The Shopify App Show

The Shopify App Show goes deep with "indie" developers who build the most innovative stuff on the Shopify ecosystem. This is not a product demo show! Hosted by a 14-year ecosystem veteran, we skip the sales pitches, demos, and pricing talk. Instead, tune in for fun, 25-minute chats with founders about their craft, origin stories, and the specific use cases that help you win. Find the hidden gems that outperform the VC-backed giants. Real builders. No corporate fluff. Just great apps. Subscribe to build a better tech stack.

The Shopify App Show is a business podcast hosted by Martin Cox, with 30 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Martin Cox hosts The Shopify App Show, a business show with 30 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #31

  Can you make a website optimize itself? Self Driving CRO with Georgi Petrov

  Sep 15, 202629 minS1

  For every case study you see about A/B tests and CRO changing the world and printing money for merchants, there's unlimited, untold stories where these two methodologies are eternally in the too hard basket. At the end of the day, every Shopify store has the same shitty numbers. A hundred people land on your site, maybe three make it to the checkout. The rest just vanish, and we all get stuck trying to work out how to solve it. Georgi Petrov is the kind of guy who makes the rest of us feel like mere mortals. In the last 15 years, he has built iSenseLabs into the number one OpenCart plugin vendor, then carved out three companies from it: SMSBump, which sold to Yotpo, NitroPack, which sold to WP Engine, and he's involved in Consentmo too, which we featured on the podcast in a couple of other episodes with Elena Tsacheva. His newest venture, UXify, is AI agents that watch real shoppers, catch the exact moment they get frustrated, and fix it without spending time and money on A/B tests. So I got Georgi to share his story and I had to grill him about what UXify's AI agents actually do. We get into some juicy topics like why shoppers coming from ChatGPT convert 10 times better than everyone else, and a new tool that's basically TikTok for rage clicks. Sponsors The Support Heroes provide support for app developers all over the world. If your app business is drowning in support tickets, head to thesupportheroes.com . Native App Co , building apps that don't feel like apps, including Stork Credit, Fish Wishlist, Product Pelican & Omnibus Owl. Check us out at nativeappco.com . In this episode Georgi's path from iSenseLabs (the number one OpenCart plugin vendor) to spinning out SMSBump, NitroPack and Consentmo What UXify's AI agents actually do: watching real shopper behaviour to find friction and fix it live Real numbers: one agent driving $200K/month in extra revenue, another lifting re-engagement by 30% Why ChatGPT-referred traffic converts at 10x the rate of regular traffic Talking to your data instead of drowning in dashboards, and unifying every AI tool under MCP Reals: a "TikTok for rage clicks" feed showing the last 10 seconds before shoppers bail Why layout shift (CLS) matters even more now that AI shopping agents are browsing sites themselves How much traffic you need before UXify is actually useful YouTube Chapters 00:00 - Intro 02:15 - From iSenseLabs to SMSBump, NitroPack and Consentmo 05:10 - What UXify's AI agents actually do 07:45 - Real wins: $200K/month and 30% re-engagement 08:56 - Winning back abandoned tabs 10:58 - Why ChatGPT traffic converts 10x better 13:07 - Ditching dashboards for an AI-first chat interface 14:52 - Correlation vs causation: weather, World Cup and email timing 15:50 - Unifying every tool under MCP 17:39 - What's next: Chrome extension and new agents 19:20 - Reals: TikTok for rage clicks 21:35 - Making layout shift (CLS) visible 22:40 - CLS as an agentic Core Web Vitals problem 24:12 - Real user monitoring vs synthetic testing 26:23 - How to get started and the traffic threshold that matters 28:16 - Wrapping up

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  Episode #30

  Shit in, Shit out. The Ugly Truth About Merchandising with Mark Rillera of Tagalys

