Welcome to the February edition of Commerce Jam.
January brought the biggest shift in eCommerce infrastructure since mobile checkout. Shopify and Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), turning AI agents from product researchers into actual buyers.
ChatGPT started running ads at $60 CPM. And Google search per user in the U.S. fell nearly 20% year over year. If you are still optimizing only for traditional search, you are optimizing for a shrinking channel.
This edition unpacks what you should act on now.
Let's dive in!
In this issue:
- How to Prepare Your Shopify Store for Agentic Commerce and UCP
- Shopify Platform Updates
- AI, SEO & Agentic Commerce
- eCommerce News & Industry Trends
- Shero News
- Prompt Toolbox
- Resources & Suggested Reading
- Closing Thoughts
How to Prepare Your Shopify Store for Agentic Commerce and UCP
Quick recap that the average AI Answerability score from our AI readiness report in December was 42 out of 100. Product pages scored highest at 53. Category pages, critical for intent-based queries, scored just 35. Only 6% of stores had FAQ schema in place.
That data was about AI search readiness. This year, Agentic Commerce and UCP raise the bar further. Their AI agents are not reading your content for context. They decide whether to give you the sale.
Two competing protocols are now live. Google and Shopify announced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) at NRF in January 2026, with backing from 20+ companies, including Target, Walmart, Visa, and Etsy. OpenAI and Stripe built the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), which powers ChatGPT's Instant Checkout. Shopify supports both through their Agentic Storefronts.
With this strategic reality, agentic commerce shifts power from brand to data. Brand loyalty matters less when an AI agent selects products based on structured specifications.
Merchants with clean product data, complete schema, and strong reviews will get the sale. Whereas merchants relying on homepage design and brand storytelling to differentiate themselves will be filtered out before AI agents even consider price.
In the full article, we break down UCP vs ACP in detail, cover what needs to be in place across five areas (structured data, schema, reviews, inventory, and Merchant Center compliance), walk through the technical setup for Shopify merchants, and give you an honest assessment of when it makes sense to wait.
Read the full article on the Shero Commerce blog →
Shopify Platform Updates
These updates were pulled from the Shopify Changelog, the Shopify Developer Changelog, and our internal team. Follow Khalid Chao on LinkedIn for weekly Shopify release summaries.
ACH Payments for B2B Wholesale
U.S. Shopify Plus merchants can now accept ACH Direct Debit bank payments for B2B orders. ACH reduces processing fees from the typical 2.5-3% credit card rate to under 1%.
For merchants processing $500K+ in monthly B2B transactions, this could cut annual processing costs by 40 to 60%. The tradeoff: ACH settlement takes 3 to 5 business days vs. instant card processing, so cash flow planning matters (Shopify Changelog).
Store Credit for Companies
Shopify now supports issuing store credit at the company level rather than the individual buyer level. This streamlines B2B credit management for merchants with wholesale accounts where multiple buyers order under one entity (Shopify Editions Winter '26).
B2B Pickup in Store
Wholesale buyers can now reserve inventory online and collect from physical locations while using B2B price lists and payment terms like Net 30. All pickup and shipped orders are managed in a single Shopify workflow (Shopify Help Center).
Payment Requests Per Fulfillment
Merchants can now collect payment as each fulfillment ships rather than charging the full amount upfront. This feature is significant for B2B merchants handling large multi-shipment orders where buyers expect to pay per delivery (Shopify Changelog).
POS Inventory Transfers
Shopify POS 10.20 introduces native inventory transfer workflows directly from the POS terminal. Staff can create and manage transfers between locations without switching to admin. Our own Mike Warwick flags this as a "big deal for POS merchants" when it dropped on February 3 (Shopify Changelog).
Product Variant Limit: 100 to 2,048
For 17 years, Shopify capped products at 100 variants. The Winter '26 Edition announced that the limit had increased to 2,048 variants per product. This eliminates the need for workaround apps and SKU splitting for merchants in apparel, configurable goods, and complex wholesale catalogs (Shopify Blog: 2048 Variants).
Horizon Themes with Built-in B2B
All 10 Horizon themes now include volume pricing, quantity rules, and quick order lists without custom code. 250+ improvements to animations, interactive sections, and performance come standard (Shopify Editions Winter '26).
Checkout UI Extensions Default to Non-Blocking
As of January 26, checkout UI extensions default to non-blocking behavior. To enable blocking, merchants must explicitly activate the setting in the checkout editor. Shopify recommends Cart and Checkout Validation Functions for cross-checkout validation instead (Shopify Dev Changelog).
Flow Adopts API 2026-01
Shopify Flow now uses version 2026-01 of the GraphQL Admin API, which includes improved metafield and metaobject querying, updates to working with returns, and granular category-specific return reason definitions (Shopify Dev Changelog).
