#BlinkTank: Shopify to activate agentic storefronts this month
Hi everyone,
There’s no doubt the pressure is mounting. As we approach the tax year-end for many, the atmosphere is defined by uncertainty. The ongoing crisis in the Middle East is compounding the issue - global shipping remains in a state of flux, and margins are feeling the squeeze. If the impact hasn't hit yet, it certainly will soon.
But the sun is out - at least it is here in Birmingham - and we are looking onwards. Because despite the macro-noise, this week brought some pretty big news that could well impact plans for the rest of the year.
OpenAI offloads checkout to Shopify - with agentic storefronts
Last week, I wrote that OpenAI was stepping back from native checkout because the infrastructure was too complex. Then, this email from Shopify started to land in inboxes.
If I’m being honest, the pivot by OpenAI isn't much of a surprise, but the speed of the shift by Shopify is.
Agentic storefronts is a significant milestone we’ve been tracking for a while. The foundations have been taking shape for some time, particularly around the developments with Shopify Catalog.
Seeing it go live for all merchants later this month is a massive move, but we need to be realistic about the immediate impact:
- We aren't expecting this to move the needle on revenue today. The numbers in the wild will be small.
- What we will be doing is monitoring this obsessively to see how data is being surfaced and how users are actually interacting with these agents.
- I’ve said before that Q4 2026 will be the first quarter where AI shopping behaviour becomes embedded. This rollout is the starting gun.
📎 The Keyword: Shopify activates ChatGPT product discovery for all stores
📎 The Information: OpenAI scales back shopping plans for ChatGPT
"Agents will change everything", says Harley Finkelstein
Speaking to TechCrunch, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein made it clear that the goal is to move beyond simple search results toward a world where an AI agent understands a merchant's full context.
As should be obvious by now, Finkelstein is positioning Shopify as the necessary bridge between LLMs and the physical world of commerce. His comments reiterated this once again:
- "The idea that a human has to do every single step of a transaction is going away. Agents will change everything about how people discover and buy."
- "We are making sure that when an agent 'walks' into a Shopify store, it can understand inventory, shipping rules, and product attributes as well as any human shopper."
- "This isn't about a chatbot; it's about the commerce operating system being readable by AI."
📎 TechCrunch: Shopify is preparing for AI shopping agents to change everything, exec says
Shopify and Klaviyo deepen partnership
While the ChatGPT interface is getting the headlines, another interesting shift for 2026 is the deepening integration between Shopify and Klaviyo.
In a recent announcement, the two platforms outlined new joint capabilities designed to unify customer data across regions. As Andrew Bialecki, co-founder and co-CEO of Klaviyo, put it: "Shopify enables merchants to sell anywhere, and Klaviyo helps make every customer relationship more valuable."
This moves us toward a level of data portability that feels like it’s being built specifically for an AI-first environment. For an AI agent to actually be useful, it needs more than a static SKU list - it needs the "intelligence" that usually sits inside a CRM.
Here is how we see this playing out:
- We could see Klaviyo’s predictive analytics - things like churn risk and LTV - being fed directly into Shopify’s agentic framework. This allows an agent to understand not just what a customer is asking for, but who they are to the brand.
- When an agent "shops" on behalf of a user, it won’t just be checking stock levels. It could be querying a unified data set that knows a customer's specific preferences and purchase history in real-time.
- By becoming the "checkout of choice" for LLMs, Shopify is capturing the transaction volume OpenAI found too difficult to manage. Klaviyo provides the "memory" that tells those agents what to actually sell.
There is, of course, a reality check here. In a note published on Yahoo Finance, Simply Wall St pointed out, there is an underappreciated risk that growing regulatory and privacy demands could reshape how this data is used.
📎 FutureCIO: New joint capabilities of Klaviyo and Shopify to accelerate global commerce growth
📎 Yahoo Finance: Is Shopify’s AI partnership push quietly redefining its moat In commerce infrastructure (SHOP)?
Double the Sam (!) - Keep Optimising podcast
If you have a high tolerance for hearing me drone on, you have two glorious opportunities this week.
First, I joined Chloë Thomas on the Keep Optimising podcast to talk about the shift to GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation). We discussed in practical terms how Shopify brands should structure product data to capitalise on the shift from traditional search to AI discovery.
Secondly, I’ll be speaking at Engage with eCommerce in Covent Garden on March 25th.
My talk, "Moving beyond ad spend: how to achieve 20% year on year growth through technical merchandising," looks at how to squeeze growth out of your existing catalogue without just throwing more money at Meta and Google Ads.
Many thanks to the Quickfire team for inviting me to take part!
📎 Keep Optimising: SEO GEO: Turn Your Shopify Product Data into an AI Search Growth Engine with Sam Wright, Blink (episode 296)
📎 Eventbrite: Engage with Ecommerce
Search Console fully rolls out non-branded filter
Google has officially rolled out a "Non-branded queries" filter in Search Console. This is a win for every merchant. Previously, stripping out brand data to see true SEO performance was a manual mess of regex; now, it is a native toggle under Performance > Search Results.
Heads-up: the data only seems to track back to late February. It will take a few more weeks before this is useful for year-on-year reporting, but it’s a still a feature that has been needed for a long time.
📎 Search Engine Journal: Google answers questions about Search Console’s branded queries filter
New Merchant Center for Agencies
Google has finally moved Merchant Center for Agencies into General Availability for the US and Canada (it remains in pilot for the rest of the world).
Think of this as an MCC account, but for product feeds instead of ad campaigns. It replaces the old Multi-Client Account (MCA) system, which provided access but no portfolio-level tools. This new interface allows agencies to monitor account health and item-level visibility issues across an entire client list from a single login.
📎 Google: Introducing Merchant Center for Agencies
Network shout-out: AgentChecker.ai
This week’s shout-out goes to https://agentchecker.ai/, a tool built by one of my very favourite people, Mersudin Forbes.
Agent Checker is an automated audit tool that sends a real AI agent to browse your website. It tests the things AI agents care about - structured data, accessible navigation, working forms, clear content hierarchy - and scores your site on how well it performs. You get a detailed report with specific, actionable recommendations.
We've been testing it, and the outputs are genuinely useful. It is genuinely worth a look.
As ever, thanks for reading!
All the best, Sam
This newsletter was brought to you by the team at Blink, specialists in SEO and PPC for large-catalogue Shopify stores.
