When you’re using a bad website that belongs to someone else, it’s usually very obvious.

As a visitor, you want to complete the job that you arrived on the website to do as quickly and easily as possible.  If the site makes any of that journey slow, difficult or illogical you’ll remember it as a bad experience, and if there’s another way to get the job done next time, you’re likely to choose that instead.

That’s your experience as a consumer. What happens if you’re on the other side? You might have a website that’s newly launched, or be several revisions in, but if you haven’t taken a recent audit, you have no way of knowing how it’s perceived by the people using it.

This article will explain how to get a simple and accurate picture of your website performance for the metrics that matter, giving you a clear picture of what needs to improve and what’s already working well.

First, ask what, and who, is my website for?

Revisiting the fundamentals of what your website is supposed to do, and who you built it to serve, can be a surprisingly deep source of insight.

Start your audit with these simple questions:

• Who are your website’s main audiences? (Don’t forget that includes search engines as well as humans)
• What means will they use to find your website, e.g. Google searches, social media activity?
• What do you want each of those audiences to do when they arrive, e.g. read about a product and then buy it, donate to a charity, etc.
• How easily can they do it? Are there any barriers that will stop them completing the actions you want them to?

Answer these questions in as much detail as you can and you’ve just created step one of your website improvement plan.

Look at your website like a first-time visitor

Websites are like children. Whether you’ve spent years nurturing it or it’s a newborn, it will embody your ideas, hopes and dreams. One of the hardest parts of auditing it will be putting yourself in the place of someone encountering it for the first time, and possibly finding that it’s awkward and ugly.

You know what your terminology means, you know what you put in the navigation and where it’s intended to take you, and you know why you organised your pages the way they are. All of this will have made absolute sense based on what you know about your company.

A new visitor doesn’t, and that’s a difficult thing to fake an understanding of. Open your homepage and ask what somebody could understand within the first few seconds.

Can they immediately tell what you sell or provide? Is it obvious who you work with? Can they see why they should choose you? Is there a clear next step?

Then repeat the exercise on important landing pages (if you don’t know which ones are most popular, see our article on free analytics tools). Someone arriving from Google may never see your homepage at all, so every page needs to make sense in isolation, whether that’s by doing a job itself or just by making it easy to visit other pages.

Internal language is also a common problem here. Businesses naturally organise websites around their own departments, products and terminology, while customers tend to think in terms of problems, needs and outcomes.

A good website can bridge that gap, but not without the conscious effort needed to talk about the Weekly Net Usage Statistics, not the WEENUS.

Check whether people can actually find things

Navigation is easy to overlook because regular users learn their way around a website, and that includes you and your staff. New visitors don’t have that advantage, and aren’t guaranteed to take the route that you imagined.

Try to complete some common tasks yourself. Find a particular product, locate a specific service or work out how to contact the right team. Look for pricing, delivery information or a relevant case study.

Count how many decisions and clicks it takes.

You don’t need to obsess over rules such as making everything accessible within three clicks, but important content shouldn’t be too buried.

Search is also worth testing on larger websites, particularly eCommerce sites. Try misspellings, product categories, model numbers and the sort of natural language customers might actually type.

Your website structure also matters to search engines. Clear categories, sensible internal linking and logical page relationships help Google understand which pages are important and what they are about.

Do some Google searches for products or services that you appear for, and see how tempting it is to navigate around the site from the page that you land on. Are related items or services being shown to you there, and are they shown in a way that makes them easy to visit next?

Audit the website on mobile by using a mobile

Checking how your website works on a phone is invaluable. There are tools and tricks that let you experience the phone version from Chrome, but nothing can beat actually clicking your way through it on a real phone.

Are buttons easy to tap? Does anything overlap? Are menus straightforward? Does text feel comfortable to read? Are forms annoying to complete? Do pop-ups cover vital bits of screen?

Pay particular attention to anything that affects conversion.

On an eCommerce website, test category filters, product galleries, variant selection, basket functionality and checkout. On a lead-generation website, fill in the enquiry form yourself.

Mobile traffic represents a substantial part of the audience for most websites, and in many sectors it’s the majority. A frustrating mobile experience isn’t a secondary problem because it’s affecting your primary market.

Look at what your analytics are telling you

Opinions become much more useful when you compare them with actual behaviour. We’ve talked elsewhere about the fact that Google’s Analytics 4 and Search Console are two vital parts of understanding website performance, which is made even more impressive because they’re free.

With the proper setup, Google Analytics 4 can help you identify where people enter the website, which pages they visit and where they complete important actions. Search Console can show which pages appear in Google, what people search for and where rankings or clicks are changing.

Rather than getting distracted by the biggest headline traffic numbers, go in with a list of the key pages that people should be visiting and look for patterns.

Which landing pages attract visitors but generate few enquiries or sales? Where do users seem to drop out? Which high-value pages receive surprisingly little traffic? Are important calls to action being used, and are they properly search optimised?

For an eCommerce site, look at the journey through product views, adding to basket and checkout. A sharp fall at a particular stage can point towards a usability, pricing, delivery or technical issue.

For lead-generation websites, make sure you’re tracking meaningful conversions in the first place. A traffic graph is much less useful if you can’t tell whether any of those visitors contacted you.

Search Google for your own products and services

This is where an SEO audit starts to link commercial and technical site performance. Make a list of the searches a potential customer might use when they need what you offer, then find out whether you appear.

Don’t only search for your company name. If somebody already knows who you are, much of the marketing work has already been done, so you need to think about the “non-branded” searches: the products, services, problems and questions relevant to your customers.

SEO tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs can provide much more comprehensive ranking data, but the really interesting stuff is paid for. Google Search Console shows real queries for which your website has received impressions, though, so that can be a good place to start. It’s linked to your site so you can’t use it to spy on competitors, though.

Look for gaps between what the business wants to sell and what the website is currently visible for.

You may discover that an important service has only a few paragraphs dedicated to it, that multiple pages are competing for the same topic, or that competitors have created useful content around questions you haven’t addressed.

Don’t ignore how search itself is changing

Website visibility isn’t just about appearing first on Google for searches.

Potential customers may encounter your business through Google AI Overviews, AI assistants and other generative search experiences, alongside standard search results.

Being recommended by AI puts even more emphasis on clear, authoritative content.

Your website should make it easy to understand who you are, what you do, where you operate and why your organisation is credible. Important services should be explained properly rather than hidden behind marketing language.

Content that answers genuine questions clearly is valuable to both people and search systems.

This doesn’t mean creating enormous amounts of AI-targeted content. In most cases, improving clarity, depth, expertise and structure is the better starting point.

Check the quality of your most important pages

Not every page deserves equal attention.

Start with pages that generate revenue, attract significant organic traffic or represent strategically important services and products, then compare them with the strongest competing pages.

Is your page easier or more difficult to use? Does it have the right depth of information, and is it clear what the next steps are?

A good service page might explain what the service involves, who it is for, common problems, your approach, relevant experience and what somebody should do next.

A strong product page needs useful descriptions, specifications, imagery, delivery information, returns details and reassurance around purchasing.

Thin pages often exist because as a business, you already understand the subject and assume the customer does too. Some will, but for the ones that don’t, you’ve created a barrier that they might not be motivated to cross.

Test your calls to action

Every important page should have a logical next step.

That doesn’t mean filling the screen with brightly coloured buttons, but it does mean thinking about what someone reading that particular page might realistically want to do next.

They could be ready to buy, but they might also want to ask a question, see examples of your work, compare options, download more information or understand pricing. Calls to action should match their intent as closely as possible.

Also, check the wording. “Submit” tells somebody what a button does technically, but “Request a quote” tells them what happens next.

Small differences in wording can have a significant impact, acting as a prompt to encourage visitors to complete your desired action.

Audit forms and checkout journeys yourself

Forms have an unfortunate tendency to become more complicated over time.

They’re a free way to get essential data on your potential customers, but add enough fields and eventually an enquiry form begins to resemble a mortgage application.

Only ask for information you genuinely need at the current stage.

Then test the form yourself on desktop and mobile. Check validation messages, confirmation pages and automated emails.

If you run an eCommerce website, do the same with checkout. Look for unnecessary friction, confusing delivery options, unexpected charges or anything else likely to make someone hesitate.

Your analytics may tell you that customers are abandoning a process, but it’s only by completing it yourself that you can find out why.

Check website speed – but keep the scores in perspective

Performance matters, as a slow website creates a worse experience and can affect search performance (because Google doesn’t like technically poor websites) and conversion rates.

Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse can identify problems including oversized images, render-blocking resources, layout shifts and slow server responses. If any of those are causing you problems, you’re probably best off talking to an agency.

However, a PageSpeed score isn’t a business KPI.

The aim isn’t to achieve a perfect 100 while ignoring everything else. It’s to make the website feel fast and stable for real users so they want to keep coming back.

Pay particular attention to Google’s Core Web Vitals, but interpret them alongside real-world performance and analytics.

A slightly lower score on a page that converts exceptionally is less urgent than a technically fast page that can’t close a sale.

Look for technical problems

Some website issues are invisible until you deliberately search for them.

An SEO crawl can uncover broken links, missing page titles, duplicate content, redirect chains, pages that search engines can’t access and other structural problems. Screaming Frog is a tool that will do this for you, and it can look at a decent cross-section of pages even in the free version.

You should also check:

• whether HTTPS is working correctly
• whether important pages are indexable (check them in Search Console and you can request a crawl if they aren’t)
• whether old URLs redirect properly
• whether XML sitemaps contain the right pages
• whether canonical tags are being used appropriately
• whether structured data is valid where relevant

Not every warning produced by an SEO tool represents a serious problem, so prioritisation matters. A broken internal link on a major category page deserves more attention than an inconsequential technical warning buried in an unused archive, but you need to know which is which to make that decision.

Review accessibility

Accessibility should be part of website quality, not a separate exercise conducted after everything else.

• Check whether the website can be navigated using a keyboard
• Make sure text has sufficient contrast
• Use meaningful link text
• Provide appropriate alternative text for informative images and proper labels for form fields

Heading structure matters too. Pages should use headings to create a logical hierarchy rather than simply because a particular heading size looks good.

Many accessibility improvements also make websites easier to use generally.

Clearer language, better navigation, well-labelled forms and readable layouts benefit everyone.

Look for trust signals

Before somebody buys or makes an enquiry, they need to feel confident that there is a credible organisation behind the website.

Depending on the business, useful trust signals could include customer reviews, case studies, testimonials, accreditations, recognised clients, guarantees, team information and clear contact details.

The important point is evidence. Almost every business claims to provide excellent service, high quality and expert advice, so those phrases have very little persuasive power anymore.

Showing your successful work, results or expertise behind the claim is much more convincing. Showing that through a third-party service that makes the testimony impartial is even more impressive, and has been shown to improve the strength of the behavioural nudge in website users.

Ask someone else to use the website

One of the most revealing website audits requires almost no specialist software beyond the human brain.

Give someone unfamiliar with the site a task and watch them try to complete it.

Don’t explain where anything is. You might ask them to find a particular service, choose between two products or work out how to contact you. Watch where they hesitate, what they click and what they misunderstand.

Five minutes of observing a new user can reveal problems that months of looking at the same website have made invisible to your internal team.

Compare your website with competitors (carefully)

Competitor research is useful, but copying competitors isn’t.

A competing website might rank well despite being difficult to use. Another might look impressive while performing poorly commercially. You can’t reliably know which of these factors is true, but you can use competitors to identify expectations and opportunities.

How do they structure their services? What questions do they answer? Which search terms do they appear for? What proof do they provide? What features have they introduced that customers might now expect?

Then ask whether those ideas make sense for your own users and objectives.

The aim is to understand the market, not create a slightly different version of somebody else’s website.

Ask your visitors what they think

There are tools that will let you survey your website’s current visitors to find out what they think of the experience.

You can view Heatmaps, which show which areas of the page have the most time spent on them, and even replay sessions to see where the cursor went and what users tried to click on.

Hotjar (now called Contentsquare) is a free service that will let you access this data, and offers even more if you want to pay for it – just remember to cancel once you have enough data to support your decision-making.

Turn your audit into priorities

A website audit can easily produce a spreadsheet containing hundreds of recommendations, and that isn’t necessarily useful.

The important part is deciding what to do first.

We normally suggest considering three things: how serious the problem is, how much commercial impact fixing it could have and how difficult it will be to resolve.

That helps separate urgent opportunities from nice-to-have improvements.

An audit should result in a roadmap, not just a list of faults.

So, is your website actually nice to visit?

There isn’t one score that can answer that question.

Website quality is a combination of visibility, usability, technical performance, content and commercial effectiveness.

The best websites aren’t necessarily the flashiest ones. They make it easy for the right people to find them, understand them, trust them and take the next step.

And importantly, they keep auditing and improving.

Analytics, search behaviour, competitors and technology will all change. The website you launched three years ago might still look perfectly presentable while quietly becoming less effective because the field it’s playing on has changed.

Regular auditing gives you a way to spot those changes before they become bigger problems, and should become part of your regular maintenance routine.

Want another pair of eyes on your website?