Shopify Scripts Deprecation Extended
The deadline for migrating from Shopify Scripts to Shopify Functions has been extended to June 30, 2026. Scripts still work, but merchants should plan their migration now. Functions offer faster execution and expanded capability (Shopify Changelog).
Legacy Custom Apps Blocked
Starting January 1, 2026, merchants can no longer create new custom apps directly in Shopify Admin. Existing apps continue to work. New custom apps must be built through the Dev Dashboard (Shopify Community).
Human or Bot Session Filter in Analytics
Shopify Analytics now includes a filter to separate human vs. bot traffic, giving merchants clearer insights into actual visitor behavior. Built-in heatmapping and precise date/time controls also landed in this update. This is especially relevant as AI crawlers and agents increase traffic to Shopify stores (Shopify Changelog).
Shopify Payments Expands to 15 New Countries
Shopify Payments is now available in Poland, Lithuania, Norway, Latvia, Hungary, Estonia, Malta, Croatia, Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Gibraltar. This is a significant expansion for merchants selling into European markets (Shopify Changelog).
Marketing Pixels Now Auto Share Data Based on Performance
As of January 13, all active marketing pixels automatically share data with tools that are driving traffic and results. Shopify will soon limit data sharing if those tools stop driving results. This is an important shift in how pixel data flows between your store and ad platforms. If you rely on custom pixel setups or have specific data-sharing requirements, review your pixel configurations in Settings to make sure auto sharing aligns with your attribution model and privacy requirements (Shopify Changelog).
Category Specific Return Reasons
Shopify now suggests relevant return reasons based on the product category being returned, not a generic dropdown. This option gives merchants better data on why products come back, which feeds directly into product improvement, listing accuracy, and quality control decisions. Returns have been a black box for most Shopify stores. Knowing that 40% of your shoe returns are "wrong size" vs 40% of your electronics returns are "not as described" changes what you fix first (Shopify Changelog).
AI, SEO & Agentic Commerce
ChatGPT Ads Launch at $60 CPM with $200K Minimum Spend
OpenAI officially launched advertising in ChatGPT in late January 2026 with CPMs at approximately $60 per 1,000 impressions and a minimum advertiser commitment of $200,000. That pricing is roughly 3x higher than Meta's typical $15 to $20 CPMs and comparable to premium NFL TV inventory. Ads will appear at the bottom of responses for free and Go-tier accounts. Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans remain ad-free (ADWEEK).
OpenAI says ads will not influence ChatGPT answers. Advertisers receive only high-level metrics like impressions and clicks. No conversion tracking. No purchase attribution. In my opinion, this is worth watching, but not worth spending on yet. The measurement gap is too wide for performance focused budgets (Search Engine Land).
Last Sunday, Anthropic ran Super Bowl ads poking fun at the idea of ads in AI assistants. :) For context: MediaPost reports ChatGPT queries average approximately 60 words compared to Google's typical 3.4 word searches. Longer queries signal higher purchase intent, which is why OpenAI believes $60 CPM is justified. Visitors from AI platforms spend 68% more time on websites than traditional organic search visitors.
Whether advertisers agree the premium is worth it will determine if this becomes a real channel or an expensive experiment.
Google Search Decline Accelerates: Down 20% Per User
Google desktop searches per U.S. user fell nearly 20% year over year from 2024 to 2025, according to the Datos/SparkToro Q4 State of Search report published January 28, 2026.
The drop in Europe was only 2-3%. SparkToro's Rand Fishkin attributes the decline to AI answers reducing the need for follow-up searches. Google is not losing users. It is losing repeat searches (Search Engine Land). Zero-click searches stabilized in the low 20% range by year's end.
AI Overviews now appear in approximately 30% of searches and reduce clickthrough rates by around 35% according to Similarweb data via Graphite (Press Gazette).
Google also completed its December 2025 core update after 18 days, emphasizing AI content quality and people-first signals. For merchants: organic search still matters, but the traffic ceiling is getting lower. My advice is to diversify discovery channels now. If your content strategy leans on AI-generated product descriptions without human editing, expect ranking volatility.
Shopify Products Searchable in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode
Shopify merchants can now sell products directly inside ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini through Agentic Storefronts. ChatGPT Instant Checkout launched with Etsy in September 2025 and is now expanding to more than a million Shopify merchants.
Google's AI Mode in Search uses UCP to enable native checkout without leaving the conversation (Shopify News). Product results in ChatGPT are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance. Again, clean product data wins.
AI Traffic to Retail Sites Surging
Web traffic from AI sources on Amazon Prime Day 2025 was up 3,300% year over year, per Adobe Analytics. Cyber Monday saw similar surges. A recent Omnisend report found 65% of customers now use AI tools to discover new products. Still, AI accounts for less than 1% of total U.S. desktop activity according to SparkToro, but the growth rate significantly exceeds traditional search (Digital Commerce 360). The question is not if AI will become a major discovery channel. It is how fast.
