THE CLUB DROP THIS WEEK IN SHOPIFY
SHOPIFY'S AI NOW TESTS YOUR STORE BEFORE YOU DO.
Five updates, 24 days before Black Friday. What each one means and the one thing to do about it.
Shopify shipped a big batch on October 28 and 29, most of it aimed at AI and automation. Below: the five worth your time before the BFCM rush, four sales leaks we found auditing real stores, and a 10-item BFCM checklist. Every Shopify item links to Shopify's own changelog so you can check the details yourself.
01 AI STORE TESTING
SIDEKICK SUGGESTS A CHANGE, THEN TESTS IT ON SIMULATED SHOPPERS.
Sidekick can now suggest a storefront improvement, build it as a draft, and compare it against your live store using AI-simulated shoppers (Shopify's SimGym). You see the result and decide whether to apply it. It only picks changes that can be made in your theme and are expected to affect add-to-cart. SimGym also gained shopping goals, with recommendations and a visual guide to where each one goes.
One honest caveat, straight from Shopify: these are not tests on real shoppers and not live A/B tests. Treat the result as a smart second opinion, not proof.
Do this: ask Sidekick for one suggestion on your best-selling product page this week. If it looks sensible, apply it now, well before your pre-BFCM theme freeze, so real orders can tell you whether it worked.
02 AUTOMATION
FLOW CAN NOW WATCH YOUR PRODUCTS FOR CHANGES.
Shopify Flow has a new Product updated trigger. Pick up to five product or variant fields to watch (tags, metafields, prices and more), and the workflow runs whenever one of them changes. Separately, staff now need the matching admin permissions before they can test or turn on a workflow, so nobody can automate an action they couldn't do by hand.
Do this: build a price guardrail before your sale prices go in. Watch the price field, and if a price drops by more than 30%, email yourself and tag the product "price-check". It catches the $4.99-instead-of-$49.99 typo before your customers do.
03 CART RECOVERY
ABANDONED CARTS CAN NOW GET A WHATSAPP NUDGE.
Shopify Messaging now sends automated WhatsApp marketing messages. There are ready-made templates for abandoned browse, abandoned cart and abandoned checkout, or you can add a WhatsApp step to your own automations. Find it under Messaging → Automations.
Do this: if a good share of your customers live on WhatsApp, switch on the abandoned checkout template first, since those shoppers were closest to buying. Only message people who agreed to hear from you there, keep it to one short, friendly message, and check the costs in your admin before you turn it on.
04 ADS
CAMPAIGN AUTOPILOT IS OPEN TO EVERYONE, WITH MORE CHANNELS.
You set a budget and guardrails, and Autopilot builds a campaign from your store, products and customers, chooses the channels, and moves money toward whatever performs best. It's now available to all merchants in the Growth tab and covers Meta, Microsoft Advertising, Snapchat, Shop and Shopify Messaging, with X Ads coming soon. It also suggests SEO fixes you can review and approve.
Do this: don't hand it your Black Friday budget cold. Run a small, capped test over the next two weeks, compare it with what you already run, and only scale it for BFCM if the numbers hold.
05 PRODUCT DATA
SHOPIFY NOW CHECKS YOUR BARCODES FOR YOU.
The admin now checks barcodes against the GS1 registry, the body that issues GTINs. Type one in and Shopify suggests marking it as a GTIN; saved "Custom" barcodes that look like GTINs get a suggestion too. In the bulk editors you can accept or dismiss every suggestion at once. Nothing changes unless you accept it.
Do this: this is the easy half of the EU rule that started November 1. Open the products bulk editor, accept the GTIN suggestions, and fill any empty barcode fields. Google Shopping matches your listings better with real GTINs too.
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STORE TEARDOWN REAL AUDITS, NO NAMES
WE AUDITED A DOZEN REAL SHOPIFY STORES. HERE'S WHAT WAS LEAKING SALES.
Over the last few weeks we ran more than a dozen live Shopify stores through our audit tool, from a one-product UK startup to a rug retailer with 40,000+ product photos. Names stay private, but the mistakes are too useful not to share. Every one of these is fixable in an afternoon.
1. The free-shipping offer said two different things. One food brand's banner promised one free-shipping threshold while its shipping policy said another. A clothing store advertised free shipping over $150, but only its policy page mentioned that you had to be signed in to get it. Shoppers who find out at checkout don't email you about it. They just leave.
Fix: open your banner, product page, shipping policy and checkout side by side. One number, one set of rules, everywhere.
2. A "sale" that wasn't a sale. One store had 12 products showing a crossed-out "was" price that was no higher than the real price. Two others had leftover compare-at prices from old promos. It looks sloppy at best and misleading at worst, right when shoppers are comparing deals.
Fix: filter your products by compare-at price and clear anything that isn't a real, current discount before you load your Black Friday prices.