At Webselect, we design, build and optimise websites with a focus on what they actually need to achieve.

That can mean improving organic search visibility, fixing conversion problems, simplifying user journeys or identifying when an existing website has reached the point where incremental improvements are no longer enough.

If you’re not sure whether your website is performing as well as it should and can’t make time for regular audits yourself, we can help you find out if your site is doing all it can to support your business.

Selling clothing online has always had a particular challenge for retailers: customers can’t experience before they buy, so your product images, reviews and information need to do the hard work.

A strong fashion eCommerce website now has to do more than ever before to convert a sale. It needs to, as much as it can, help customers understand how a garment looks, how it fits, what it feels like and whether it will work with the rest of their wardrobe, without them ever coming into contact with the item.

That supporting information is becoming ever more important as Google, social platforms and AI-powered shopping tools take a greater role in product discovery. Customers can increasingly search conversationally, compare products visually, generate shopping inspiration and virtually try on clothing before they reach a retailer’s website.

Some emerging systems can even help a customer complete a purchase without following a traditional journey through the retailer’s website through to checkout.

It’s taken the old playbook for clothing brand websites, set fire to it and then driven a lorry over it. That lorry is full of clothing that’s been sold by other websites already using this technology, making the important question how your brand can also get on board. The route to success used to be having the best static content, but you need to think about whether your eCommerce setup gives customers, search engines and emerging shopping platforms enough useful information to confidently find, recommend and sell your products in the strongest way possible – which might even be via a completely new channel.

Here are some of the most important ways that you, as a fashion retailer, can level up your eCommerce website.

Get ready for virtual try-on

Virtual try-on is moving beyond the novelty stage and becoming part of the way major technology platforms can help customers to shop for clothing.

Google initially developed virtual try-on experiences that allowed shoppers to see garments displayed on a selection of models with different body shapes and sizes, which was quite useful but pretty utilitarian as a feature. It has now expanded the technology so shoppers can upload their own photographs and visualise themselves wearing selected items.

Google launched its virtual apparel try-on feature in the UK in December 2025, allowing shoppers to upload a photograph and try on eligible products appearing across its Shopping Graph. The feature covers billions of apparel listings rather than being limited to products from a small group of participating retailers.

Google has also developed a more advanced process that can generate a reusable, full-body digital version of a shopper from a selfie and basic sizing information. The customer can then use this image when exploring products through Google Shopping.

This has the simultaneous impact of boosting the importance of your product photography (so Google has good data to build the preview with) and making its presence on your website less crucial than it’s ever been.

The better quality the photography, the more accurate the render will be, and that’s a powerful upgrade for the price of consistent imagery. The better quality the result, the easier it will be for consumers to imagine themselves in the garment, doing a proportion of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to sales. After all, if you’ve already seen yourself wearing it and looking good, what’s the remaining barrier to purchase?

You need to audit your main product images as a priority, and review whether you’re including shots that:

• • show the full garment clearly and without obstruction;
  • use consistent lighting and relatively uncluttered backgrounds;
  • accurately represent the colour, texture and shape of the item;
  • avoid excessive props, overlaid graphics or distracting styling;
  • are large and detailed enough to be reused across different shopping platforms.

Lifestyle photography is still valuable, but it should complement clean, technically useful product images.

Retailers do not necessarily need to develop their own virtual fitting room. In many cases, the more immediate priority is ensuring that their images, product feeds and website data can support the virtual try-on experiences being created elsewhere.

What comes next? Video-based virtual try-on

Static virtual try-on isn’t the final stage of this technology.

Google Labs’ experimental Doppl app allows users to upload photographs of outfits found online, in shops or on social media and apply them to a digital version of themselves. It can then create a short AI-generated video showing the outfit being worn, giving the user a sense of how the overall look might appear in motion.

Doppl has also introduced a personalised, shoppable discovery feed in the US. It recommends outfits based on the user’s stated preferences and previous interactions, presents AI-generated videos of real products and links users through to merchants where the items can be purchased.
This remains an experimental product rather than a standard feature UK retailers can simply enable on their websites. However, it shows us where technology wants to end up.

Shopping platforms will eventually combine:

• personal style profiles
• product recommendations
• digital representations of the shopper
• AI-generated outfit videos
• direct links to purchasable products.

For retailers, that increases again the importance of maintaining a high-quality and consistent product media library. Images won’t just be used to illustrate an item, but will also help external systems generate entirely new ways of presenting it.

Make products discoverable from a description or an idea

Traditional fashion searches tend to be relatively short: “black midi dress”, “men’s linen shirt” or “wide-leg trousers”.
However, customers do not always begin with a recognised product term. They may have a particular item in mind but struggle to describe it using conventional retail categories.

Google’s Vision Match feature was developed for this kind of shopping journey. A user can describe an imagined item, such as a colourful midi dress with a large floral pattern. Google generates visual representations of that idea and then searches its Shopping Graph for real products with a similar appearance.

This introduces a different type of product discovery. Previously, retailers were looking to rank their products against traditionally descriptive search terms. Now, their products may be visually and semantically matched against a much more detailed customer brief.

A shopper could potentially describe:

A dark green fitted jacket with large gold buttons and a slightly military style. The system then needs to identify products that match the description, even if the retailer has never optimised a page for that exact combination of words.

To support this kind of discovery, product information needs to be specific. Useful attributes might include:

• the precise colour or shade
• pattern
• cut and silhouette
• length
• fabric
• fastening
• neckline
• sleeve style
• decorative details
• occasion
• season
• fit

Generic descriptions such as “a stylish addition to any wardrobe” won’t help a visual matching system. Describing the product accurately gives Google and other platforms more information with which to identify it. Clear product photography again plays an important role too, as the closer it is to the generated image, the greater the chance of your item being included in the recommendation.

Treat product data as part of the shopping experience

Most fashion websites naturally focus on what customers can see on the page. Increasingly, what sits behind that page matters just as much.

Google Merchant Centre, structured data, platform feeds and commerce APIs all help external services understand details such as:

• colour
• size
• price
• availability
• material
• gender
• age group
• brand
• product category
• delivery
• returns
• product identifiers

Google recommends sharing product information through both structured data and Merchant Centre feeds because this can improve its understanding of products and increase eligibility for different shopping experiences.

Incomplete or inconsistent product data can limit where a product appears and make it harder for search engines and AI shopping tools to match it with the right customer.

Make sure your feeds provide accurate information for every meaningful product attribute, including:

• brand and product title
• colour and pattern
• gender and age group
• material
• size and size system
• availability
• price and sale price
• condition
• product category
• Global Trade Item Number, where applicable

Avoid stuffing product titles with promotional phrases or filling descriptions with vague brand language.

A title such as “Women’s navy linen wide-leg trousers” provides more useful information than “The must-have trousers of the season”.

The clearer the data, the easier it is for Google and other discovery platforms to understand who the product is for and when it is relevant.

Structure product variants properly

A single item of clothing may be available in several colours and a dozen different sizes. From the customer’s point of view, these are variations of the same product. From the website’s point of view, however, they can easily become a confusing collection of URLs, stock records and product data.

Google supports ProductGroup and product variant structured data for products such as apparel and footwear that are sold in different sizes, colours, materials or patterns. This allows retailers to indicate that several individual variations belong to one broader product group.

Implementing this properly can help Google understand the relationship between variants rather than treating every size or colour as an entirely unrelated product.

It can also improve the customer experience. Shoppers should be able to move between colours and sizes without losing their place, encountering an unexpected page reload or discovering too late that their chosen combination is unavailable.

Your website should make it immediately clear:

• which colours and sizes are available
• which combinations are out of stock
• whether another variant is available
• whether an unavailable item can be ordered or reserved
• whether the customer can request a restock notification

The same information must remain consistent across the website, Merchant Centre and any other sales channels.

Variant management may sound like a technical detail, but poor implementation creates friction at one of the most commercially important points in the buying journey.

It can also make it harder for AI shopping systems to distinguish between a product that is completely unavailable and one that is simply out of stock in a particular size.

Make sizing genuinely useful

A generic sizing table is better than no guidance at all, but it’s not going to answer the customer’s real question of “Will this particular garment fit me?” without some work on their behalf.

Sizing can vary significantly between brands, product ranges and even two garments sold by the same retailer. A standard chart that simply converts UK sizes into chest, waist and hip measurements may not explain whether an item is intentionally oversized, tightly fitted, cropped or unusually long.

Competitive fashion websites provide guidance that is specific to the product, which might include:

• the model’s height and the size being worn
• whether the item runs small, large or true to size
• garment measurements as well as body measurements
• the length, rise or inside leg
• the level of stretch in the material
• fit notes based on verified customer feedback
• a size recommendation or fit questionnaire

This information should be easy to find close to the size selector. Hiding it in a general FAQ or placing it at the bottom of a long product description was a favoured SEO tactic for many years, but now that the information has more meaning, this placement means many customers will never see it.

Good sizing information can increase confidence before purchase. It may also help tackle one of the fashion sector’s most persistent commercial problems: customers ordering several sizes with the intention of returning most of them.

Virtual try-on may help customers visualise an item, but it doesn’t remove the need for accurate measurements and honest fit guidance.

Show more than the front of the garment

Customers need to inspect clothing in much greater detail than many other online products. One polished front-facing photograph was pushing your luck even before these technical advances, and now it’s a clear sign that you’re not taking your business seriously.

A useful product gallery should help the customer answer practical questions.

What does the back look like? How long is it? Is the material sheer? Does the fastening look secure? How does the fabric move? Are there pockets? What does the stitching look like close up?

Depending on the product, useful media may include:

• front, back and side views
• close-ups of fabric, seams, fastenings and details
• photographs of the item on more than one body type
• short video clips showing the garment in motion
• zoomable high-resolution images
• styling photographs showing how the item can be worn
• user-generated photographs from customers

As visual search and AI-generated shopping experiences develop, these assets may be reused outside the product page itself.

A strong product media library becomes a feature that supports both the immediate on-site shopping experience and the external platforms through which a customer may discover the item.

Consider reusable 3D product assets

Augmented reality and 3D product models are not new ideas, but the tools available to create and distribute them continue to improve.

Google’s merchant listing documentation allows retailers to provide 3D model information for eligible products, while social and commerce platforms have developed augmented-reality try-on and interactive 3D viewing experiences.

Creating a 3D model for every item on your website isn’t going to be viable. Picking a selection of items based on sales and page visits, however, is definitely worthwhile.

As a suggestion, it may be more valuable for products such as:

• footwear
• eyewear
• handbags
• jewellery and accessories
• high-value items
• permanent or frequently repeated product ranges
• flagship products used heavily in advertising

We’ve focused more on using these items on the website and within the wider Google ecosystem in this article so far, but it’s important not to overlook the other venues that they can help with – social media being the main example.

Improve your merchant listing data

Product structured data can make a page eligible for enhanced appearances within Google Search, including product snippets, Google Images results and shopping-related listings.

Merchant listing markup can communicate information such as price, availability, shipping, returns, member pricing and product details directly to Google.

For fashion retailers, it is particularly important that the structured data on the website matches the product feed and the information visible to customers.

If the page says an item is available but the feed says it is out of stock, or the structured data contains a different price, Google may have difficulty deciding which information to trust.

Retailers should regularly test their product markup and monitor the Merchant listings and Product snippets reports in Google Search Console.

Errors should not be left to accumulate simply because the product pages still appear to function normally for customers.

Make returns and loyalty benefits machine-readable

Surfacing your returns policy and any membership benefits you offer is a strong trust signal even without a foundation of data, and Google now supports organisation-level return-policy structured data to allow the policies to be more easily read and understood. Retailers can provide information about matters such as the returns window, applicable countries, return methods and return fees through markup or relevant Google services.

It also supports loyalty-program structured data, which can communicate benefits such as member prices and loyalty points. Google may use this information alongside products and within other search features, creating many additional opportunities to convince prospective customers with your policies and offers.

Customers are often more hesitant to order clothing from an unfamiliar shop because they are uncertain about fit, and don’t want to fall victim to a punitive or unhelpful returns policy. A clear and competitive returns policy surfaced through easily parsed schema can influence the purchase before the customer visits the website.

Similarly, a members-only price or loyalty reward may help one your shop stand out when several similar products are being compared.

You should ensure that these policies are:

• clear to customers
• accurately represented in structured data
• consistent with Merchant Centre
• kept up to date when terms change

It is another example of the wider buying decision moving beyond the boundaries of a retailer’s product page.

Prepare to sell through AI agents

Perhaps the most significant development is the movement from AI-assisted product discovery towards AI-assisted purchasing.

Google has introduced agentic shopping tools that can track the price of a product according to the customer’s chosen size, colour and target price. In supported cases, its systems can help add the product to the retailer’s basket and complete the purchase using Google Pay after receiving the customer’s confirmation.

Shopify and Google have also co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP. It is designed to provide a common language through which AI agents and commerce platforms can handle stages of the shopping journey from discovery to checkout.

Shopify has begun enabling selected merchants to sell through Google’s AI Mode and Gemini, with wider agentic commerce capabilities being developed across other AI platforms.

