After a host described buying a raincoat through ChatGPT, Shopify's president gave advice to merchants heading into Black Friday. His point is that the product data you give AI shopping agents now decides whether you get found.
Yeah, there are a bunch of other products that are not like brand-driven purchases to me that don't, you know. Now I'm so curious to, John, you got to wear the rain jacket tomorrow, whether it's raining or not. I got to see. Your jaw's going to be on
John Coogan
the floor. You're going to be like, that's the best raincoat I've ever seen.
Harley Finkelstein
I will, though, give a shout out, though, to those that are listening to the show. And I know we have so many Shopify merchants that watch your show religiously who are thinking about preparing for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. What I will say to them is to the conversation we're having, it is really important that you look at the knowledge, like the knowledge center inside the Shopify admin to figure out what are agents seeing about your products. Because remember, we have syndicated all of your products into catalog. The catalog was built for agents so they can sift through everything, real-time inventory, the right product attributes and details. But if there are like details of your products that you are not telling it, so if this raincoat is really good in New York City, but won't work in Toronto because it's too cold, that is a product attribute you should mention. Like this works better in cold weather. Therefore, you will be found more if the consumer is searching for that. That is a very November 2026 recommend suggestion that was never actually that important because eventually consumers can kind of do their own research. But now it matters more than ever because the agent is going to surface whatever is the most merit-based product.
John Coogan
Yeah, the big thing is measurements. I mean, for me, I'm six foot eight tall and like have specific proportions, but I've given my agent. Yeah, flex, John. Flex, you know. But I've given my agent like every possible measurement. And so it can go and sometimes it can look for this particular size…
Harley Finkelstein
Shopify merchants is a company out of New York called Gold Belly. Do you guys know Gold Belly? They're amazing. So I live in Canada now, but I love, I mean, I grew up in the US, so I love getting like Katz's deli delivered to Montreal and stuff like that. It turns out that some products can go over…
John Coogan
Yeah. The reason why Katz has a huge line. We drove by Katz's Del Yes in New York, and it was a line down the block, and now we know that. Amazing. Great spot.
Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.