  Sep 8, 202633 minS1

  Merchandising and fashion sound easy, don't they? Everyone's been selling clothes online for years, so surely all the existing platforms have that covered. But this episode might change the way you think about that. I sat down with Mark from Tagalys , who specialise in search and merch for fashion. We talk about one of my favourite technical terms: shit in, shit out. If your data's a mess, it doesn't matter how good your AI, your merch tool, or anything else on your store is. We spent some time breaking down what good actually looks like. Mark name drops brands like Sheike and Represent in the UK, who balance brand storytelling with trade performance. I'm a big believer that if you get the stuff under the hood right, that gives brand, marketing and e-commerce teams the power to do good marketing that's creative and interesting - which is what fashion should be all about in the first place. Given the time of year, we also talk about how you need to be trading differently heading into peak season versus the rest of the year, and what you should be doing there. We talk about what the future looks like too - Shopify Sidekick, and whether that's the UX merchandising teams actually want, or whether we're moving to a world where you've got a Tinder swipe for merchandising instead. Mark's spent time on the agency side at MindArc and running e-commerce for the likes of Incu, Hype DC and Glue Store before landing at Tagalys, so he's seen the "get your data in order" problem from every angle. We get into what separates the merchants who nail merchandising from the ones drowning in spreadsheets, why the data problem people should have fixed five years ago still isn't fixed, how to restructure your collections for peak trade without torching your brand identity, the benchmarks you should be watching daily once peak hits, and why Mark thinks the next merchandising UX looks less like a chatbot and more like Tinder. Sponsor Reads The Support Heroes : dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. If your drowning in support tickets for your app heading into peak season, head to thesupportheroes.com . Product Pelican : If today's episode hit a nerve, it's probably because your product data isn't in the shape it needs to be. Product Pelican is a native PIM for Shopify - it helps you manage and audit your catalogue at scale so your merch tools, your AI, and your search actually have something good to work with. Shit in, shit out, remember. Check it out at apps.shopify.com/product-pelican . 00:00 - Why fashion merchandising is harder than it looks 02:04 - Why Tagalys exists: the physical store analogy 04:16 - What actually makes Tagalys different 05:39 - The merchants nailing it: Sheike and Represent 07:04 - The data mistake almost everyone's still making 09:05 - Shit in, shit out 12:14 - Peak trade prep: what to do right now 14:44 - Structuring collections for peak vs business as usual 16:13 - Day to day merchandising once peak hits 18:02 - Automating rules instead of manual pinning 19:07 - Getting the whole team reading the same data 20:45 - Feeding merchandising data into Sidekick, Klaviyo, MCP 21:44 - Has Tagalys built a Sidekick extension yet? 23:19 - The Tinder swipe future of merchandising 24:41 - What keeps Mark excited about e-commerce 32:12 - Wrapping up

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  Episode #29

  "You can't fake real trust": Agencies and Influencers with Gavin McKew & Yash Chavan (live episode)

  Sep 3, 202621 minS1

  Third and final bonus drop from Toronto. This one's got an agency lens on it: Gavin McKew is Director of Innovation at SHERO Commerce and doesn't hold back on what actually gets an app noticed inside a 75-person agency. Yash Chavan runs SARAL, an influencer marketing platform, and just launched SATHI, their new Shopify affiliate offering. We get into why Gavin doesn't trust app store reviews anymore, the one thing that gets an app instantly deleted from his test store (hint: it's about metafields), the build vs buy fight happening inside every agency dev team right now, and Yash's take on why AI-generated influencer content still can't fake real trust. Also a properly funny bit at the end about the best way to bribe an agency person. Video's rough as usual but the panel's razor sharp. If you're pitching apps to agencies or wondering how influencer marketing actually plays for B2B, this one's for you. Sponsor Reads This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing, and the team who helped make this Toronto live show happen. Head to thesupportheroes.com . And from us at Native App Co, a plug for Product Pelican , the native PIM for Shopify. Gavin's entire "if it's not using metafields and metaobjects, it's uninstalled" rant is basically our whole product philosophy said out loud. apps.shopify.com/product-pelican . In this episode: Gavin on why app store reviews don't cut it anymore for agency evaluation The instant red flag: any app that doesn't feel native gets uninstalled on sight The build vs buy fight playing out inside agency dev teams right now Yash on SARAL, influencer marketing as a numbers game, and why B2B and AI companies are jumping in Why AI-generated influencer content still can't replace real trust SATHI's quiet, waitlist-only launch and its 100% trial-to-upgrade rate Closing bit: what's the best way to win over an agency person 00:27 — Meet Gavin and Yash 01:39 — The state of the app ecosystem from inside an agency 03:40 — What signals Gavin actually looks for in a new app 05:17 — The instant red flag: apps that don't feel native 06:16 — The build vs buy fight inside every agency 09:14 — Meet Yash and SARAL: influencer marketing as a numbers game 11:04 — Why AI-generated influencer content still can't fake trust 13:05 — SARAL's go to market and agency partnerships 13:55 — SATHI's quiet launch and 100% trial-to-upgrade rate 14:48 — Building partnerships as an indie vs enterprise app 16:56 — Yash's strategy for his first Toronto trip 17:38 — Closer: how to actually win over an agency person 19:24 — Wrapping up