Of course, customers won’t immediately stop visiting fashion websites. What this does suggest, however, is that future shopping journeys might not always follow the familiar route of:

1. search result
2. homepage
3. category page
4. product page
5. basket
6. checkout

An AI assistant can potentially help the customer define what they want, compare products, check availability and begin or complete the transaction through a connected shopping environment.

To participate reliably, your site will need more than attractive design. It needs:

• accurate live pricing
• reliable inventory information
• correctly structured variants
• current product images
• accessible delivery and returns details
• a stable checkout
• well-maintained feeds and integrations

The eCommerce website increasingly needs to operate as both a shopfront and a dependable source of commerce data.

Use AI to improve discovery, not replace merchandising

AI-powered search and recommendation tools can also improve the experience within your own website.

They can help interpret natural-language searches, suggest complementary items and adapt recommendations based on customer behaviour or stated preferences, which can be a significant upgrade if you’re currently running with generic search.

A customer might search for “Something smart but comfortable for an outdoor work event.”

A conventional keyword search will struggle if none of the individual products use that exact wording. A stronger search system can interpret the intended occasion and return relevant garments.

However, installing an AI recommendation or search app is not a substitute for organising your catalogue properly.

The underlying product relationships still need to make sense. Your site should define how products relate by:

• collection
• style
• occasion
• colour
• material
• season
• fit
• complementary items

A well-designed recommendation system might suggest the matching jacket, an alternative colour or an item with a similar fit.

A poorly configured one might just promote whatever has received the most clicks, regardless of whether it helps the customer.

Human input into merchandising remains important, and AI should strengthen it by making a larger catalogue easier to explore instead of producing an endless carousel of loosely connected products.

Connect content and commerce

Fashion purchases are often driven by inspiration as much as direct demand.

Customers might begin by looking for advice on what to wear to an event, how to style a particular shape or how to build a more versatile wardrobe.

Useful editorial content can bring these customers into the website earlier and then guide them towards relevant products.

Examples might include:

• what to wear to a summer wedding
• how to style wide-leg trousers
• a guide to different denim fits
• how to build a capsule wardrobe
• the best fabrics for travelling
• how to care for linen or cashmere
• how to choose a coat for your body shape

The commercial opportunity is lost when these guides are too separate from the shop.

Products should be linked naturally within the content, while product pages can link back to useful styling or care advice.

Shoppable lookbooks, editorial collection pages and “complete the outfit” features can narrow the gap between inspiration and purchase.

For years, the answer to online visibility was relatively straightforward: if you wanted more people to find your website, you invested in SEO.

Those early days were pretty simple, because there was a list of tactics that worked and the result was largely decided by who was able to best execute them. SEO itself wasn’t simple, but we understood how to do it well. Once Google’s algorithm began to change from something designed to return the single best result to something designed to return the single best result for you in particular, it complicated into required technical foundations, useful content, keyword research, website performance, link authority, strong product or service pages, and a clear understanding of your intent as a user. But the search route we were optimising for was still familiar: people searched on Google, Google displayed a list of results, and your job was to appear as prominently as possible in those results.

As more people are using AI tools to research products, compare providers, summarise options, and ask questions that they might once have typed into a search engine, that’s becoming just one route among many. Google itself is also becoming more AI-led, with AI-generated answers appearing above, alongside, or instead of traditional search results for certain queries.

That raises understandable questions for businesses: do you optimise for SEO, or should you now be optimising for AI? Does AI optimisation look different, and if it does, what are the differences?

The answer is that the distinction is both more and less than you think. Each AI platform has unique preferences, and so the days of one route to optimise are dead – recent research has found that some of Google’s preferences directly contrast what ChatGPT looks for when deciding to cite a page. Your first job now starts with weighing up where you want to be seen, and deciding which bits of optimisation to carry out.

What do I recommend as someone who works in both SEO and AIO?

I think that it makes sense to carry out SEO first, but with an eye on the places where it crosses over. AI optimisation isn’t really a replacement for SEO, because so much of the information used to judge your business is sourced from your website by AI. If your website is technically weak, unclear, thin on useful content, or difficult for search engines to understand, it isn’t going to perform well in either traditional search or AI-led discovery.

In other words, before you worry about being recommended by AI, you need to make sure your website deserves to be found in the first place.

I’m busy, I’ll read about this later

Bad idea. If you’re a regular Google user, you’ve probably noticed that recently, you’re often served an AI answer before you get to the search results. It invites you to ask a question, and if you do, it turns into less of a browsing session and more of a conversation. If you’ve been shopping for goods or services online, that AI Overview might have included product recommendation.

Users are learning not to always expect a list of links. Increasingly, they’re spoon fed direct answers, summaries, comparisons, recommendations, and next steps. All the information needed to make a great buying decision used to be available if you were motivated to look, but now it’s distilled into an easy to read couple of paragraphs by a single press of the “enter” key. Someone looking for a local service provider might ask an AI assistant to shortlist suitable companies. A buyer researching a technical product might ask for the pros and cons of different options, and a customer planning a larger purchase might use AI to narrow down choices before ever visiting a website. I know I’ve already done at least two of those three.

None of that means traditional search is disappearing. Google remains central to how people navigate the web, and organic visibility is both commercially valuable for most businesses and (in some cases) connected to your brand’s likelihood to surface in an AI answer. The change is that search experience is becoming more of a blended medium. Users don’t just stay on Google search but will also move across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, social platforms, YouTube, review sites, maps, marketplaces, and brand websites before making a decision.

That means optimisation isn’t as simple as making some page adjustments and ranking for keywords that automatically bring visitors to your site. Visibility now depends on the holistic elements that make up your brand, and its effect on your presence online.

This is where some businesses risk jumping too far ahead. They’ve heard about AI search and assumed they need a completely new strategy, when in reality, many of the fundamentals haven’t changed.

AI tools still need information to work with, which means crawlable websites, trusted sources, clear explanations, consistent entities, structured content, third-party validation, and pages that answer real questions well. Those aren’t separate from SEO (well, not completely – like I said, it’s getting complicated).

SEO first, because AI still depends on the web

AI tools may feel very different from search engines, but that’s mostly the interface at work. Behind the scenes they are still heavily influenced by the information available online, and that’s what makes ignoring SEO an unfeasible growth tactic. A Large Language Model like ChatGPT is trained on an existing dataset. That dataset is vast, but it is dated to the moment it was retrieved and fed to ChatGPT. If that were the only data it had access to and the cutoff was 26 July 2025, asking a question about something that happened after that date would either generate no answer at all, or worse, a hallucination that gives you the wrong answer, but with absolute confidence.

That’s why it also has access to web search – it can retrieve the latest information that way, and fact check itself. The chance of a hallucinatory answer is reduced because there’s fresh info on tap, and the end user looking for reliable information on something goes away happy. That also increases the spectrum of information available on your business to everything online that can be crawled by a search robot. The more there is available, the more complete the picture of your brand, but there will always be some bits you wish were more available than others.

If your business has a weak digital footprint, AI systems have less to draw on. If your website is technically poor and/or light on relevant information, it becomes harder for both search engines and AI tools to understand what you offer and why you should be recommended. If your brand is barely mentioned outside your own website, there is less evidence of authority, relevance, or trust.

That’s all in scope for SEO, and why I think it makes the best starting point.

A strong SEO foundation helps you build the assets that both search engines and AI systems need. These include:

• Clear service, product, category, and landing pages
• Helpful content that answers real customer questions
• A technically sound website that can be crawled and indexed
• Structured information that makes your business easier to understand
• Strong internal linking between related pages
• Evidence of expertise and credibility
• Consistent brand information across the web
• Reviews, mentions, links, and citations from relevant third-party sources

Many of these aren’t on 2012’s list of SEO essentials, because they’re representative of the fuller picture that your digital presence is now built on.

Businesses that skip these steps and try to “optimise for AI” in isolation are likely to struggle, because they’ll most likely end up only optimising for one piece of the puzzle. Also, a lot of AI optimisation advice is still pretty sketchy. We know it can be misled because it’s already being used by criminals to defraud people, but executing the same move without resorting to the kind of cheap tactics that might get you banned later is not yet on the table.

The honest way to do it is to accept that before you can become the answer, you need to have answers worth finding.

What is AI optimisation, really?

AI optimisation is sometimes also called GEO, or generative engine optimisation. The term is useful, but it makes the discipline sound more separate from SEO than it really is.

At its simplest, AI optimisation means making your business more likely to be understood, cited, summarised, or recommended by AI-led discovery tools. It’s important to say “business” and not “website” here

That might include optimising for Google’s AI features, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and other platforms that generate answers rather than simply displaying links.

The important point is that done right, AI optimisation is not about tricking AI systems. It is about making your information clear, trustworthy, well-evidenced, and easy to interpret.

If I’m working on a traditional SEO approach I might ask:

“What keywords should this page rank for?”

An AI-aware approach means I also need to ask:

“What questions should this page answer clearly?”
“What evidence proves this business is credible?”
“Would an AI assistant understand who this company helps?”
“Is the information specific enough to be included in a useful recommendation?”
“Are the claims supported by details, examples, reviews, case studies, or third-party references?”

That shift is because AI-led discovery often rewards clarity and usefulness rather than keyword repetition. A page that targets a phrase won’t be enough, as the content needs to explain, compare, evidence, and guide.

The danger of treating AI as a shortcut

Because AI search is new and fast-moving, there’s a temptation to look for quick wins. The bad advice already ranges from creating hundreds of AI-generated pages, to flooding the web with content, to using a checklist of “AI ranking factors” to appear in answers.

That’s straight out of the early days of SEO, and it’s as risky now as it was back then. It’s also a little dumber, because we have the case of SEO to show why it was a bad tactic.

Search engines have spent years trying to reduce low-quality content created purely to manipulate rankings. AI systems face the same challenge, especially as the web becomes increasingly filled with generic AI-generated material. If everyone is publishing similar AI-written content, originality, expertise, and trust become more important, because they’re the bit that AI can’t write. Not honestly, anyway.

This is particularly relevant for businesses in competitive or trust-sensitive sectors. A generic article that says broadly the same thing as every other website is unlikely to make a brand stand out. A page that gives specific advice, shows real expertise, answers nuanced questions, and reflects genuine commercial knowledge is much more valuable.

AI can be useful in the content process, but it can’t replace expertise. It can help structure ideas, identify gaps, summarise research, or produce first drafts, but your final content needs to be shaped by a combination of human knowledge, brand positioning, and customer understanding.

The winning approach isn’t having the most content, it’s creating content that is clearer, deeper, more specific, and more useful.

What should businesses optimise first?

If you are deciding where to focus, the best approach is to build in layers.

1. Start with technical SEO

Your website needs to be accessible, crawlable, fast, secure, and easy to navigate. If search engines can’t properly access or understand your pages, AI tools probably can’t either.

This includes making sure important pages are indexable, page speed is good, any redirects are managed properly, duplicate content is controlled, and the site structure makes sense. If you’re not sure, PageSpeed Insights and Search Console are two free Google tools that can give you a read on your site’s technical performance.

Technical SEO isn’t glamorous, but it underpins everything else so get it done first and you might save money later.

2. Strengthen your core commercial pages

Before publishing large volumes of blog content, make sure your main service, product, category, and location pages are doing their job.

These pages should clearly explain what you offer, who it is for, why it matters, and why a customer should choose you over everyone else who is selling the same thing. Answer the questions a buyer genuinely needs resolved before making contact or purchasing and you can handle those objections before they even speak to you.

For eCommerce websites, I’d recommend include improving category copy, product descriptions, filters, FAQs, buying guides, and internal links. For service businesses, it may involve clearer service pages, sector pages, case studies, testimonials, and location-specific content. The latter can be tough if you’re in professional services and need to balance internal stakeholder approval with a practical approach to content, but it will be worth it if you can persuade them to get on board.

3. Build helpful supporting content

Once your commercial pages are strong, supporting content can help capture earlier-stage searches and AI-led research queries.

This might include guides, comparisons, explainers, FAQs, glossaries, opinion pieces, and advice-led articles. You don’t want to publish content for the sake of it, but to build topical authority around the subjects your customers care about.

For example, a business should not only have a page selling a service. It should also have content that explains when that service is needed, how to choose a provider, what mistakes to avoid, what costs to consider, and what outcomes to expect.

This kind of content is useful for traditional SEO and well-suited to AI discovery, because it gives both search engines and AI systems richer context. One note is that a lot of businesses have been using listicles (articles that are built around a list) to declare themselves the number one business in their field. This has led to some reasonable success with AI repeating the claim to users, but it’s now well-known enough that it’s highly likely to be one of the first things that gets punished as a “cheat” tactic.

4. Make your expertise visible

AI tools need signals of trust, and so do your customers.

Your website should make it clear why your business is credible. That includes a combination of author information, accreditations, awards, reviews, case studies, client examples, media mentions, detailed product knowledge, and transparent processes.

For many businesses, this is an underused opportunity. They have genuine expertise, but their website does not show it clearly enough.

It’s something that many people struggle with, but you can’t assume people will know why you are good. Explain it, provide the evidence to prove it, and make it easy for both users and algorithms to understand.

