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THE CLUB DROP ISSUE #001 · OCT 2026
STOP RUNNING YOUR STORE LIKE IT'S 2023.
AI isn't coming for ecommerce. It's already changing how the best teams work.
Welcome to the very first issue of Ecommerce Club. This isn't another newsletter summarizing yesterday's news. We're building this for the people actually doing the work: founders, ecommerce teams, marketers, developers, operators and agencies. Every issue will give you a handful of things worth knowing, testing or stealing.
BUY. BUILD. GROW. TOGETHER.
01 WHAT'S WORKING
AI AS AN OPERATOR, NOT A COPYWRITER.
A lot of ecommerce teams are still using AI like this: "Write me a product description."
That's fine. But it's one of the least interesting things AI can do for an ecommerce business. The bigger opportunity is giving AI context + data + a job to accomplish.
WE'RE USING AI FOR:
→ Auditing thousands of Shopify products
→ Finding missing SEO metadata
→ Cleaning product data
→ Analyzing competitor stores
→ Reviewing Shopify themes
→ Debugging Liquid
→ Building sections
→ Creating redirect maps
→ Finding merchandising problems
→ Turning audits into development tasks
Don't ask AI to write something.
Ask: "How can AI remove 80% of the manual work from this process?"
02 THE CLUB PLAY
GIVE CLAUDE CODE ACCESS TO YOUR SHOPIFY THEME.
If you have developers, or you're comfortable with a terminal, this is one of our favourite workflows right now. Instead of copying Liquid into a chat and asking what's wrong, let Claude Code work with the actual project.
THE BASIC WORKFLOW:
Install Shopify CLI
Pull your Shopify theme locally
Open the project in Claude Code
Give Claude context about the store
Ask it to investigate before changing anything
Review the changes
Test on a development theme
Ship
EXAMPLE PROMPT:
"Audit this Shopify theme and identify the five biggest opportunities to improve performance. Don't modify anything yet. Explain the problem, affected files, expected impact and recommended fix."
03 WHAT'S CHANGING
YOUR AI NEEDS CONTEXT.
The quality of AI output usually isn't limited by the model. It's limited by what you've told it.
Give Claude Code a CLAUDE.md file with your standards:
# CLAUDE.md
STORE: Your Store Name
PLATFORM: Shopify
THEME: Your Theme
STACK: Liquid / HTML / CSS / JavaScript
PRIORITIES: Performance, accessibility
MOBILE: Mobile-first
RULE: Reuse existing components
RULE: Never edit production directly
RULE: Explain major changes before implementingThink of it as onboarding a new developer. Except you only have to do it once.
04 AI IRL
STEAL THIS PROMPT.
Copy. Customize. Get results.
Act as a senior Shopify developer and ecommerce CRO consultant.
Audit this Shopify theme before making any changes.
Look for conversion friction, performance problems, accessibility issues, unnecessary JavaScript, duplicated functionality, poor mobile UX, merchandising issues and technical debt.
For every issue, provide:
1. The problem
2. Why it matters
3. The affected file(s)
4. Recommended solution
5. Expected impact
6. Risk level
7. Estimated implementation effort
Rank everything by Impact x Effort.
Do not modify any files until I approve the plan.05 SHOPIFY WATCH
BEFORE YOU INSTALL ANOTHER APP...
Ask four questions:
Can Shopify already do this natively?
Could Shopify Flow automate it?
Could we build this cleanly in the theme?
Is this app worth another script, subscription and dependency?
Apps are fantastic when they solve difficult problems. But we've seen plenty of stores where years of installing "just one more app" has created a Frankenstein stack nobody wants to touch.
OUR PREFERRED STACK:
Shopify + fewer great apps + automation + AI.
NOT THIS:
Shopify + 37 apps + hope.
06 THE SWIPE FILE
YOUR 10-MINUTE MONDAY STORE CHECK.
Before opening Slack Monday morning, look at:
☐ Revenue vs. last week / last year
☐ Conversion rate
☐ Average order value
☐ Traffic by channel
☐ Add-to-cart rate
☐ Checkout conversion
☐ Top products
☐ Products losing sales
☐ Inventory issues
☐ Search Console errors
☐ Site speed
☐ Customer support complaints
WHAT'S WEIRD?
That's usually where you should start.
FREE CLUB DROP
THE 2026 ECOMMERCE CHEAT SHEET
Our curated list of the best tools, workflows and shortcuts to make running ecommerce easier.
✓ AI tools ✓ Shopify ✓ CRO ✓ SEO ✓ Analytics ✓ Email ✓ Customer service ✓ Design ✓ Automation ✓ Prompts + more
NEW THE CLUB COMMUNITY
THE CONVERSATION DOESN'T END IN YOUR INBOX.
Ecommerce Club now has its own community. A place to ask questions, share what's working and get real answers from founders, marketers, developers and operators doing the work.
👋 Introductions — say hi and share what you're building
❓ Ask the Club — any question, big or small
🤖 Artificial Intelligence — prompts, tools and workflows
🧩 App Development — Shopify apps, themes and code
📩 Newsletter — discuss every Club Drop
This week's question: How many apps is your store running right now? Drop your number in the community.
Smart starts here.
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LESS NOISE. BETTER ECOMMERCE.
There are thousands of ecommerce newsletters. Most tell you what happened.
Ecommerce Club is going to focus on what matters, why it matters, and what you should actually do about it.
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