail and FAQs is gonna be massive. So like you would ask your friend, yeah, okay, but how is Mecca different to Sephora? But you're not gonna go on Mecca's website and ask that or expect to see that in an FAQ. But it's really interesting to think that actually you can still feed that data to AI. And then that is the type of question that they're gonna be asked. So I feel like, yeah, I think it's a really exciting time to like get a bit ruthless about your product differentiators again and just like not just have to get the visual impulse all the time. Just yeah, be part of that conversation. So that's got me really excited for this conversation.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:08

Are you going to jump in straight away and like have a look at your descriptions on your top products and kind of rewrite them for the bots and the humans?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:15

Oh, we had to do that literally because Andrew came in with a foul swoop and did like the massive AI sweep of everything, and it was so bad. Like you could tell it was written by a you know late 30s bot, and it was like, oh, our customers are like mostly female, so it was like, oh, this is so bad. And then our paid ads was using that as like the benchmark. Our turn and voice went all over the shop. So yes, I feel like it's a good excuse to get back in there and add a bit of personality and punch in those keywords, which he said not to do, but I feel like he was secretly saying to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:51

All right, keywords and backlinks. It's the future of e-commerce. But I think that's the thing too, isn't it? It's it's JJ made a really strong point around how important it is to have strategy because yes, you could have a long list of things you want to do. You've actually got to be focused in what you can do and what you choose to do because there are gonna be so many AI things that you can do, but a lot of it is the boring stuff. It's the data, it's the copywriting, it's all the foundations of e-commerce that we've always done, but just at a new level. Did your opinion change around Crocs' AI strategy at all?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:27

Definitely. I think as a business, we're still probably using it reactively, but I think it's time to really, like it's not hard to imagine where this goes now. Maybe a year ago it was, but by the end of 2025, like you can see where things are moving, and there's kind of no excuse to not have a go-to-market strategy for all things AI commerce, if you'd like. So yeah, I I do that resonated. His last point there was basically like, yeah, have a go-to-market strategy. Like, if you don't know where you're going, then you will still have all these like apps and plug and play and you'll innovate with AI for AI's sake, but like get smart about it as a channel now.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:06

Love it, love it. And choosing not to go down the AI rabbit hole is still a strategy. And I think that's really important for people to know, not somewhere I'd go, but it is still a choice. Rosa, that was delightful. Thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:18

So much fun. Thanks, Bushy, our resident laggy.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

I can't believe I didn't get caught a laggy. What's going on here?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:25

Oh well. Well, I hope you find your Dada Daddy and live a happily ever after with Psychic.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:32

Ciao.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:33

Bye.