5. Improve your wider brand footprint

AI discovery isn’t limited to your website. Mentions across the web can influence how your brand is understood.

That means considering building your presence using digital PR, relevant directory listings, reviews, partner websites, industry publications, social profiles, your Google Business Profile, and other third-party sources.

This isn’t link building in the old SEO sense, it’s about building a consistent, trustworthy digital presence.

If your business is mentioned positively and consistently across reputable sources, it gives both users and AI systems more confidence in who you are and what you do. My top tip for this overall area is to look at Reddit, which has come up again and again as a place that brands need to be seen if they want to build a positive AI presence.

So when should you focus specifically on AI optimisation?

Once your SEO foundations are in place, it makes sense to look more deliberately at AI visibility.

That would include reviewing how your brand appears in AI-generated answers, checking whether your key topics are being summarised accurately, identifying which competitors are being mentioned, and looking for gaps in your own content.

Doing that isn’t always easy as AI will generate a new response with each ask, but there are tools which can help you to build a picture.

You can also adapt your content structure to make it easier for AI tools to interpret. Clear headings, concise summaries, direct answers, comparison tables, FAQs, schema markup, and well-organised topic clusters can all help.

The most important thing to consider is that these changes should support human users first. The best SEO and AI optimisation naturally improves the website for real customers too. If a page is easier for AI to summarise because it is clearer, better structured, and more informative, it’s probably easier for a potential customer to use as well.

SEO and AI are not opposing strategies

The phrase “SEO or AI” suggests a choice, but for most businesses, the two are connected.

SEO helps your website become visible, useful, trusted, and technically sound. AI optimisation builds on that by making your information easier for answer engines and AI assistants to understand, cite, and recommend.

The businesses most likely to benefit from AI search will not be the ones that evolve their SEO instead of abandoning it. .

That means moving beyond narrow keyword targeting and thinking more broadly about discoverability, building a brand presence that is consistent across the wider web.

In short, optimise for people first, search engines second, and AI as an increasingly important extension of both.

The practical answer: optimise for SEO first, but do it with AI in mind

If your website is already performing well organically, boosting your AI optimisation should be part of your next stage of development. It will help you understand how discovery is changing and where your brand may need stronger signals.

But if your SEO foundations are weak, that needs to be the first stop on your roadmap. A technically sound website, strong commercial pages, useful content, and clear evidence of expertise will support both traditional search performance and future AI visibility. Without those foundations, AI optimisation risks becoming a distraction.

The question isn’t really about whether SEO or AI matters more. What you really need to ask is “how do we build a website and digital presence that can be found, trusted, and recommended wherever customers are searching”?

For most businesses, that answer starts with SEO – and grows from there.

Need help with your AI or SEO strategy? Get in touch

If you’re in need of help with optimising your website and honing your online presence, just get in touch.

Shopify’s Q2 2026 updates have been some of the most strategically significant changes to the platform in recent years. Instead of focusing on a single area, Shopify has used this quarter to strengthen the foundations of how merchants sell, where their products can appear, and how developers build for the platform.

The headline release was Shopify’s Spring ’26 Edition, launched in June 2026 with more than 150 updates across commerce, AI, marketing, retail, B2B and developer tooling. Alongside that, Shopify has also made important changes to B2B availability, Shopify Scripts, customer accounts, app development, checkout extensibility and API behaviour.

The short version is that Shopify is moving towards a more connected, AI-ready, multi-channel commerce platform, where product data, checkout logic, customer accounts and fulfilment all need to work cleanly across more surfaces than just the traditional online store.

Below, we look at the key Shopify updates from Q2 2026, what they mean in practical terms, and which announced Q3 changes that both merchants (you) and developers (us) should already be preparing for.

Shopify Spring ’26 Edition: commerce “everywhere”

The largest Q2 announcement was Shopify’s Spring ’26 Edition, titled Everywhere. The theme of the release is pretty straightforward: Shopify wants merchants’ products to be discoverable and purchasable wherever customers are searching, browsing or asking for recommendations.

That means you’re expanding beyond the online store, Google Shopping, social platforms or marketplaces. Now, you need to consider AI assistants, conversational search, shopping agents, the Shop app, in-store retail environments and other emerging channels as well.

At the centre of this shift are two important pieces of infrastructure: Shopify Catalog and the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).

Shopify Catalog structures product data so AI agents and shopping surfaces can better understand, recommend and display products. UCP provides a standardised way for AI agents and commerce platforms to interact, covering more of the journey from product discovery through to checkout.

For Shopify merchants, the practical benefit is that product data can be made available across a wider range of AI-driven and conversational channels without each one requiring a separate manual feed or bespoke integration. In other words, Shopify is trying to make structured product visibility a default part of the platform.

This has made having strong product data critical for businesses. Product titles, descriptions, variants, attributes, specifications, imagery and availability need to be clear and complete if merchants want their products to appear accurately in AI-led shopping experiences.

Agentic Storefronts and AI channel management

One of the most notable Spring ’26 updates is the ability to manage AI commerce channels more centrally from within Shopify Admin.

Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts give merchants greater visibility over where their products appear across AI shopping surfaces. The Admin experience is designed to show which AI channels are active, how those channels are performing, and where there may be missed opportunities.

For eCommerce businesses, AI visibility is already another discovery channel to monitor alongside organic search, paid media, email, marketplaces and social. Shopify’s update suggests that merchants will increasingly need to think about “AI search performance” in the same way they already think about SEO or paid shopping performance.

The most useful part of this update is being able to understand how customers are finding products, which queries a store appears for, and where improvements can be made. Shopify has also positioned Sidekick as part of this feedback loop, with the ability to suggest product data improvements where products are appearing but not converting.

For merchants, this creates a useful action point: product information should now be reviewed not only for human shoppers and search engines, but for AI interpretation too.

Sidekick becomes more deeply embedded

Sidekick, Shopify’s AI assistant, has also received a significant Q2 push. Shopify is positioning Sidekick less as a standalone help tool and more as an embedded operational assistant across the business.

In Spring ’26, Sidekick gained stronger integrations with merchant data, Shopify Admin, mobile workflows and third-party apps. Shopify also announced Sidekick App Extensions, enabling partner apps to surface data and actions directly inside Sidekick conversations.

That means merchants may be able to ask more practical, commercially useful questions without leaving the Admin, such as which marketing campaigns are performing, which products are understocked, or what changes might improve a particular sales channel.

For smaller eCommerce teams, the appeal is clear. Many merchants do not lack data; they lack time to interpret it. If Sidekick can turn store, app, marketing and inventory information into timely recommendations, it could reduce the amount of manual reporting needed to make everyday decisions.

However, merchants should still treat AI recommendations as prompts for review, not automatic strategy. The quality of the output will depend on the quality of the underlying data, app integrations and business context.

Native B2B expands beyond Shopify Plus

One of the most commercially important Q2 updates came in April 2026, when Shopify announced that foundational B2B features would be extended to merchants on Basic, Grow and Advanced plans, not just Shopify Plus.

This is a major change for merchants that sell both direct-to-consumer and wholesale. Historically, many non-Plus merchants have relied on third-party apps, duplicate stores or manual workarounds to handle trade pricing, wholesale accounts and B2B terms.

With the Q2 update, Shopify is making core B2B functionality available to a much broader group of merchants. Features include company profiles, custom catalogues with tailored pricing, volume discounts, quantity rules, vaulted credit cards and payment terms.

For growing brands, this could remove a significant barrier to wholesale. A business that has started receiving trade enquiries can now test and manage B2B demand within the same Shopify environment it already uses for DTC sales.

There are still distinctions between plan levels. Shopify Plus remains the option for more complex B2B requirements, including unlimited catalogues and more advanced functionality. However, the direction is clear: Shopify wants B2B and DTC to sit within one operating system, rather than being managed as disconnected parts of the business.

For merchants, this creates an opportunity to review whether wholesale could now be handled more efficiently natively in Shopify, especially where existing B2B workflows depend on manual ordering, locked pages or third-party pricing tools.

Shopify Scripts reaches its final deadline

One of the most urgent Q2 changes is the end of Shopify Scripts.

Shopify confirmed that editing and publishing new Scripts would stop on 15 April 2026, with all Shopify Scripts ceasing to execute entirely on 30 June 2026. This is especially important for Shopify Plus merchants that still rely on Scripts for custom discounting, shipping logic or payment customisations.

Shopify Functions is the replacement path. Functions provides a more modern way to extend Shopify’s backend logic, covering areas such as discounts, shipping and payments.

If Scripts are still active and have not been replaced before the deadline, the underlying logic will stop working. That could affect promotions, delivery rules, wholesale pricing behaviours, payment methods or other checkout-related customisations, so if it affects you, or you think it might affect you, get in touch with us today.

You will need to urgently audit what each Script does, whether it is still required, and how it should be replaced. In some cases, a native Shopify feature or public app may now cover the requirement, and in others a custom Shopify Function may be needed.

Checkout, customer accounts and branding continue to evolve

Shopify also continued to push merchants and developers towards its newer checkout and customer account architecture.

In Q2, Shopify introduced a new Checkout and Accounts Configuration API for Shopify Plus, bringing branding customisations for checkout, customer accounts and sign-in into a more unified structure. This replaces older checkout branding APIs and is designed to make it easier to manage consistent brand presentation across multiple customer-facing surfaces.

Shopify has also been previewing visual and layout improvements for customer accounts, including more consistent single-column native pages and better visibility for order action extensions.

For merchants, the important point is that customer accounts are no longer a forgotten post-purchase area. They are becoming a more flexible, extensible part of the customer experience, particularly for stores that rely on repeat purchasing, subscriptions, order management, returns, loyalty or B2B account workflows.

This is another reason to review older account customisations. Legacy approaches that rely on older Liquid templates or outdated extension patterns may become increasingly restrictive as Shopify continues to modernise customer accounts.

Developer tooling receives a major update

Q2 also brought several important developer-focused changes.

Shopify CLI 4.0 introduced semantic versioning, automatic upgrades and the removal of several deprecated commands and flags. App deployment in CI/CD also became available for all apps through app automation tokens, improving security and making it easier to automate app releases through GitHub workflows and similar tools.

Shopify’s AI Toolkit also became more prominent during the quarter. It allows developers to connect AI tools to Shopify documentation, API schemas, validation and CLI workflows. Shopify later added support for using the AI Toolkit to help upgrade checkout and customer account UI extensions to newer API versions and Polaris web components.

For merchants, these developer updates may sound technical, but they affect the reliability and maintainability of custom Shopify work. Better tooling should make it easier for agencies and app developers to build, test, deploy and update Shopify functionality without relying on fragile manual processes.

In practical terms, merchants with custom apps, private integrations or complex checkout extensions should ask whether their development workflows are aligned with Shopify’s latest standards.

Shop, POS and retail improvements

The Spring ’26 Edition also included improvements across the Shop app and Shopify POS.

Shopify highlighted AI-powered Shop Search, improved use of Shop buyer profiles, better surfacing of retail locations in the Shop app, local inventory visibility for in-store pickup, and QR-code-enabled returns that can begin in Shop and finish in store.

POS v11 also introduced interface improvements intended to make complex cart building faster for retail staff, with the cart remaining visible while discounts, edits and customer lookups open in a side panel.

For omnichannel merchants, it’s worth noting that these changes continue Shopify’s move towards a more unified retail experience. Online browsing, Shop app discovery, in-store pickup, physical retail and returns are being treated less as separate journeys and more as connected parts of the same customer relationship.

The merchants most likely to benefit are those with both eCommerce and physical retail locations, or those looking to use local stock availability and in-store services as a conversion advantage.

Marketing updates: Shop Campaigns, AI sales support and Campaign Autopilot

Marketing was another major area of Q2 development.

Shopify announced that Shop Campaigns would expand to more channels, including ChatGPT, Pinterest and open-web advertising through Microsoft Monetize. The appeal of Shop Campaigns is that merchants can target customers at a set acquisition cost and pay when the customer converts.

Shopify also announced an AI sales associate for Shopify Inbox, designed to answer buyer questions, recommend products and support order enquiries using information already available in the Shopify Admin, such as catalogue, inventory and policies.

Campaign Autopilot was also introduced in early access. This is an AI-powered marketing feature designed to run campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, Shop and email, while optimising within merchant-defined guardrails. Shopify has indicated that more channels are coming.

These updates point towards a future where Shopify is not just the platform where orders are processed, but a more active system for customer acquisition, conversion and retention.

For merchants, the opportunity is efficiency. The caution is control. AI-led marketing tools still need clear guardrails, strong product data, good creative direction and sensible performance measurement.

Q3 2026 changes already announced

Although Shopify’s main Q2 announcements have already landed, several Q3 changes are already on the radar.

The most immediate is the 2026-07 API version, which introduces several developer-facing changes. These include new discount fields in the Storefront API’s cart types, a publicly accessible customer tax settings field in the Admin GraphQL API, payment method identifier requirements for certain remote customer payment method mutations, and access to line item weight through the public Admin API.