3. Template leftovers customers could see. One homepage still showed a placeholder phone number and a "chat with us" button connected to nothing. Another store's theme was still loading code from three apps it had already uninstalled, which is extra weight on every page.
Fix: click every button and number on your homepage like a customer would. Then ask your developer to strip out code from apps you no longer use.
4. Sold-out products everywhere. Store after store had hundreds of sold-out products still showing in collections, often with no "notify me" option. That's a dead end on a page you paid to bring someone to.
Fix: push sold-out items to the bottom of collections, or hide them, and add a back-in-stock alert so the interest turns into an email address.
Want to know what yours would say? The same audit is free and takes about a minute.
Your Search Bar Is Haunted
Shoppers type exactly what they want and get “0 results found” back. They don’t complain. They just vanish to a competitor.
Gladly understands what shoppers mean, typos and all, and turns dead-end searches into product recommendations.
QUICK HITS
Variants are now managed right on the product page, no separate page needed.
Waive a balance: you can waive what's still owed on an order from its payment card.
Subscriptions can now go on draft orders paid by invoice. Useful for B2B and phone orders.
Shopify Analytics now shows activity from supported apps (emails sent, rewards redeemed) and adds bubble maps of where your sales come from.
Sidekick can now use web search and data from supported apps when it makes suggestions.
Sales channels: you can map and customize product data per channel, and it stays in sync as your catalog changes.
POS recognizes more returning customers at checkout, so your in-store list grows.
Admin search on desktop now finds pages, settings, records and installed apps in one place.
BFCM COUNTDOWN 24 DAYS TO GO
YOUR 10-MINUTE-A-DAY BFCM CHECKLIST.
Ten jobs, about ten minutes each. Do one a day and you're finished well before the November 20 theme freeze.
Place a real test order on your phone with every payment method you offer: card, Shop Pay, PayPal, Apple Pay. Then refund it.
Build your Black Friday discount codes now, give them end dates, and test that they combine (or don't) the way you expect.
Work out your real margin on the offer, after the discount, payment fees, shipping and ad cost. If it doesn't make money, change the offer, not the hope.
Line up your free-shipping message so the banner, product page, policy and checkout all match (see the teardown above).
Check stock on your top 10 sellers and reorder now, while suppliers can still deliver before Black Friday.
Turn on (or test) your abandoned checkout email, and send yourself one to see what customers get.
Publish your holiday shipping cutoff dates on your shipping page and in your FAQ.
Make sure gift cards are live: they're the last-minute gift that never runs out of stock.
Delete apps you don't use and run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights.
Put bot protection in place before the traffic spike, because card-testing bots love busy weeks.
WORK WITH THE CLUB
NO TIME FOR THE LIST? WE'LL DO IT WITH YOU.
The team behind the Club builds and fixes Shopify stores for a living. If you'd rather hand some of this off before Black Friday, we can help with:
BFCM readiness: a CRO and speed audit, then we fix what it finds
Shopify builds and migrations, plus design and theme work
Integrations and custom apps when the app store doesn't quite fit
AI workflows and automation, including Flow, Sidekick and your support inbox
Analytics you can actually trust, and ongoing support
Tell us what you're working on and we'll get back to you within two business days.
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OUR FIRST FREE COURSE IS LIVE.
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Already have a store? Send it to the friend who keeps saying they'll start one.
CLUB PICK FRAUD & BOTS
STOP CARD-TESTING BOTS BEFORE BFCM.
Card-testing bots love busy weeks, because a burst of tiny fake orders hides in the noise. Blockify blocks bots, fake sign-ups and VPN or proxy scammers before they reach checkout, and lets you block by IP, country or region. It's built for Shopify and has a free plan.
Check out Blockify → (affiliate link: we may earn a commission at no cost to you)
DATES TO PUT IN YOUR CALENDAR
Nov 3 (today): Shopify reports Q3 results. We'll cover anything that affects your store next week.
Nov 20: a good day to freeze your theme. No new apps or big changes after this.
Nov 27: Black Friday.
Nov 30: Cyber Monday. Schedule your prices to switch back afterwards.
Jan 1, 2027: apps must move to expiring access tokens. Ask your developer if you have a custom app.
WOULD YOU LET AI TEST YOUR STORE?
Tried Sidekick's suggestions or SimGym yet? Tell us in the community what it suggested and whether you'd trust it, and share anything new you've spotted in your admin.
SHARE & EARN
Know someone who'd find this useful? Forward it or share your link. 1 referral = a shout-out for your store. 3 = a free Pro Store Audit. 5 = a 1:1 call with Terry. 10 = a free month in the Mastermind.
LESS NOISE. BETTER ECOMMERCE.
We read the changelog so you don't have to. See you next week.
Want a hand getting your store BFCM-ready?