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  Episode #28

  Shopify B2B: Why It's Time To Get On Board, with Josiah Hubbard

  Aug 31, 202634 minS1

  B2B is quite possibly the biggest opportunity for most ecommerce businesses. The B2B numbers most people ignore: 87% of all US e-commerce transactions are B2B B2B orders run roughly four times bigger than B2C Only 2-10% of Shopify stores actually do B2B That's why this episode is an important one. B2B is one of my specialities on Shopify, so it was a pleasure to sit down with Josiah Hubbard, who's been at Helium Dev for eleven years. Helium's flagship app, Customer Fields, took off in 2018-2019 as merchants kept bending it sideways to hack together B2B registration flows. That misuse is what led them to build Onboard B2B , a dedicated app for vetting and approving business customer applications. We get into why B2B on Shopify used to mean tagging customers and duct-taping discount codes together, what changed when Shopify opened B2B to all plans (not just Plus) earlier this year, and how Josiah decides when to say no to a feature request even when a merchant's convinced it's a no-brainer. If you've ever talked yourself out of trying B2B because you don't have a "proper" wholesale operation, or you're an app developer wondering where the next opportunity is, this one's worth your time. Sponsor reads This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing. Head to thesupportheroes.com . Speaking of B2B, this episode's brought to you by Fish Wishlist . Fish works natively with Shopify B2B, pulling in your B2B price lists by default, and lets customers turn their wishlists straight into quotes that land in Shopify as draft orders. If you're running B2B, it's built for exactly this. Check it out on the Shopify App Store. In this episode: The stats nobody's talking about: 87% of US e-commerce is B2B, but hardly any Shopify stores touch it How Helium's Customer Fields app accidentally became the backbone of DIY B2B setups (and why merchants abused it into spaghetti flows) Why Onboard B2B exists: Shopify authentication first, then a proper vetting and revision process for business applicants What changed when Shopify opened B2B to every plan, not just Plus, and the pricing pivot that followed How Josiah decides what to build when two merchants want a feature versus fifty Building outside Shopify: Scale Headshots, the corporate headshot SaaS used by H&R Block and FIFA What's next for Onboard B2B: global tax ID validation and storefront application forms YouTube Chapters 00:00 — Why B2B is Shopify's most under-tapped opportunity 02:00 — Helium's eleven years and the birth of Customer Fields 06:11 — How merchants hacked B2B together with tags and abused flows 08:21 — The problem with building for a workflow with infinite branches 10:51 — Deciding what to build: two requests vs fifty 16:01 — Shopify B2B goes to all plans - what actually changed 20:26 — Where merchants get stuck starting B2B 25:10 — Building outside Shopify: Scale Headshots and Snap Bar 31:18 — What's next: tax ID validation and storefront forms 33:38 — Wrapping up

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  Episode #27

  Building the Shopify apps they wish always existed. Gabbie Rea & Adam Wooding (live episode)

  Aug 27, 202618 minS1

  Bonus episode number two from the Toronto live show, and this one's the self-declared "Aussie panel." Adam Wooding built POS Cafe, solving a very specific pain: Shopify POS's three-variant limit wrecking havoc for cafes and restaurants trying to run a coffee order with extra shots and oat milk. Gabbie Rea used to work for Martin at Overdose, jumped ship, and now runs Sundae Lane and Biscuit Bundles, one of the first Shop Minis builders out there. We get into the terrifying leap from charging agency day rates to supporting someone for ten bucks a month, how Gabbie rode the Cart Transform API wave to build native bundles, Adam's brutally honest take on running an agency and an app business at the same time, and why neither of them sees other apps in their space as the enemy. Video's a bit shaky again but if you've ever wondered whether it's worth ditching agency life to build your own thing, this one's for you. Sponsor Reads This episode is sponsored by The Support Heroes - dedicated Shopify support agents who actually know what they're doing, and the crew behind us getting this live show off the ground in Toronto. Head to thesupportheroes.com . And a shout to Product Pelican , the native PIM for Shopify, from us here at Native App Co. If Adam and Gabbie's story about building something merchants are actively hunting for resonates, that's exactly the gap Pelican fills for product data. apps.shopify.com/product-pelican . In this episode: Adam on why POS Cafe exists: solving Shopify POS's modifier limitations for cafes and restaurants How POS Cafe grew almost entirely through organic word of mouth and Shopify's retail sales team Gabbie's leap from agency developer to founder, and the Cart Transform API moment that made bundles possible The gut punch of going from agency hourly rates to ten-dollar-a-month customers Adam on the rollercoaster of running an app business and an agency side by side to keep cash flowing Why neither of them sees other apps in their category as competition 00:27 — Welcome to the Aussie panel 02:22 — What is POS Cafe, actually 04:10 — Growing organically through the Shopify community 05:32 — Gabbie's leap from Overdose to founder 07:22 — Cart Transform API: the catalyst for native bundles 08:19 — How they decide what to build next 10:31 — From agency day rates to ten dollars a month 11:27 — The rollercoaster of running an app and an agency at once 13:20 — Why more apps in your space isn't a bad thing 14:58 — Getting ROI out of a week like this 16:33 — Nothing beats in-person relationships 17:40 — Wrapping up

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