For merchants, these changes mostly matter where there are custom apps, headless storefronts, tax integrations, subscription flows, discount logic or fulfilment tools that depend on Shopify APIs. Developers should review the 2026-07 release notes before adopting the new API version, particularly where discount calculations or customer tax information are involved.

Another Q3 milestone is the continuing move away from older checkout and post-purchase customisation methods. Non-Plus merchants should be aware of the 26 August 2026 deadline connected with Thank You and Order Status page upgrades. Any store still relying on older app script tags or additional scripts in those areas should review its setup well ahead of time.

Shopify is also holding its DotDev developer event on 21-22 July 2026, which is likely to provide more detail on APIs, extensions and the developer roadmap. While that does not itself change merchant functionality, it may clarify the next wave of platform direction for agencies, app developers and technically complex merchants.

Do you need to do anything as a result of these changes?

The best way to approach Shopify’s Q2 2026 updates is to treat them as part of a wider shift in how Shopify expects commerce to work.

Products need to be structured well enough to appear across AI channels, and B2B should be considered as a native growth opportunity, not necessarily a separate system. Checkout and account customisations should be reviewed against Shopify’s modern extensibility framework, custom apps and integrations should be checked for API compatibility and marketing teams should already be thinking about AI-led discovery and performance, without losing sight of brand control and commercial judgement.

A sensible review should include:

• Auditing your product data for completeness, including titles, descriptions, variants, specifications, images and availability.
• Checking whether any Shopify Scripts remain in use and ensuring they are replaced before the deadline.
• Reviewing whether native B2B features could simplify wholesale operations.
• Assessing checkout, Thank You page, Order Status page and customer account customisations.
• Checking custom apps, integrations and headless storefronts against the 2026-07 API changes.
• Reviewing how AI channels, Shop, POS and Campaigns could fit into the wider acquisition and retention strategy.

Shopify’s Q2 2026 updates show a platform preparing for a new phase of eCommerce. The online store remains important, but it is no longer the only place where buying decisions happen. Discovery is spreading across AI assistants, conversational search, the Shop app, social channels, retail locations and other embedded experiences.

As always, this creates both opportunity and complexity. The Shopify stores that benefit most will be those with clean product data, modern checkout and account infrastructure, well-managed integrations and a clear understanding of where their customers are discovering products.

Our priority is to help you move from reactive updates to proactive platform management. Shopify is evolving quickly, and stores that keep pace with these changes will be better placed to sell wherever customers choose to shop next.

Need help reviewing your Shopify setup?

We work with eCommerce businesses to improve Shopify performance, streamline technical setups and make better use of the platform’s latest features. If you would like to understand how these updates affect your store, our team can help you identify the changes that matter most and build a practical roadmap for implementation, so get in touch.

As a marketplace, eCommerce has always moved quickly, but 2026 feels like a particularly important year for online retailers. The fundamentals still matter – clear navigation, strong product pages, fast loading speeds and a smooth checkout – but the definition of a good eCommerce experience is expanding.

Customers now expect online stores to be more helpful, more personalised and easier to use across every device. At the same time, AI-driven shopping tools are beginning to change how people discover products, compare options and make purchasing decisions.

So, what features should eCommerce websites prioritise this year? We have reviewed recent industry commentary from Shopify, Adobe, Google, Baymard and other eCommerce sources of expertise to identify the themes that keep appearing. The result is a practical view of what retailers should be thinking about now to support better customer experience, stronger conversion rates and future-ready growth.

Smarter search and product discovery

On-site search has always been important, but expectations are rising in-line with the premium experience offered by online retailers. Customers increasingly expect search to understand intent, not just match exact keywords. That means eCommerce websites need to support more flexible product discovery, including synonym recognition, typo tolerance, predictive search, filters, sorting options and relevant product recommendations.

The next stage is AI-assisted discovery. Shopify’s 2026 eCommerce trends report highlights AI as one of the major forces shaping online retail, particularly where it supports more individualised customer experiences.

Given the current race to embed AI in everything, it’s easy to dismiss this as background noise, but for retail, there is a genuine reason to consider the applications of AI. This doesn’t mean rushing to add a chatbot to every page, but with a bit of thought you will quickly realise the ways that AI can provide your customers with a better experience.

Our suggested starting point is making sure customers can find the right products quickly. That includes:

• A prominent search bar, especially on mobile
• Intelligent search results that handle natural language queries
• Strong category architecture
• Product recommendations that come across as genuinely relevant
• Filters that match how your customers shop
• Clear promotion for bestsellers, new arrivals and seasonal edits

AI can enhance these journeys, but if your fundamentals are based on poor product data, weak navigation or confusing category structures, you’re putting the cart ahead of the horse.

Product data that is ready for AI shopping

One of the most important eCommerce developments this year is the rise of agentic commerce – where AI tools help customers find, compare and potentially purchase products.

Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol is a good example of where things are heading. Google describes UCP as an open standard designed to help retailers turn AI interactions into instant sales, including direct buying through Google AI Mode and Gemini. Google has also said that UCP can allow shopping agents to access real-time product details such as pricing and inventory.

Because eCommerce websites may increasingly be discovered and interpreted by AI-powered shopping surfaces, not only by customers browsing directly through a homepage or category page, your website needs to be ready for them to understand and index your products.

Treat your product data as a commercial asset –  the more accurate and detailed it is, the more helpful it will be to both humans and machines. Essential considerations include:

• Accurate product titles and descriptions
• Complete product attributes, such as size, colour, material, fit, compatibility or dimensions
• Up-to-date pricing and stock availability
• Structured data and schema markup
• Clean product feeds for Google Merchant Centre and other channels
• Consistent naming conventions across products and variants
• Clear delivery, returns and availability information

If a human customer or AI shopping assistant can’t understand your products clearly, your site is immediately at a disadvantage.

Mobile-first user experience

Mobile optimisation stopped being a “nice to have” a few years ago, and for most eCommerce businesses, it is now the main shopping experience.

That means you need to think beyond whether a website technically works on mobile. A strong mobile eCommerce experience should be designed around how people browse, compare and buy on smaller screens.

Baymard’s 2026 product page UX benchmark found that mobile eCommerce sites still have significant room for improvement, with many product pages performing at only a mediocre level.

Practical mobile-first features include:

• Fast-loading pages
• Thumb-friendly navigation
• Sticky add-to-basket buttons where appropriate
• Prominent product imagery
• Clear product information above the fold
• Easy-to-use filters and sort options
• Mobile wallet payment options
• Forms that are simple to complete on a phone

A mobile-first site should not feel like a scaled-down desktop site. It should feel like an eCommerce experience designed for the way people actually shop today.

Better product pages

The product page remains one of the most important parts of any eCommerce website. It is where customers decide whether they trust the product, the brand and the purchase process.

Baymard’s product page research shows that even leading eCommerce sites still lose customers because of avoidable UX issues, incomplete product information or poor presentation.

Strong product pages should include:

• High-quality product photography
• Video or 360-degree imagery if possible
• Clear pricing and promotional information
• Accurate variant selection, such as size, colour or finish
• Product specifications and dimensions
• Fit, sizing or compatibility guidance
• Delivery and returns information close to the buying decision
• Stock availability
• Reviews and social proof
• Related products and cross-sells
• Clear calls to action

For fashion, interiors, jewellery, beauty, homeware and higher-consideration purchases, product content is especially important. Customers need enough confidence to buy without seeing the item in person.

5. A fast, low-friction checkout

Checkout optimisation remains one of the most reliable ways to improve eCommerce performance. Customers who reach the checkout have already shown strong buying intent, so avoidable friction at this stage is particularly costly. The smoother checkout is, the more likely your customers are to complete the process.

Baymard’s cart and checkout research is one of the most useful resources here, with a large benchmark database covering checkout usability, cart design and eCommerce UX guidelines.

Key checkout features include:

• Guest checkout
• Clear delivery costs before the final step
• Multiple payment options
• Digital wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal
• Address lookup
• Minimal form fields
• Clear error messages
• Persistent basket contents
• Trust signals close to payment
• Transparent returns and delivery messaging

A good checkout should feel trustworthy and predictable. Customers shouldn’t discover unexpected costs, delivery limitations or account requirements at the last possible moment, that information needs to have been clearly provided as soon as possible.

Personalisation with restraint

Personalisation is one of the most discussed eCommerce features this year, but it needs to be handled carefully. Customers like relevance, but they don’t want to feel like they’ve been watched as part of the process.

Adobe’s 2026 AI and Digital Trends research found that customers appreciate the convenience and personalisation AI can provide, but remain cautious about sensitive information and important decisions being handed over to AI systems.

Suggested eCommerce personalisation might include:

• Product recommendations based on browsing behaviour
• Recently viewed products
• Personalised offers for returning customers
• Loyalty rewards
• Relevant email or SMS flows
• Location-specific delivery information
• Content based on customer preferences

Poor personalisation, by contrast, can feel intrusive or irrelevant. The aim should be to make the shopping journey more helpful, not to show customers that every click has been tracked. They might already assume that, but they don’t want to see behind the curtain.

Trust signals throughout the journey

These days, trust is a conversion feature, and it’s one that’s both easy to implement and, in some ways, difficult to sustain. Customers are unlikely to complete a purchase if they have doubts about the product, the retailer, the payment process or what happens after checkout. Your main concern will be keeping that flow of reviews and other positive user-generated content coming.

Essential eCommerce trust features include:

• Customer reviews
• Clear returns information
• Visible contact details
• Delivery timescales
• Secure payment messaging
• Brand story and credibility indicators
• Product guarantees or warranties where relevant
• Authentic imagery and user-generated content
• Clear policies for privacy, returns and delivery

By their nature, you want your trust features to be front and centre on your site, not hidden away in the footer. It should appear at the points where customers are making decisions, especially on product pages, basket pages and checkout screens.

Flexible payment and delivery options

Customers want choice when it comes to payment options, particularly in an environment where flexible payment options can be integrated into your checkout. They often prefer to default to a particular delivery fulfilment partner, too, and this can be essential. If you only offer one option and a scandal breaks around them, customers will go elsewhere to avoid that broken trust. Express options are also recommended, and if fulfilled correctly, can be a strong source of positive reviews.

For eCommerce stores, customers expect to see:

• Card payments
• Digital wallets
• PayPal
• Buy now, pay later where appropriate
• Gift cards
• Express delivery
• Click and collect
• Clear international delivery options
• Easy returns

We recommend implementing as much transparency as you can. Payment and delivery options should be visible early enough for customers to make an informed decision, not revealed only after they have entered their details.

Richer visual and interactive product experiences

Products need more than static images and a short description to have the best chance of selling.

For limited-time promotions or product launches, a countdown timer widget can create urgency by showing customers exactly how long an offer remains available.

Retailers are increasingly investing in richer product content, particularly where customers need to understand scale, texture, fit, finish or compatibility.

Useful features can include:

• Product videos
• 360-degree imagery
• Augmented reality previews
• Size and fit tools
• Comparison tables
• Interactive guides
• Before-and-after imagery
• Configurators for custom products

These features should always serve a practical purpose, or the only thing they’ll do is waste your money. A video that shows how clothing could look on a customer, how a tool works or how a piece of furniture looks in a real room can be far more persuasive than another paragraph of copy.

Stronger post-purchase experience

The eCommerce journey doesn’t end when your customers get to the checkout. A good post-purchase experience can reduce support queries, increase customer satisfaction and encourage repeat purchases.

Important post-purchase features include:

• Clear order confirmation emails
• Delivery tracking
• Easy returns or exchanges
• Helpful customer service options
• Replenishment reminders where relevant
• Loyalty or referral incentives
• Product care guidance
• Review requests

This is also where eCommerce brands can build long-term customer relationships. A customer who feels informed after purchase is more likely to return than one who has to chase for basic delivery updates.

What should eCommerce businesses prioritise first?

Not every retailer needs to implement every feature immediately. The right priorities depend on the platform, product type, customer base and commercial goals, and we can help you understand what you need, and in what order.

For most eCommerce websites in 2026, the practical priority list looks like this:

1. Improve site speed and mobile usability
2. Make search and navigation easier
3. Strengthen product pages
4. Reduce checkout friction
5. Improve product data and structured feeds
6. Add trust signals where customers need them most
7. Introduce personalisation carefully
8. Prepare for AI-led shopping and product discovery

The most successful eCommerce websites don’t chase every trend, but they do understand and implement the features that can make a difference. They get the fundamentals right, then use newer technologies to make the customer journey genuinely easier.

The essential eCommerce features of 2026 are so far a mix of old and new. Fast websites, strong product pages and simple checkout journeys are still vital, but eCommerce is also moving towards smarter search, richer product data, AI-assisted discovery and more personalised customer experiences.

At Webselect, we help eCommerce businesses improve the performance of their websites through practical digital strategy, SEO, UX and conversion-focused development. If your eCommerce site needs to work harder this year, now is the right time to review the features that matter most, so get in touch.

When it comes to eCommerce, Amazon sets a standard which can be intimidating for any brand that isn’t a multi-national corporation to beat. Their website has built the playbook on nudge-based eCommerce web design, and it uses a vast selection of tactics to drive sales.