Training AI to Recommend Your Brand
AI agents do not respond to taglines, brand stories, or marketing copy. They respond to structured, verifiable data. To get recommended by ChatGPT or Gemini, focus on: complete product specifications in structured fields, verified customer reviews with detailed feedback, accurate real-time inventory and pricing, FAQ content that answers specific comparison queries. Counter AI's generalizations with specific, verifiable evidence. Sales messages train AI. Taglines do not. See prompt below for more information.
eCommerce News & Industry Trends
Saks Global Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
Saks Global, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 14. The filing came barely a year after its $2.7 billion debt-fueled acquisition of Neiman Marcus. The company listed $3.4 billion in debts, with Chanel owed $136 million at the top of the creditors list. Saks has since ended its eCommerce partnership with Amazon and begun liquidating Saks Off 5th Digital inventory (CNBC). The takeaway for mid-market merchants: D2C is not a nice-to-have. It is the model that survives.
Amazon Q4: $213B Revenue, $200B Capex Planned for 2026
Amazon posted $213.4 billion in Q4 2025 revenue, up 14% year over year. North America sales hit $127.1 billion. Ad revenue grew 23% to $21.3 billion. AWS grew 24% to $35.6 billion, its fastest growth in 13 quarters.
But the headline for merchants: Amazon plans $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, nearly doubling analyst expectations. Most goes to AI infrastructure and AWS. Amazon also flagged investment in "quick commerce and even sharper prices" for international stores. Prime members received 8 billion same-day or next-day items in 2025, up 30%. When Amazon spends $200 billion to move faster, everyone else needs to move faster too (Amazon Q4 2025 Earnings).
U.S. eCommerce Orders Surged 147% in 2025
U.S. eCommerce orders surged 147% in 2025, but growth was uneven. Top-performing brands pulled ahead while others struggled with tariff impacts and logistics bottlenecks. Pre-buying to offset expected price increases drove significant volume in the first half. Intentional shopping, where consumers buy thoughtfully rather than impulsively, accelerated throughout the year (E-Commerce Times).
Tariffs and Trade Policy Continue to Reshape Supply Chains
Section 232 tariffs on semiconductors hit 25% as of January 15. Tariffs on wood products have been delayed but remain pending. USMCA review is scheduled by July 2026. Retailers who pre-bought inventory before tariffs are beginning to run through that stock, and new inventory carries higher costs. PVH Corp reported inventory costs up 3% year over year, with 2% attributed directly to tariffs. Shopify's new Section 232 customization feature lets merchants configure exact metal percentages for duty calculations (Retail Dive).
Value Driven Consumer Behavior Intensifies
High prices from lingering tariff effects are pushing consumers toward value-seeking and intentional spending across categories. 40% of U.S. consumers say a brand's value comes from factors other than price, including customer service, product quality, ease of checkout, and loyalty programs, according to Deloitte's Consumer Loyalty Program Survey (eMarketer). Retailers planning for 2026 need to think beyond discounting.
Retail AI Adoption Lagging Despite Hype
The retail industry faces "higher organizational restrictions, more skepticism, and slower integration" for AI compared to other sectors, according to a 2025 study by the Wharton School and GBK Collective. The gap between AI leaders who embed generative AI across operations and laggards risks widening significantly in 2026 (Retail Dive).
PitchBook predicts a K-shaped economy this year, in which companies in the AI ecosystem thrive while others struggle amid weakened consumer buying power. eMarketer's 2026 outlook notes that agentic commerce may face a long adoption curve, similar to that of social commerce. Facebook spent years touting the potential of social commerce, yet it will account for just 6.6% of total U.S. eCommerce sales this year. Agentic commerce could follow a similar pattern unless it demonstrably makes everyday shopping easier for a broad consumer base.
Operational Speed is the New Competitive Advantage
Executives in eCommerce describe 2026 as a "structural reset" driven by AI-powered shopping, autonomous network operations, and tariff changes reshaping supply chains. The new benchmark is time to change: how fast a company can respond to tariff adjustments, supply chain disruptions, carrier changes, new brand onboarding, and localization requirements.
"The companies stuck on monolithic systems will lose years of competitiveness in months," says Lance Owide, VP and GM of B2B at BigCommerce (Digital Commerce 360). For Shopify merchants, this means evaluating your app stack, integration architecture, and operational workflows with a bias toward speed and modularity.
Shero News
Starting 2026 with New Team Members
Shero Commerce kicks off the year with five new hires across the UK and the US. The expanded team strengthens capabilities across client services, partnerships, project management, design, and technical delivery.