One of the most potent, and widely envied elsewhere, is providing you, me, and anyone else who shops on there with a personalised experience. Every purchase, item viewed, saved wishlist and shared product page will feed into a version of their site that’s unique to you.

That approach has been implemented across the web, from eCommerce stores all the way to corporate law firms that want to show clients insight that’s relevant to the work being done on their behalf.

So, if you aren’t already doing the same, how do you catch up?

Building an Amazon-style recommendation engine from scratch is, more than likely, not achievable. For most businesses, that’s an unrealistic, unnecessary and extremely expensive solution. A more sensible starting point is to choose an eCommerce platform that already gives you practical ways to make the customer journey more relevant.

There are, of course, lots of eCommerce solutions available. Generally speaking, the price reflects the level of complexity that you’ll be able to bring to personalisation, and if you’re an SME that can be prohibitive. That’s where Shopify becomes a compelling option, either if you’re not already using it, or you’re just not getting the most out of all it can offer.

Shopify doesn’t expect you to leap straight from a static online store to enterprise-level personalisation. Instead, it gives you a more accessible foundation, with tools for customer segmentation, product discovery, recommendations, localisation, automation and third-party integrations. In other words, it gives you the ability to stop treating every visitor exactly the same.

For any business currently using a platform with little or no personalisation functionality, that’s a significant step forward.

Personalisation doesn’t have to mean complexity

The word “personalisation” can sound intimidating. These days it’s a bit tainted by an association with artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, behavioural tracking and complex customer data platforms.

If you want those services they certainly exist, but they aren’t the only way to make an eCommerce website feel more relevant.

In practical terms, personalisation can be as simple as:

• showing different messages to new and returning customers
• recommending products that complement the item being viewed
• helping customers find products using the language they naturally search with
• showing the right currency, market or language to international shoppers
• identifying loyal customers and treating them differently
• sending more relevant post-purchase or win-back emails
• automating actions when customers behave in a certain way

That’s the level where you need to begin. Not with a fully bespoke personalisation engine, but with a platform that gives you enough flexibility to build more relevant journeys over time, without making it so complicated that no one in your team wants to take ownership of it.

A basic setup for an eCommerce platform lets you upload products, take payments and manage orders, but that doesn’t mean it’s helping you understand, segment or respond to your customers. Shopify will give you more of that infrastructure from the start.

Shopify helps you segment customers more effectively

One of the clearest ways Shopify supports personalisation is through customer segmentation.

Customer segments allow merchants to group customers based on shared characteristics. Shopify describes these as dynamic, rule-based customer lists, with customers automatically added or removed depending on whether they meet the criteria of the segment.

That’s helpful to you because you won’t want every customer to be treated the same way.

A first-time buyer may need reassurance, but a loyal customer may respond better to early access or exclusive rewards. A lapsed customer might return if you offer the right incentive. A customer who regularly buys from a specific category is likely to be interested in related products, not a generic campaign sent to the entire database.

With Shopify, merchants can create customer segments around factors such as purchase behaviour, location, order history, customer value and engagement. Shopify also provides default segments and templates that can be adapted, giving retailers a useful starting point rather than forcing them to build every customer group manually.

For businesses moving from a platform with no meaningful customer segmentation, this can transform the way you think about marketing. Your customer database stops being one flat list and becomes a more useful commercial asset.

Instead of asking, “What email should we send everyone this week?”, the question becomes, “Which customers are we speaking to, and what is most relevant to them?”

That is a much healthier way to approach eCommerce growth.

Shopify makes product discovery more relevant

Personalisation is not only about who the customer is. It is also about what they are trying to do in the moment.

A customer browsing a product page is giving you a signal. They are showing interest in a particular item, range, category, problem or price point. A strong eCommerce platform should help you respond to that signal.

Shopify’s Search & Discovery app allows merchants to customise search, filters and product recommendations. Some Shopify themes include recommended product sections on product pages, and these can display complementary and related products that are managed through the Search & Discovery app.

That opens up valuable merchandising opportunities for you:

• A skincare brand can recommend the cleanser or SPF that pairs with a serum
• A furniture retailer can show matching pieces from the same collection
• A food brand can suggest refills, bundles or complementary flavours
• A technology retailer can recommend cables, accessories, warranties or compatible products

This doesn’t need to be overcomplicated to be commercially useful. Often, the most effective personalisation is simply helping the customer take the next logical step.

No product page should be a dead end. Even if you’re not going to sell that product, you can guide the customer towards other products that make sense in context, increasing the likelihood of a sale while making the journey feel more helpful.                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Poor search is one of the most common weaknesses of basic eCommerce platforms. Customers rarely search in the exact language you’ll use as a retailer. Where one person searches for “sofa”, another searches for “couch”. One customer might know the technical product name, another only knows the problem they are trying to solve.

If your website can’t interpret those differences, the customer might assume you don’t sell what they need, even when the product is sitting in your catalogue.

Shopify’s Search & Discovery app gives you more control over storefront search and product discovery, including search customisation, filters, product recommendations and synonyms. The app can also  be used to modify online store search and predictive search, including featuring specific products and improving results through synonyms and semantic understanding.

That’s going to help close the gap between the way your business describes its products, and the way customers actually look for them.

For example, a store might create synonym groups so that different search terms point customers towards the same relevant products. It might also use filters to help shoppers narrow a large catalogue by size, colour, availability, product type or other attributes.

This isn’t your classic “Welcome back, Colin” personalisation. It’s personalisation in a more practical sense, because your website becomes better at responding to customer intent.

For retailers with larger catalogues, that can make a significant difference. The customer experience feels smoother, product discovery becomes easier and fewer shoppers are going to be left with irrelevant or empty results.

Shopify supports market and location-based personalisation

Location is another important part of eCommerce personalisation.

A shopper’s country or region can affect the currency they expect to see, the language they prefer to read, the delivery information they need and the level of confidence they feel before buying. A generic experience can quickly create friction, especially for international customers. If you’re selling internationally and you’re not personalising for location, you’re almost certainly missing out on a percentage of sales.

Shopify provides international sales and localisation tools that help you adapt the shopping experience for different markets. Its localisation and translation guidance notes that customers often prefer to view content in their native language, and that translating store content can help international customers better understand marketing, product details, shipping and return policies.

This is especially important for brands selling across multiple countries. A customer in France, Germany or the United States shouldn’t have to work too hard to understand pricing, shipping, returns or product information. If they do, their confidence and your sales will drop.

Shopify gives you a way to make the store feel more local and relevant without needing to operate an entirely separate website for every market. That might include translated content, market-specific settings, local currencies or clearer regional shopping experiences. If you’re currently using a platform that offers the same static experience to every visitor, this can be a major upgrade. International personalisation is not just a nice-to-have, it can directly affect trust and conversion.

Shopify Flow brings personalisation into operations

Personalisation isn’t limited to what appears on the front end of the website, it also depends on what happens behind the scenes, which is where Shopify Flow can be useful. Shopify Flow is designed to automate business processes using triggers, conditions and actions. In simple terms, that means a store can be set up to respond automatically when something specific happens.

For example:

• when a customer joins a segment
• when an order is created
• when a customer abandons checkout
• when a product variant goes out of stock
• when a return is requested
• when a customer subscribes to email marketing

Shopify’s own list of Flow triggers includes customer, order, fulfilment, product, return, subscription and inventory-related events, among many others.

This creates opportunities to build more responsive customer journeys:

• A high-value customer could be tagged automatically.
• A member of the team could be alerted when a VIP places an order.
• A customer who joins a particular segment could trigger a follow-up workflow.
• A post-purchase sequence could be connected to specific behaviours or product types.

For businesses that have been managing these processes manually, or not doing them at all, this is a real step towards personalisation at scale. The customer won’t ever see Shopify Flow, but they’ll feel more like engaging when communication is more timely, relevant and consistent.

Shopify gives you room to grow

One of Shopify’s biggest strengths is that it doesn’t force every merchant into the same rigid model.

The platform gives you a strong starting point, but the app ecosystem allows you to extend personalisation further when you’re ready. That might mean adding a specialist email platform, a loyalty programme, an advanced search tool, a quiz or product finder, a subscription app, a reviews platform or a more sophisticated recommendation engine.

This flexibility is important, because as a small or mid-sized retailer you’re not necessarily going to need an enterprise digital experience platform. You might just need better segmentation, better search, better recommendations and better marketing automation. Shopify is going to provide that foundation, while still leaving room to add more advanced tools as the business grows.

That makes it a practical choice for brands that want to improve the customer experience without overcomplicating the technology stack.

It also means personalisation can be introduced gradually, as you don’t have to do everything at once. Start with customer segments, improve product recommendations, refine search, introduce localisation, then build more advanced marketing and retention journeys over time. That staged approach is far more realistic than trying to launch a fully personalised store in one large project.

Shopify vs a basic eCommerce platform

The difference becomes clearer when you compare Shopify with a platform that has little or no personalisation functionality.

This is where Shopify becomes especially appealing. It doesn’t need you to build everything from scratch, but it also doesn’t leave you trapped with a generic storefront.

For businesses that have outgrown a basic eCommerce setup, Shopify offers a more modern and flexible way to start making the customer journey feel relevant.

The commercial case for personalisation

Personalisation isn’t just a website design trend, as it has a direct relationship with commercial performance.

Whether you already hold a pool of customer data you’re not using, or can start to build one with the right website backing you up, that data will give crucial insight into improving your business. Customers want to find the products they’re looking for as quickly possible, to see relevant products being recommended and if they’re on your mailing list, to be contacted about the products and services they’re actually interested in. When international shoppers see content in a language and format they understand, they are more likely to trust the store.

The underlying principle is simple: relevance reduces friction.

A generic website asks the customer to do more of the work. A personalised website does more of the work for them. It guides, recommends, remembers, adapts and responds.

That doesn’t mean you need to be Amazon. Their model is built around scale, volume and vast behavioural data. You probably just need something more focused: personalisation that supports your products, customers and growth strategy.

Shopify is well suited to that middle ground. It gives you enough personalisation capability to improve the customer experience now, while keeping the platform manageable for internal teams.

Where Shopify is especially useful

Shopify’s personalisation features are particularly valuable for retailers that want to:

• move away from sending every customer the same marketing
• build stronger repeat purchase journeys
• recommend relevant products and accessories
• improve search and product discovery
• sell more effectively across different markets
• automate customer and order-based workflows
• connect their store with specialist marketing and retention tools
• grow without committing to a heavily bespoke platform

For many businesses, that’s exactly what is needed to progress.

You don’t need the most complex personalisation platform on the market, but a commercially sensible eCommerce platform that helps you make better use of customer data, product data and behavioural signals will make a real difference.

That is the role Shopify can play.

So, does your eCommerce website need personalisation in 2026?

The answer is almost certainly yes.

Customers are used to online experiences that feel relevant, expecting websites to help them find what they need, remember previous interactions, show useful recommendations and adapt to their location or intent. When a store fails to do that, the experience can feel dated, static and harder to use.

The good news is that personalisation no longer has to be reserved for global retailers with enormous technology budgets.

Shopify gives your growing business a practical way to start. Through customer segments, product recommendations, improved search, localisation, automation and a broad app ecosystem, it can help you move beyond the one-size-fits-all online store.

We can help

Whether you’re a retailer who wants to switch to Shopify, or you’re already using it but not getting the best out of it, we can help. Contact us today.

Updates to Google algorithms are sometimes a bit like buses. Two can come along at once, just like the old saying goes, but they are also lethal if they run you over.

Some websites are finding that both of those things are true after Google updated both their Spam Algorithm and their Core Algorithm in March this year (2026).

As with the double hit of those two algorithms updating back in December 2024, some of the effects on established, trustworthy websites have been seismic, with Search Engine Land reporting 79.5% of top-three URLs changing position, 90.7% of top-10 URLs shifting, and 24.1% of top-10 pages falling out of the top 100.

How do Google algorithm updates work?

You’re probably familiar with the saying “moving the goalposts”, which for those who don’t like simile means making it impossible to score, because the thing you were aiming at suddenly isn’t there anymore.

That’s the best way to describe how it works, except instead of a ball, you’ve got content that’s been ranking for commercially-viable keywords, and instead of a goal you’ve got Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (or SERPs, for short).

What did the March 2026 Google algorithm update do?

The clearest trend was a move away from generic middle-layer content and towards websites that Google appears to see as more direct, authoritative or useful destinations.

How did the March Google update affect eCommerce stores?

In eCommerce, some retailers lost visibility, particularly those ranking for broad product or category searches where many competitors offered similar pages. At the same time, stronger brands, manufacturers, specialist retailers and clear product destinations often gained.

Previous updates have already indicated that we’re now in a place where big brands are more likely to come out on top, both for search results and in AI citations, and this one has done nothing to indicate anything else.

To an extent, the shifts suggest that Google was asking, “Is this the best place for the user to complete their task?”, which is very much in line with their core mission.

For example, a generic category page with standard product listings and manufacturer copy may now struggle if Google can show a brand, marketplace, specialist retailer or better-structured buying guide instead. The same applies to content-led ecommerce pages. A “best X” article that simply rounds up products without first-hand expertise, original insight or genuine usefulness is increasingly vulnerable.

That’s going to be punishing for retailers who’ve been focused on a quick-turnaround blog strategy that’s not drawing on the internal expertise that makes employee input so valuable. Adding something “new” is the key, and experience will create that naturally. It’s then up to you, or your marketers, to draw that out.

eCommerce winners and losers: not all retailers were treated equally

The most useful ecommerce lesson from the March updates is that retailers were split by value, not category.

Brand-led and specialist eCommerce sites were more resilient, which is neither surprising nor a lot of help for smaller businesses. Retailers with clear authority, strong product relevance, distinctive range depth or direct brand demand were better placed than broader retailers competing on interchangeable search terms.

The more exposed sites tended to share the same weaknesses:

• Thin category pages with little unique content or merchandising logic
• Product pages using standard supplier descriptions
• Large numbers of near-identical pages targeting similar terms
• Generic buying guides that did not add much beyond what competitors already offered
• Heavy reliance on non-branded organic traffic
• Weak evidence of real expertise behind the content

The practical takeaway that your eCommerce SEO can’t rely on theoretically technically correct, but actually commercially generic, pages.

A category page should help your customer choose between the items that you sell, but also needs to make a case as to why you’re the best choice to buy it from. Identify and  answer the questions that matter before purchase, and if you’re creating and using buying guides, make sure they show evidence of expertise, not just a summary of what’s already obvious from the product feed.

How did the March Google algorithm update affect B2B websites?

Just as not every window is a door, not every business website is eCommerce. Outside eCom, similar movements appeared in sectors where Google has to make trust-based decisions.

In jobs, education, finance, real estate and travel, visibility often shifted away from aggregators, directories or broad comparison sites, and towards official providers, institutions, brands or more direct sources.

That is an important point for B2B websites, who have often built their SEO strategies around informational content: explainers, guides, comparison pages, FAQs and industry commentary. That approach still has value, but it’s going to take some work to shore up what’s already been produced with that same element of “only we can tell you this”, which is when the content demonstrates genuine expertise and clear usefulness.

Thanks to AI, a generic “What is X?” blog post is easier than ever to produce, which also makes it easier than ever for Google to ignore. The future of B2B SEO is going to be won by publishing content that proves experience, demonstrates authority and gives the reader something they cannot get from ten other search results.

The legal sector has taken a big hit

The legal sector is a particularly useful example because it combines local SEO, high-value enquiries and strong trust requirements.

After the March updates, reports from the legal sector suggested that many law firm websites lost visibility, especially in highly competitive areas such as personal injury and criminal defence. These are areas where search results are saturated with pages targeting very similar terms, a lot of which are geographic: “car accident lawyer in [city]”, “criminal defence solicitor in [location]”, “personal injury lawyer near me”, and so on.

The problem is not exactly the keyword targeting – many of these sites have done very well for years, and know what they’re doing when it comes to high-quality content that supports their keyword growth. The problem is that too many of these pages say almost the same thing, simply because there isn’t a lot you can say if you don’t want to put your neck out, which isn’t desirable for a sector that’s understandably ruled by risk.

It’s probably the end of a favourite tactic for law firms who are dependent on local business. Historically, a set of templated location pages has been the go-to for building that local profile within Google. A page that swaps one town or city name for another but otherwise says the same thing as ten other pages in your site structure might have been viable before, but it does little to prove why your firm is the right choice so it’s time to rethink that tactic.

What’s also been hit hard is legal commentary. It’s common for law firms to publish insight into changes in law, but the preference for that is now firmly with governmental websites and sources of insight that don’t have a commercial interest in turning views into sources of new work.

For their service pages, legal SEO now needs stronger evidence of real-world expertise. That might include:

• Named solicitor involvement
• Clear author credentials (also great for AI citation, so worth investing in)
• Properly developed team profiles
• Real case experience, where compliant
• Practice-specific insight
• Local context that is genuinely useful
• Clear regulatory and professional trust signals (so more reason to enter into Directories)
• Content that reflects how clients actually ask questions

For the legal commentary piece, it’s a bleaker picture at present. There’s no way to immediately override a preference within Google, so it will be a case of looking at those few sites who haven’t been affected in order to unpick what they’re doing that nobody else is.

Ongoing keyword losses may not be temporary

One of the more important observations from the March updates is that ranking losses have continued long, long after the official rollout dates ended.

That isn’t unusual, because core updates often create an initial period of volatility, followed by a new baseline where some sites recover, some continue to move, and others settle into a lower position. There will always be equal parts winners and losers, because that’s the nature of the game.

What’s unusual this time is that we’re over a month out from the update and some sites have continued to lose keywords ever since. That makes it really hard to strategise, because you need to know what you’ve lost before you can plan how to take it back.

For eCommerce websites, the concern may be category and product visibility. For law firms and other professional-service businesses, it may be local service pages or informational guides that previously supported enquiries. The likelihood for the latter is that this needs to be treated as a permanent shift, instead of a blip that can be fixed with simple changes to page content. Google wants to surface content from government and regulatory sites above your insight, so you need to know where to direct your recovery in order to make sure that effort isn’t wasted.

What can you do to recover lost keywords?

The wrong response to a core update is to go at it without a plan, or a clear idea of the field you’re playing on.

Just adding more content won’t offer a fix if the cause is an underlying quality, trust or differentiation issue. In many cases, it may make the problem worse, especially if the new content is generic, AI-assisted and only loosely connected to what Google thinks your users need.

Firstly, you need to know if you’ve been affected. With the breadth of this update the likelihood is that you have, but if you don’t know how to find out then we can help you.

Once you have an accurate picture, it’s time to put a recovery plan into action. We always start with the pages that previously drove rankings, revenue or enquiries, then ask whether they still deserve to be the best result for the query when compared to the current front-runners.

For eCommerce sites, we review whether key product and category pages offer enough value beyond the product feed. Do they help customers choose? Do they include useful filters, original descriptions, comparison detail, delivery information, sizing guidance, reviews or expert commentary?

For B2B websites, it means reviewing whether service pages explain the offer clearly, show evidence of expertise and differentiate the business from competitors.

For law firms particularly, it means moving beyond generic practice-area copy and showing real professional authority through people, credentials, process, experience and trust signals.

Across every sector, the questions are similar:

• Is this page genuinely useful?
• Does it show first-hand expertise?
• Does it answer the user’s real question?
• Is it meaningfully different from competing pages?
• Does it make clear why this business is credible?
• Is it the best destination, or just another option?

The larger lesson from March 2026

Google’s March 2026 updates are potentially devastating, but they’re also business as usual. We’re all beholden to their whims, and what they want today is very different to what they wanted ten years ago.

As AI-generated and templated content becomes easier to produce, Google has more reason to reward pages that demonstrate real value. That does not mean every website needs to become a publisher, and it does not mean SEO is becoming less important. If anything, it has to cope with some even heavier lifting now, as it has to bring in both humans and the bots that are putting together AI answers to queries.

Many of us have already been pushing towards it for years, but SEO has to become more closely connected to brand, expertise, user experience and commercial usefulness. That can be tricky if your stakeholders are expecting it to work via a few magic words

The websites most likely to thrive are those that can prove they are worth choosing, by becoming a better buying destination, showing genuine expertise and building trust into the core structure, content and experience of the website.

Help with your search engine optimisation visibility and strategy

If you’re reading this and wondering if you’ve been affected by the changes, get in touch. We’ll be happy to send you a free report that shows exactly what your current situation is, and if it’s bad news, we can help you to recover. The important thing is that help is available, if you need it.

When a Shopify store underperforms, the first instinct is often to add something, which could be a new app, a redesigned homepage or a different product page layout. Sometimes those changes help, but more often, they introduce more complexity without addressing the real problem.

In practice, the most effective improvements usually come from understanding what already exists – and why it isn’t working as well as it could.

That is what a User Experience (UX) and Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) audit provides. Done properly, it replaces opinion with evidence, isolates genuine friction, and creates a clear prioritised path to improvement. It’s not about taste or trends, it’s about behaviour, intent, and decision-making.

This article explains what a Shopify UX and CRO audit really is, how a specialist Shopify agency like ours approaches them, and why they are often the fastest way to unlock meaningful conversion gains without rebuilding your entire site.

What a Shopify UX and CRO audit will cover

A UX audit isn’t a design critique, and needs to be isolated from discussion about your brand. Yes, it’s about visual structure, but not in the same way that a moodboard exercise, a rebrand discussion, or a debate about whether a site looks “modern enough” are. Visual clarity matters, but your site’s aesthetics are unlikely to be the root cause of poor performance.

A Shopify UX audit is an evaluation of how effectively the store supports real customer journeys. That includes:

• How easily customers understand what the business sells
• How quickly they can find relevant products
• Whether key questions are answered at the right moment
• How the site behaves on mobile, not just desktop
• How confident customers feel about delivery, returns, and trust
• Whether the checkout experience reinforces or undermines confidence

The focus is on streamlining the way that people use the site, to encourage more of the behaviour you want (which could be add to basket and checkout, email newsletter signups, or account generation) by ensuring all the correct signals are in place to convey the right signals. The goal is not to make the site prettier, but to make it easier to buy from.

Why Shopify UX problems are often easy to miss

One reason UX audits are so valuable is that many Shopify UX issues are not dramatic. The site doesn’t look broken, and nothing obviously “fails”.

Instead, friction accumulates without being obvious:

• A filter that works, but feels slow.
•  A product page that answers questions, but in the wrong order.
•  A navigation structure that makes sense internally, but not to new users.
•  A mobile layout that is technically fine, but requires too much scrolling.

Each issue on its own seems minor. Together, they erode confidence and suppress conversion.

Because store owners and internal teams are so familiar with their own products, these problems are especially hard to spot without external review. What feels obvious to the business is often unclear to first-time visitors, which is where a third party perspective becomes essential. 

How specialist agencies approach Shopify UX audits

Strong Shopify UX audits follow a structured approach. They are not improvised, and they do not start with design tools.

1. Understanding intent before interface

The first step is understanding who the store is really for and what success looks like for those users.

That means identifying primary customer types, their motivations, and the context in which they are shopping. Are they browsing casually or buying with urgency? Are they researching or replenishing? Are they price-sensitive or quality-driven?

Crucially, it also means understanding what customers need to know before they commit. In eCommerce, hesitation is usually caused by missing or poorly timed information, not lack of desire.

Without this context, it’s impossible to judge whether a UX decision is working or not.

2. Reviewing the store as customers actually use it

UX audits are scenario-driven. Rather than clicking around randomly, we simulate real journeys:

• Landing on the site for the first time
• Browsing a category with no brand familiarity
• Searching for a specific product
• Comparing variants or similar items
• Shopping on a small mobile device
• Checking delivery and returns before purchase
• Completing checkout with and without friction

We deliberately test edge cases. Out-of-stock products. Long product lists. Complex variants. International users. Slow connections.

This is where most UX issues surface – not in ideal demos, but in realistic use.

3. Mobile-first, because that’s where most friction lives

Almost every Shopify UX audit reveals more issues on mobile than desktop.

That’s not because mobile design is neglected, but because mobile magnifies problems. Small screens expose poor hierarchy because there’s so little room for error, and a heavy pages on desktop can feel even slower when delivered by 4G internet. There are also interaction issues with things like hidden content that stays hidden, and wonky touch targets that reveal gaps in usability.

A specialist Shopify UX audit treats mobile as the primary experience, not a secondary adaptation, because that’s the truth of the modern web experience. We also find that if something feels awkward on mobile, it usually affects conversion more than desktop issues because as a species, we’re now so used to an ultra-slick experience when using our phones.

4. Evaluating product discovery, not just product pages

A common mistake is focusing UX effort almost entirely on product pages.

In reality, product discovery is often where stores lose customers. Navigation structure, category logic, filtering, sorting, and search behaviour all shape whether users reach the “right” product with confidence.

UX audits look closely at:

• Whether categories reflect how customers think, not how products are organised internally
• Whether filters are meaningful, usable, and fast
• Whether sorting options align with user intent
• Whether search results feel helpful or overwhelming
  

Improving discovery often delivers bigger gains than endlessly refining product page layouts.

5. Information timing: when answers appear matters as much as what they say

Most Shopify stores have the information customers need somewhere on the site. The problem is usually timing.

Delivery costs hidden until checkout.
Returns policies buried in the footer.
Sizing guidance separated from variant selection.
Trust signals appearing too late to reassure.

A UX audit looks at whether information appears at the moment it is needed, not just whether it exists. It’s a real insight into the thinking that’s behind conversion rate optimisation, and the difference between CRO and a simple website redesign.

Proper sequencing is one of the strongest drivers of conversion, and one of the most overlooked, so it’s essential to include as part of your CRO efforts.

The role of data (and its limits)

Analytics are essential, but they are not sufficient on their own.

Data tells you where problems occur, whether they are high exit rates, low add-to-cart rates or drop-offs at checkout steps. What it doesn’t tell you is why.

UX audits combine quantitative signals with qualitative judgement. We use data to guide focus, but we rely on experience and behavioural analysis to explain the causes.