New York Team Onsite
Last week, the Shero team gathered in Red Hook, NY, for an all-hands onsite. The week-long event brought together 40 remote team members from the UK, Finland, and Albania for strategic planning, team building, and collaboration sessions. Many of our partners, including Athos, Patchworks, Rivo, and Shopify, also joined us. These gatherings help us maintain alignment across a distributed team spanning four countries and multiple time zones. But most importanly it builds culture and is a great opportunity for team bonding.
(in case you are wondering, what's with the bunny ears... on our last night, we threw my brother, Adi Shero, a surprise bunny-themed 40th birthday party 😊).
Many thanks to Richmond Arce for all his effort that went into planning and organizing such a successful event.
From the Blog
Recent posts from the Shero blog worth checking out: our take on whether headless Shopify is worth the investment, a practical guide to B2B checkout optimization on Shopify Plus, and a deep dive into structured data requirements for AI discoverability. These are written from our experience with hands-on client work, not theory. Check them at sherocommerce.com/blog.
Prompt Toolbox
Two prompts this month focused on getting your store ready for agentic commerce and AI discoverability.
1. Product Data Readiness Audit for Agentic Commerce
Use this prompt with ChatGPT Agent Mode or any AI assistant to evaluate whether your product data is structured for AI agent discovery and recommendation.
Prompt: "You are an eCommerce data quality expert specializing in AI discoverability. Audit the product catalog at [enter store URL]. For the first 10 products, evaluate: completeness of product titles (do they include brand, material, use case, and key specs), structured variant data (size, color, material clearly separated), image alt text quality, presence of structured reviews, schema markup accuracy, and real-time inventory status. Score each product 1 to 10 on AI readiness. Provide a summary with the three highest impact fixes that would improve AI agent recommendations for this catalog."
2. Competitive AI Visibility Check
Use this prompt to understand how your products appear when AI agents compare options in your category.
Prompt: "Act as an AI shopping agent. A customer asks you to find the best [product type] under [price]. Search for options and explain your selection process. Which product attributes influenced your ranking? Which brands appeared first and why? Now search for [your brand name] specifically. How does it compare on the attributes you used for ranking? What is missing from the product data that would improve its recommendation score?"
Resources & Suggested Reading
AI & Agentic Commerce
Building the Universal Commerce Protocol (Shopify Engineering) | Technical deep dive into UCP architecture, capability layers, and extension model.
Shopify's Agentic Commerce Announcement | Official announcement covering UCP, Agentic Storefronts, and the Agentic Plan for non-Shopify merchants.
OpenAI's Approach to Advertising | OpenAI's official stance on ChatGPT ads, privacy, and user trust commitments.
Universal Commerce Protocol Developer Guide | Practical implementation guide for developers building with UCP.
Search & SEO
Datos/SparkToro Q4 State of Search Report (via Search Engine Land) | The data behind the 20% decline in Google searches per U.S. user.
Publishers Say Google Traffic in 'Managed Decline' (Press Gazette) | How publishers are adapting to 33% decline in Google referral traffic.
Shopify Platform
Shopify Winter '26 Editions: Full Feature List | Complete breakdown of 150+ platform updates in the RenAIssance Edition.
Shopify Changelog | Official source for all platform updates. Bookmark and check weekly.
Industry & Trends
6 Retail Trends to Watch in 2026 (Retail Dive) | Covers AI adoption gaps, tariff impacts, consumer spending shifts, and distressed retail.
10 eCommerce Trends That Will Shape Online Retail in 2026 (Digital Commerce 360) | AI traffic surges, conversion rate stabilization, and the BOPIS advantage.
Ecommerce Faces a Structural Reckoning in 2026 (Digital Commerce 360) | Why operational speed and data velocity are the new competitive edges.
Closing Thoughts
With UCP launched and ChatGPT starting to sell products directly in conversation, some brands may see this as noise that will settle back to normal. Others are already auditing product data and testing AI-powered checkout flows.
The difference is not intelligence or resources. It is recognition that distribution is changing faster than most marketing strategies can keep up with.
At Shero, we are helping clients audit and fix these gaps now. Not because it is urgent this month, but because when agentic commerce scales, there will not be time to rebuild product data from scratch.
The parallel I keep coming back to is mobile commerce in 2012. Everyone knew it was coming. Most merchants waited until responsive design became table stakes and then scrambled. Those who moved early captured years of compounding advantage.
Agentic commerce feels the same. The infrastructure is being laid now. The merchants who prepare their product data, enable Agentic Storefronts, and test AI checkout flows today will have a structural lead when this channel scales.
Worth thinking about.
Warm regards,
Gentian
P.S. If you enjoyed this month’s newsletter, feel free to share it with a colleague or friend in the industry. And as always, I’d love to hear your feedback or topics you’d like to see covered in future editions, just hit reply and let me know!