This is where specialist agencies add value. Recognising patterns across many Shopify stores allows teams to identify issues faster and with greater confidence.

Accessibility and clarity as conversion drivers

Accessibility is often framed as compliance. In practice, accessible UX is usually better UX.

Clear headings, readable text, predictable interactions, good contrast, and sensible focus states all improve comprehension and reduce cognitive load. That benefits every user, not just those using assistive technologies.

UX audits include accessibility not as a tick-box exercise, but as a lens for clarity and robustness.

Turning audit findings into action 

The most important part of a UX audit is not the diagnosis, but the prioritisation.

A good audit does not produce a long, undifferentiated list of issues. It groups findings by:

• Impact on conversion or confidence
• Effort required to fix
• Risk of unintended side effects
  

This allows teams to act sensibly. Some changes are immediate and low-risk while others belong in a planned roadmap or are simply noted for future consideration.

The goal is momentum, not perfection.

Common outcomes of effective Shopify UX audits

Well-run UX audits often lead to:

• Clearer navigation and category structures
• Improved mobile usability
• Better sequencing of key information
• Reduced reliance on unnecessary apps
• Higher engagement on product and collection pages
• More confident progression to checkout
  

Crucially, these improvements often come without redesigning the entire site. That makes UX audits one of the highest-ROI interventions available to Shopify stores.

When a UX audit is the right next step

A Shopify UX audit is particularly valuable when:

• Conversion has plateaued despite traffic growth
• Performance improvements haven’t translated into sales
• Redesigns have failed to deliver expected gains
• The store has grown organically without clear structure
• Internal opinions about “what’s wrong” conflict
  

In these situations, an audit replaces guesswork with clarity.

Why invest in a UX and CRO audit?

Shopify UX audits are not about aesthetics, trends, or personal preference. They are about understanding how real customers behave, where friction accumulates, and which changes will actually move the needle.

For stores that feel “fine” but underperform, a UX audit is often the fastest path to meaningful improvement. It creates focus, reduces wasted effort, and provides a shared understanding of what matters most.

Handled properly, it allows businesses to improve conversion steadily and confidently – without constantly rebuilding what they already have.

A Shopify store is never truly “finished.” The moment your site launches is the point at which your assumptions meet reality, but from that second onward, real customer data begins to flow, and how a business responds to that data determines whether the store scales up, or plateaus.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) on Shopify isn’t about “growth hacks” or countdown timers. It is a disciplined process that reduces friction, enhances clarity, and aligns your store’s interface with the way your customers think.

Why CRO is a Process, Not a Project

One of the most expensive mistakes a brand can make is treating CRO as a “periodic redesign.” Total overhauls are disruptive, reset your data baseline, and often “fix” things that weren’t broken while introducing new, untested friction.

Effective Shopify optimization happens through small, data-validated changes, where we see something as simple as clarifying a shipping policy or moving a CTA compound over time.

That’s why businesses invest in CRO: If you can improve your conversion rate from 2% to 3%, you haven’t just gained 1%. You’ve increased your revenue by 50% without spending an extra penny on acquisition (CAC).

The Core Pillars: Where the “Big Wins” Live

Most Shopify stores aren’t being held back by a lack of features, but by poor information sequencing. Customers don’t leave because they hate your product; they leave because they have an unanswered question, or because the presentation has frustrated them. This is where our experience as a Shopify agency really comes in, as we know what’s working elsewhere, and what isn’t. 

1. The “Mobile-First” Reality

Shopify traffic is often 70-80% mobile. If your standard experience when interacting with the site happens on a 27-inch iMac, it’s easy to forget that you’re not looking at the same store as your customers. A couple of common issues are:

• Lack of a sticky “Add to Cart” button: Ensure the primary action is always within thumb-reach.
• Poorly Defined Visual Hierarchy: On mobile, vertical space is precious. Customers need to understand the value your products offer to them more than they need huge images to scroll past.

2. Product Page (PDP) Hierarchy

The PDP is your salesperson. It needs to answer three questions in under five seconds:

• What is this?
• Why is it better than the alternative?
• Is it for me?

There are lots of indicators which can help to address these concerns, and largely it will be a case-by-case to identify them. As a examples, some of the optimisations we’ve carried out for our clients have included moving “Social Proof” (reviews) and “Risk Reversal” (returns/shipping) closer to the Buy button. As a general rule, don’t make users hunt for the “Shipping & Returns” tab.

3. Reducing “Cognitive Load” in Navigation

Too many Shopify stores overwhelm users with massive “mega-menus.”

• The Rule of 7: The human brain struggles to process more than seven items in a list.
• Search Optimization: Ensure your search bar is prominent. Users who search convert at 2–3x the rate of those who browse.

The Shopify Optimization Toolkit

A specialist agency doesn’t guess; they observe. We combine quantitative data with qualitative insights to find the “Why” behind the “What.”

Stability First: Testing Without Breaking the Engine

Your Shopify store is a revenue engine, not a laboratory. Optimization should never compromise site stability or the integrity of your Liquid code.

• A/B Testing with Intent: We use tools like VWO or Convert to test hypotheses on subsets of traffic before committing them to the main theme.
• App Audits: Every Shopify app added for “CRO” (like upsell pop-ups) adds a JavaScript tax. We prioritize clean, native theme enhancements over bloated third-party apps to keep Site Speed high.

The Synergy of UX, Performance, and Trust

You cannot optimize conversion in a vacuum. A high-converting store is built on a “Triangle of Trust”:

1. UX (User Experience): Is it easy to navigate?
2. Performance: Does it load fast enough to keep their attention? (Every 100ms delay can drop conversion by 7%).
3. Trust: Does the site look professional, secure, and transparent?

Is your store leaking revenue?

Optimization is a journey of 1% wins that lead to 100% growth. If you’re ready to move beyond “best guesses” and start making data-driven decisions, we can help.

1. Homepage: The “Five-Second” Test

The homepage isn’t for selling; it’s for directing. If a user doesn’t know what you do and where to go within five seconds, they’re gone.

• Clear Value Proposition: Does the headline state exactly what you sell and who it’s for? (e.g., “Organic Skincare for Sensitive Skin” vs. “Welcome to Our World”).
• High-Contrast CTA: Is the primary “Shop Now” button clearly visible and distinguishable from the background?
• The “Thumb Zone” Check: On mobile, can the user reach your main navigation or search bar without stretching their hand?
• Zero Clutter: Have you removed auto-playing sliders? (Data shows they rarely convert and mostly just slow down the site).

2. Collection Pages: Helping Them Choose

A confused customer never buys. Your collection pages should act as a concierge.

• Smart Filtering: Can users filter by the attributes they actually care about (size, color, price, availability) rather than just “Date: New to Old”?
• Quick Add (Mobile): For low-consideration items (like socks or candles), is there a “Quick Add” button to bypass the PDP?
• Image Consistency: Do all product images have a uniform aspect ratio and background? Messy grids look untrustworthy.
• Secondary Hover Images: On desktop, does hovering over a product show a lifestyle shot or a different angle?

3. Product Pages (PDP): The Closer

This is where the transaction happens. You need to provide enough “fuel” (information) to overcome the “friction” (doubt).

• Information Hierarchy: Are the price, reviews, and “Add to Cart” button all visible without scrolling on mobile?
• Risk Reversal: Is “Free Shipping,” “Easy Returns,” or “Money-back Guarantee” written right below the CTA?
• Specific Social Proof: Instead of just a star rating, are there “Photo Reviews” or “Verified Buyer” badges visible?
• Dynamic Sizing/Fit Guides: If you sell apparel, is the size guide a link that stays on the page, rather than a PDF that takes them away from the store?
• Urgency without the “Ick”: Avoid fake countdown timers. Instead, use real data like “Only 3 left in stock” or “Order in the next 2 hours for Tuesday delivery.”

4. Cart & Checkout: The Final Mile

Any distraction here is a potential lost sale.

• The “No Surprises” Rule: Are shipping costs and taxes calculated early, or do they only appear at the very last step? Unexpected costs are the #1 reason for cart abandonment.
• Guest Checkout: Do you allow users to buy without creating an account? (Mandatory accounts are a massive conversion killer).
• Payment Icons: Are trusted logos (Visa, ShopPay, PayPal, Klarna) visible near the checkout button?
• Minimalist Header/Footer: Have you removed the main navigation from the checkout page to keep the user focused on the finish line?

Priority Matrix for Implementation

If you can’t fix everything today, use this table to prioritize:

Expert tip: Don’t try to fix all of these at once. If you change ten things and your conversion rate goes up (or down), you won’t know which change caused it. Pick two “High Impact” items, test them for 14 days, and measure the results.

Shopify Plus is often perceived as “Shopify for big brands,” but in a modern tech stack, that’s not exactly the right way to interpret it. In reality, Plus isn’t a status symbol; it is a functional unlock for businesses where standard Shopify limitations have begun to create “friction costs” – the invisible expenses of manual workarounds and lost conversion opportunities.

For the right merchant, Shopify Plus is a catalyst for scale, and for others, it’s just an unnecessary overhead. Here is the definitive breakdown of how to decide if you need an upgrade to Shopify Plus in 2026.

Visit our Ultimate Guide to Shopify Website Development for more Shopify agency insight into development, setup and usage.

The Technical Unlocks: Beyond the Basics

While the core “engine” remains consistent across plans, Plus removes the “governors” that limit high-growth enterprises.

Checkout Extensibility & Shopify Functions

On standard plans, the checkout is a “black box”, so the options to customise it are either limited, or nonexistent. On Plus, you gain access to Checkout Extensibility. This allows an agency to build bespoke logic directly into the checkout flow using Shopify Functions.

• The Impact: You can create custom discount logic (e.g., “Buy X, Get Y” that respects complex B2B rules), custom shipping options based on real-time data, or bespoke validation rules that prevent shipping to specific postcodes for certain products.

Up to 10 Alternate Stores

Plus allows you to operate up to 10 stores under one licensing fee.

• Our agency perspective: This is vital for internationalisation, which also makes it vital for growth. Rather than a messy “one-store-fits-all” approach, you can have dedicated, localised storefronts for the UK, US, and EU, each with unique inventories and localized SEO strategies – all managed under one organizational umbrella.

Advanced API Limits

Standard Shopify plans have strict “rate limits” on data flow. Plus doubles these limits.

• Our agency perspective: If you have a complex ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or a high-frequency CRM, standard Shopify might “throttle” your data syncs. Plus ensures your stock levels and order data stay accurate in real-time, even during peak traffic like Black Friday.

Comparison: Shopify Advanced vs. Shopify Plus (2026)

*Pricing for Plus is typically billed in USD ($2,300); GBP figures are approximate based on 2026 exchange rates.

The B2B Revolution

The biggest differentiator in 2026 is Shopify B2B. Previously, brands had to run a separate “wholesale” store. Plus integrates B2B directly into the core admin, allowing you to:

• Assign bespoke price lists to specific companies.
• Offer Net-30 payment terms at checkout.
• Allow customers to use Company Profiles with multiple locations and buyers.

The “Hidden” ROI: Efficiency and Automation

A specialist agency doesn’t just look at how the monthly fee will apply to your business, they look at the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which gives you a much clearer idea of the balance between the subscription fee, and the potential savings/improvements that will aid your site’s performance. Sometimes, the answer is that you simply won’t gain enough to make the investment worthwhile, and if you’re working with a responsible agency, they’ll tell you just that.

• Launchpad: Allows you to pre-schedule theme changes, discounts, and navigation updates for major sales so your team isn’t working at midnight.
• Reduced App Spend: Many Plus features (B2B, advanced loyalty, custom discounts) replace third-party apps that can cost £200 – £500/month on standard plans.
• Lower Transaction Fees: The 0.15% fee for third-party gateways (compared to 0.5% on Advanced) can save a business turning over £5M/year roughly £17,500 annually in fees alone.

When is it Actually Worth It?

The “Revenue Rule” (usually cited as £1M+ ARR) is only half the story. When evaluating the recommendation (or not) for a move to Shopify Plus, we base it on three triggers:

1. Checkout Conversion Arithmetic: If your store does £5M a year and a bespoke checkout widget improves conversion by just 0.5%, that’s £25,000 in found revenue. If the upgrade pays for itself, it’s an easy recommendation for us to make, but we’ll always look at the numbers first.
2. Operational Complexity: If your team spends 20 hours a week on manual data entry or “workaround” apps to handle B2B or multi-currency, the efficiency gain of Plus is immediate.
3. International Ambition: If you are moving into 3 or more global markets, the “Expansion Store” model provides a level of SEO and UX control that standard Shopify “Markets” cannot match.

The Agency’s Role: Strategist, Not Just Developer

Choosing the wrong agency means they’ll tell you to upgrade because it’s easier for them. A specialist Shopify agency will treat the upgrade as a commercial business case. When working with a client, we identify which apps can be deleted, design custom logic that reduces friction, and help transition manual wholesale spreadsheets into a self-service digital portal.

The Bottom Line: Shopify Plus is not a “better” version of Shopify – it is a more programmable version, though. If your business has reached the stage where “out of the box” feels like it’s constricting your business growth, get in touch with us to talk about moving to Plus.